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One of the great peaks of the prelude literature for piano, alongside Chopin’s, Rachmaninoff’s and Scriabin’s (late) prelude sets. These works are consistently ingenious in the deployment of those devices that are now consistently associated with impressionism – modal colour, exotic scales (whole-tone, pentatonic, double harmonic, Hungarian), non-functional harmony (planing chords, purely colouristic intervals, hanging and extended chords), pedal points, timbral figuration. Interestingly, Book 2 is very different from Book 1: it’s far more pessimistic and abstract, so much so that it was greeted upon publication with some disappointment. Book 1’s fantasy has been replaced by a certain weary or ominous realism, and you get the feeling that Book 1 was more explicitly imagistic in nature, while Book 2 is symbolic – it’s going for what certain images and objects *mean*, rather than trying to depict them per se. Book 2 is also completely written on 3 staves – its sound is a bit more expansive and less propulsive, more delicately tiered.
Book 1
1: Dancers of Delphi – A languorous melody embedded in a chordal texture.
2: Sails/Veils – Whole-tone scale, then the pentatonic, then whole-tone scales again. Sailing-boats stuck to a pedal-point
3: The wind in the plain – A displaced trill trembling like grass on a plain. Flashes of lightning in the middle.
4: "The sounds and fragrances swirl through the evening air" – Harmonically rich, disfigured waltz
5: The hills of Anacapri – Luminous bells introduce an ecstatic tarantella
6: Footsteps in the snow – Possibly the bleakest soundscape in the preludes. Trudging footsteps form an ostinato in the LH. Ends in emptiness.
7: What the West Wind has seen – The frozen landscape descends into a maelstrom.
8: The girl with the flaxen hair – The most tonal prelude, recalling Debussy’s early style.
9: Interrupted serenade – A guitarist tries to serenade a potential lover, but is interrupted.
10: The submerged cathedral – First, bells stifled by the depths of the sea (given mixolydian, lydian, and then phrygian colour); as the cathedral begins to rise, full chiming bells, a sustained plainchant, then a booming organ pedal-point.
11: Puck’s dance – The mischief-maker from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. A loose gigue (in sonata form?) stuck through with dorian colour.
12: Minstrels – Banjo imitations interrupted by surprisingly blatant dominant-tonic pedals in G. A warmly sentimental lyric is introduced, as well as a drum-like theme.
Book 2
1: Mists – Fleeting shadows in the RH over a mystic, stunned chorale in the LH. The second theme is played in octaves separated by a desolate gulf in the middle of the keyboard.
2: Dead leaves – Dejected, inbent.
3: Wine door – Inspired a postcard Debussy received from De Falla of a Moorish wine-gate in Grenada. A playful evocation of an archaic habanera, underlaid with supressed violence.
4: The fairies are exquisite dancers – A fluttering dance alternatives with lyric passages.
5: Bru
