Prelude V

[M G Jacobs (mgj32)]

This breaks the rule I had set up for the preludes on length by about 25 seconds. Mostly due to including the last section and the tempo I finally settled on. So it goes.

Notice the tempo indication and that there are no annotations.

<center><table border=1><tr><td>http://www.notation.com/discus/icons/attachment_icon.gifprelude V
Prelude V.not (http://www.notation.com/discus/messages/35939/Prelude_V-34102.not) (108.8 k)</td></tr></table></center>

[Derek Sanders (derek_sanders)]

Hello MG..I can understand what you meant by little monsters now.I have listened to #5 six times and each time I pick up on something different.You must have burnt the midnight oil on this one, quite a complex chord structure, I wouldn't even begin to comprehend going beyond the boundaries as you have, I was quite intrigued by the last cadence, did you mean it to be an unfinished plagel or is it a sort of suspended cadence? My harmony isn't up to your level obviously but as I said, I was intrigued. I wish I could step into the realms of music that you are familiar with but I think that at my age I doubt if I could grasp it. The intricacies would be too much for me. Thanks for posting it though, I am waiting to see what #6 is going to bring.

Have a Good one.....Derek.

[M G Jacobs (mgj32)]

Hi Derek,
You might be interested in the original ending, as well as I can remember it.

http://www.notation.com/discus/messages/35939/34107.jpg

One of the things that this prelude is intended to remind me of is that "cadence" and "ending" don't necessarily mean the same thing. A piece ends when the music stops, whatever chord progression is involved. But the original ending was not what I was hearing, or since it was vague, what I thought I was hearing in my head, for an ending. I was rather surprised when I tried what is there now. Actually, it took only a couple of tries, so I must have been hearing it in my head pretty definitely.

A suspended, or interrupted, cadence may be the best way to describe it, and I suppose it could be analyzed in a number of ways. If the key is G, I guess it would be a I with an added mi 7th resolving into a IImin with an added mi 7th, located far below the action. If I play a straight I followed by a straight II, in any key, or a I followed by a II with the added tones, my ear does not get a sense of any kind of resolution, whereas the prelude does to my ear achieve a sense of the music coming to rest. I guess it depends on the inversion and what if any tones are doubled.

Another thing I am reminding myself of here is that thinking of a piece in terms of key or tonal center can be a fiction. If you change the key signature to C, what do you have at the end? V7-I6. But with the only true cadence, V-I (E with an added mi 7th to Amin with added mi 7th) a few notes before, the key isn't C. But the key doesn't strike me as A, either, in which case the cadence would be VIImin to Imin. So, at least key signature is a fiction. You can use Composer to change that to anything you want and the sound remains the same. The easiest way to look at this piece is that it has several tonal centers and at some point near the end, perhaps in the last measure, itself, becomes C or is in process of working toward it.

It's been a few years, decades actually, since I did lessons twice a week in what chord can progress to which in what position with what doubled and what not. Once tones are added to the basic triad, or tones are altered, some of those rules very early on began to seem problematic (once you sharp the A in the D triad--good grief, how far are you from F# or Bb?). And listening to my teacher play from his fake book (he played cocktail piano weekends), it was interesting to see what rules were broken, all with a sound that seemed to fit. So another thing I'm being reminded of is that analysis of what I'm doing is academic, and rather than it driving me batty to not decide how to describe a chord to make it fit into a scheme, I should not spend the time if my ear likes it. What my ear likes will not be accepted, let alone liked, by all. But what mine will accept is probably pretty tame, as the sound of music goes these days.

All of which goes to say that "the intricacies would be too much for me," also. I'm making progress, slowly, at keeping myself from analyzing too much as I go, reminding myself that if it sounds right, maybe it is. And of course, maybe it isn't...

all best,
mgj