Just back from a trip to Leipzig in the early autumn of 1950 where he heard Bach's Well-Tempered Klavier at the Bicentennial Bach Competition played by the Russian pianist Tatiana Nikolaeva, Shostakovich began his own series of 24 Preludes and Fugues, Op. 87, based on Bach's model. He composed them quickly, starting on October 10, 1950, and finishing on February 23, 1951.

While his work would pay homage to Bach, Shostakovich's work would have several fundamental differences. First, the order of the individual pieces would be organized around the circle of fifths with a prelude and fugue in the relative minor following each major key piece rather than in ascending semi-tonal order of Bach's work. Second, Shostakovich's pieces would be composed in order—that is, C major - A minor followed by G major - E minor followed by D major - B minor—and, more significantly, this order would have a sort of subliminal narrative sub-text, taking the music from the "innocent" tonal world of the C major Prelude and Fugue to the profound and sublime severity of the concluding D minor Prelude and Fugue. Finally, Shostakovich's work, although conservative in its counterpoint and harmony—that is, there are no examples of invertible or reversible themes or counterpoint and the pieces are for the most part recognizably tonal in language—is still clearly the work of a modernist composer; his counterpoint and harmony may be conservative but the emotional and spiritual worlds of the preludes and fugues is at once sincere and ironic. The result is a work which can not only stand comparison with Bach's Well-Tempered Klavier, it is both Shostakovich's masterpiece for the piano and one of the contrapuntal masterpieces of the twentieth century.

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1.Prelude and Fugue No.1 in C

In the U.S.S.R. of 1950, there was no greater crime for a composer than being a "formalist." To write music that had no greater purpose than to exist as an object of pure aesthetic contemplation was to ignore the proper role of the composer in the Soviet society. The proper role was to write with utilitarian value in mind, to produce music for marches and massed choruses, music for operas with a meaning and oratorios with a message, music that praised the greatness of Communism, music which that inculcate in the people the highest ideals of Communism.

It was a daunting role for a composer, but one Shostakovich played in this period in his oratorios Poem of the Motherland (1947) and Song of the Forests (1949). But while he could play the role publicly, privately he composed music that had no greater purpose than to exist as an object of pure aesthetic contemplation. The 24 Preludes and Fugues, Op. 87, composed between October 10, 1950, and February 25, 1951, are such, and the purest of these is the first in C major.

The prelude is a lyrical sarabande in the style of Handel with occasional modulations to the flat third and flat sixth degrees that only serve to deepen its lyricism. The four-voice fugue that follows is perhaps the purest C major fugue composed in the twentieth century. Strictly composed and wholly abstract, the fugue does not once use an accidental to effect its modulations or inflect its melodies. Rather it moves moderately, pianissimo, legato sempre, through a texture of radiant clarity towards a final cadence of utter serenity. The C major Prelude and Fugue is as pure as a Grecian urn.

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3.Prelude and Fugue No.3 in G

The first of Shostakovich's 24 Preludes and Fugues, Op. 87 (1950 - 1951), is in pure C major, so pure in fact that the fugue can be played entirely on the white notes of the piano. It is in this way a wholly abstract work. The second pair, the Prelude and Fugue is in A minor, seems on paper as though it could have been written by Bach, with the prelude looking like it could have come from any of the solo violin works and the fugue looking like it could be any three-voice fugue from the Well-Tempered Clavier. The Third Prelude and Fugue in G major, however, looks immediately like Shostakovich. The prelude's Russian chant-style main theme is juxtaposed with a nervously syncopated countertheme. The fugue that follows has as its theme a kind of upward-rushing subject that permeates so much of Shostakovich's writing as an embellishment. In the fugue, however, the embellishment becomes the theme as well as the embellishment: not only does it reappear as the theme, but it also reappears as the episodes, often in canon. With its dance-like agility and swaying 6/8 motion, the fugue is one of the most cheerful of all the fugues in Op. 87 and even one of the most cheerful pieces Shostakovich ever composed.

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4.Prelude and Fugue No.4 in E-

Shostakovich composed his 24 Preludes and Fugues, Op. 87, in the order they appear in the published edition. While that ordering does not necessarily imply a thematic (much less a dramatic) continuity between the pairs of preludes and fugues, sometimes there are thematic connections, which may in turn imply a dramatic continuity.

For example, the prelude of the E minor Prelude and Fugue that follows the G major pair takes the nervously syncopated countertheme of the G major's prelude, slows it down from quarter note equals 126 to quarter note equals 100, and turns it to the melancholy minor. Clearly, Shostakovich intended the connection to be recognized and the transformation to be heard. He also clearly intended for the final bars of the prelude's way of dwelling on the major and minor third of its main harmony to register deeply in the mind of the listener. Similarly, the E minor's four-voice fugue takes the upward rushing subject of the G major's fugue for its first subject, slows it down from Allegro molto to Adagio, changes its note values from sixteenths to halves and quarters, and turns it to a pensive and despairing E minor. Clearly, Shostakovich meant this connection, too, to be recognized and the transformation to be heard. When he adds a second subject a third of the way into the fugue, its connection to the syncopated theme of the prelude is more tenuous but still palpable. When he combines both subjects in the closing sections of the fugue, the turning point of the thematic relationships has been reached and the fugue's resolution on a major third recalls and transforms the prelude's way of dwelling on the major and the minor third.

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5.Prelude and Fugue No.5 in D

Traditionally, D major is a bright, joyous key—one thinks of Bach's Fifth Brandenburg Concerto or Mozart's "Prague" Symphony—and so it is in Shostakovich's D major Prelude and Fugue from his 24 Preludes and Fugues, Op. 87 (1950 - 1951). The prelude's pastoral-like arpeggiated chords over a tranquil melody in the bass are followed by the fugue's lightly dancing subject, with its staccato repeated notes and its major-key modulations. Although not without its complexities—the harmonic structure may be major-flavored, but it does range far and come back to the tonic in interesting ways—the D major Prelude and Fugue is one of the most joyous pieces Shostakovich ever wrote.

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6.Prelude and Fugue No.6 in B-

Shostakovich's B minor Prelude and Fugue from his 24 Preludes and Fugues, Op. 87 (1950 - 1951), starts with an Allegretto that, like the C major prelude that opened the cycle, evokes the spirit of Handel. Where the C major's prelude recalled Handel's manner in his major-key sarabandes, the B minor's prelude has the double-dotted rhythms and the jaggedly expressive melodic contours of Handel's fiercest French overtures. Yet Shostakovich's overture-like prelude ends with a diminuendo down to pianissimo that leaves the key's minor third echoing in the air. The Moderato four-voice fugue which follows begins with a pianissimo subject in two parts, a measured theme in slow, measured half and quarter notes and a faster syncopated theme in sixteenth and eighth notes. These two halves are combined throughout the fugue, the second half of the subject almost always underlying the entrance of the next statement of the subject. The duality inherent in this subject gives the fugue the sense of having two subjects and results in an even more expansive fugue than the E minor fugue, which really does have two subjects. The series of canons in the extended closing stretto are among the most complex in the whole of the Opus 87 set.

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7.Prelude and Fugue No.7 in A

For listeners who know Shostakovich only by his anguished symphonies and his agonizing string quartets, the range of emotions in his 24 Preludes and Fugues, Op. 87 (1950 - 1951), will come as a shock. And few of these pieces will be more shocking than the blissfully happy A major Prelude and Fugue. It offers a prelude whose long lyrical melody sweetly sings above long pedal points in the left hand, and a three-voice fugue whose subject is an arpeggiation of the tonic triad; Shostakovich rarely composed more blissful and more radiantly blessed music as this. For the first two pages of the fugue, the music contains not a single chromatic alteration to color the mood, and when the music does move to other keys, it does not so much modulate as simply transcend one key for the next, rarely bothering with chromatic alterations. More importantly, nearly all the modulations are to major keys, culminating in a move to F sharp major on the final page that confounds A major's usual relationship with F sharp as major to relative minor by having the relationship be from major to major. A delightful prelude and fugue.

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11.Prelude and Fugue No.11 in B

It's not that any of the fugues in Shostakovich's 24 Preludes and Fugues, Op. 87 (1950 - 1951), are bad fugues. But, inevitably, some are better than others from a technical point of view. And from that point of view, the fugue from the B major pair is simply stunning. Across less than two minutes of three-voice texture, Shostakovich weaves an amazing fugue with a seven-bar syncopated subject and what are essentially two syncopated countersubjects. At the Allegro tempo (quarter note equals a very fast 138), Shostakovich's B major fugue is a technical tour de force.

Interestingly, the Prelude that precedes it is one of the simplest in the set—indeed, it is almost childishly simple. With its wandering melody and wayward modulations, the B major prelude makes a huge contrast with the tightly argued fugue that follows.

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12.Prelude and Fugue No.12 in G#-

Shostakovich arranged his 24 Preludes and Fugues, Op. 87 (1950 - 1951), into two books of 12 pairs each. The concluding and culminating piece of the first book is thus the G sharp minor Prelude and Fugue. While not quite the longest of the first book's works (the F sharp minor Prelude and Fugue is slightly longer), the G sharp minor is perhaps both the most emotionally intense and the most intellectually rigorous of all the prelude-and-fugue pairs of Book One.

The opening prelude is an enormous Andante passacaglia, a form the composer was particularly attracted to at this point in his career; one thinks, for example, of the passacaglias from his Eighth Symphony (1943) and his Violin Concerto No. 1 (1948). Like those and other passacaglias, the G sharp minor passacaglia is darkly colored and emotionally resolute to the point of fatalism. The subject remains in the left hand until its seventh statement, when it becomes a hymn-like melody in the right hand. When the subject returns to the left hand in the eighth statement, the right-hand's countersubject sinks down across the keyboard until by the ninth statement both hands are notated in the bass clef.

The four-voice fugue in 5/4 time that follows is in the same key as the passacaglia prelude, but its emotional content is entirely different. Indeed, it could almost be said not to have an emotional content. The three-bar subject is in three short phrases, two clearly in G sharp minor but the third moving out of G sharp minor into A major and then back, just as quickly, to G sharp minor. This brief harmonic movement seems to dispel the clouds of the remorseless G sharp minor of the passacaglia, and, taken together with the rapid and vigorous development of the subject, seems to help the fugue rise above and beyond the emotional gloom of the passacaglia to inhabit a world of pure contrapuntal thought. In the last bars, when the texture thins, when the tempo slows to Andante and then ritardando al Fine, when the dynamic level drops diminuendo poco a poco to pianississimo, and when the minor third of G sharp minor turns to the major third of G sharp major held under a fermata, it is as if the darkness of G sharp minor has been clarified and even purified.

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13.Prelude and Fugue No.13 in F#

If a fugue can be a lullaby, Shostakovich's Fugue in F sharp major which opens the second book of his 24 Preludes and Fugues, Op. 87 (1950 - 1951), is such a fugue. Preceded by a prelude of ineffable lightness, a prelude with a delicate arabesque and a texture of radiant clarity, the F sharp major fugue at first seems to be among the most gnarled and convoluted of all the fugues. The only one of the 24 in five voices, the only one notated in three staves through its final pages, the fugue looks on paper as though comprehending it aurally would be difficult for the listener.

And yet, Shostakovich's writing is so clear, his voice leading so explicit, his pacing so measured and purposeful, that listeners know at all times precisely where they are. More importantly, the extreme simplicity of the five-bar subject, the lucidity with which it is developed, and, most of all, the calm serenity with which it moves through its modulations, give the F sharp major Fugue the tranquillity of a lullaby.

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14.Prelude and Fugue No.14 in Eb-

What is one to make of the immense contrast of the gentle and serene F sharp major Prelude and Fugue of Shostakovich's 24 Preludes and Fugues, Op. 87 (1950 - 1951), and the dramatic prelude and ghostly fugue of the E flat minor pair that follow?

The Adagio prelude—with its melody like a bell tolling and its tremolo octaves like thunder rolling for all but two bars of the movement—seems to portend a colossal and malevolent fugue to follow. But the three-voice fugue is anything but colossal or malevolent. With a 12-bar subject in a three-voice texture, with a dynamic level that only once rises above mezzo forte and most often remains at pianissimo, with lean and lucid lines that rarely stray out of a four-octave range, with its inward and withdrawn expression, the fugue is hardly what one would expect after the prelude and not at all what one would expect after the tranquility of the preceding prelude and fugue. It is not a reply to them but rather a retreat from them.

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15.Prelude and Fugue No.15 in Db

Shostakovich joined together many kinds of preludes with his fugues: chants and fugues, pastorals and fugues, inventions and fugues, passacaglias and fugues. But his pairing of a waltz and a fugue in the D flat major Prelude and Fugue of the Op. 87 set is the most unlikely. The waltz is a brightly colored and slightly sarcastic piece which, for all its modulations and chromatic inflections, is thoroughly grounded in its key. The fugue that follows is anything but grounded; indeed, demented might be a better description. With a six-bar subject that covers 11 of the 12 notes of the chromatic scale, that changes time signature three times, and that is marked marcatissimo sempre, the subject is a reckless, almost madcap, choice for a fugue. But Shostakovich pulls it off by pushing the eleven-note subject through six wild pages of tonal and temporal instability.

An exhilarating and almost incomprehensible fugue preceded by an ironic and easily understood prelude: at this point Shostakovich seemed capable of yoking together any combination of movements to form a cohesive pair.

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17.Prelude and Fugue No.17 in Ab

Often, Shostakovich's preludes and fugues from his Op. 87 set of 24 (1950 - 1951) seem to exist uneasily side by side. At times the fugues seem like evasive replies or stern rebukes or even complete non sequiturs in relation to the preludes that precede them. But the A flat major pair is tightly joined together. Not only do the prelude and fugue share the tempo marking of Shostakovich's favored Allegretto, but the melodic material of the prelude is also reconfigured audibly as the motivic material of the subject of the fugue. The first half of the fugue subject is clearly derived from the central melody of the prelude and the second half of the subject is as clearly based on the accompaniment figure of the opening melody. This temporal and motivic unity serves to enhance the expressive unity of the prelude and fugue: few of Shostakovich's 24 preludes and fugues are as carefree and cheerful as the A flat major pair.

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18.Prelude and Fugue No.18 in F-

Composing preludes and fugues in 1950 was absurdly anti-historical. In an era when Schoenberg was writing music organized serially, a method of structural organization that would almost completely dominate music for the next quarter century, the tonal organization of the 24 Preludes and Fugues, Op. 87 seemed to be a completely reactionary career move, akin to the resurgence of the concerto grosso in the 1930s and 1940s. But Shostakovich was even more anti-historical than that: he not only composed preludes and fugues, but he also sometimes wrote them in the antique modes of the Renaissance era. With its flattened sixth and seventh degrees, Shostakovich's F minor fugue is not so much in F minor as it is in F Aeolian. Nor are these tones merely passing fancies; they determine the whole harmonic course of the movement, right down to the final cadence. Shostakovich's self-consciously antique fugue is preceded by an aria cantabile with an adagio chorale as its central section. Despite these deliberate archaisms, Shostakovich's nominally F minor prelude and fugue are entirely of the twentieth century in their subjective content. Both Shostakovich's cantabile prelude and his Aeolian fugue are indelibly imprinted with his anxious but dignified compositional personality.

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19.Prelude and Fugue No. 19 in Eb

All the writings on the E flat major Prelude and Fugue from Shostakovich's 24 Preludes and Fugues, Op. 87 (1950 - 1951) remark that the fugue is "chromatically inflected." To say the least: with a flat supertonic prominent in each of the subject's three bars, it could hardly be anything but chromatically inflected. More significantly, the subject, with its flat supertonic, is built to be inverted. And when it is inverted, its flat supertonic propels the fugue into some of the most arcane modulations to be heard in any of the 24 fugues. That the fugue concludes in E flat major seems more like an act of intervention of the part of the composer than an inevitability. Set up by a prelude that features a chorale and a nagging response that sinks through the keyboard from the top to the bottom, the E flat major Prelude and Fugue is one of the strangest and most deliberately difficult of all the 24.

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20.Prelude and Fugue No.20 in C-

In a few of the earlier preludes and fugues in the Opus 87 cycle, Shostakovich had used musical allusions to unify the preludes with the fugues. But he more often linked them only through key relationships, letting the fugue exist as a response or a rebuke to the prelude.

In the C minor Prelude and Fugue, however, Shostakovich deliberately unifies the prelude and the fugue by using the same opening notes for both parts of the pair and by recalling the opening of the prelude at the close of the fugue. Shostakovich does not disregard the structural principle of call and response or, more accurately, question and answer. Both the prelude and the fugue are built on two themes, a theme and a countertheme. In the prelude, the opening Adagio chant theme is answered by a long aria theme. As the prelude progresses, the aria theme broadens in rhythmic values and gradually moves the music toward the quietly blissful radiance of C major. In the fugue, the four-bar subject derived from the Adagio chant in half notes and quarter notes is always played twice and then answered by a five-bar chorale-like sequence with a melody in eighth notes. This subject and countersubject circle each other through the great length of the fugue until the close, when, as in the prelude before it, the second melody broadens in rhythmic values and gradually moves the music toward the quietly blissful radiance of C major. In both cases, the answer to the question the chant theme asks is a calm and serene C major.

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22.Prelude and Fugue No.22 in G-

Shostakovich gave the prelude from his G minor Prelude and Fugue (from the 24 Preludes and Fugues, Op. 87) the expressive marking tranquillo. Given the sighing character of the melody and the constant tread of the accompaniment's chords, tranquillo would seem to be precisely the wrong expressive marking. But it is as if Shostakovich were warning the interpreter away from making too much of the lamenting quality of the music and rather seeking to emphasize the serenity beyond the sadness. Although Shostakovich does not also mark the four-voice fugue's five-bar subject with the tranquillo indication, the same sad serenity lies behind every note. The fugue's modulations to keys as distant as B minor and A flat minor are not heartrending moves to darker keys but different ways of viewing the same sorrowful but tranquil theme.

The G minor Prelude and Fugue is a stunning study in emotional and melodic ambivalence.

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23.Prelude and Fugue No.23 in F

There is a blessed realm of pure spirits where the mundane rises to the level of the sublime. Musically, that realm is inhabited by only a few rare pieces: the Agnus Dei from Bach's B minor Mass, the fugal finale of Beethoven's A flat major Piano Sonata, and only a handful of others. The F major Prelude and Fugue from Shostakovich's 24 Preludes and Fugues, Op. 87 (1950 - 1951), is among those pieces. The prelude is an aria of unearthly beauty with a modulation from F major to D major that opens the doors of heaven. The fugue builds a lucid and luminous structure from a seven-bar subject developed through three voices. The clarity of Shostakovich's part writing, the graceful ease of his modulations, the supernatural elegance of the final bars as the note values broaden and the subject resolves into a triad of unearthly beauty: these things elevate his F major Prelude and Fugue to the elevated regions beyond the worlds we know.

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24.Prelude and Fugue No.24 in D-

After being condemned as a formalist in 1948—a condemnation which was just this side of a death threat and just the other side of being officially ostracized—Shostakovich wrote either for popular entertainment or for his drawer. For popular entertainment, he wrote film scores and oratorios. For his drawer he wrote his First Violin Concerto and his Tenth Symphony. But there was one exception to this trend: the Twenty-four Preludes and Fugues, Op. 87. Composed quickly between October 10, 1950, and February 25, 1951, Shostakovich refused to consign these pieces to his drawer but rather insisted on playing them for the Composer's Union, the very body which had condemned him as a formalist. It was a brave aesthetic choice: there are few forms more formal than that of a prelude and fugue and few forms less likely to embody the notion of Socialist Realism, the official doctrine of all artistic endeavors in the U.S.S.R. in the late '40s and early '50s.

Despite furious debate within the Union, Shostakovich refused to relent and he continued to play the pieces. Who knows why he felt compelled to stand up for the preludes and fugues or why he felt so strongly about them, but one could understand if Shostakovich took great pride in his work. One could especially understand it if he took very great pride in the final prelude and fugue, the most massive prelude and fugue of all 24, the most blatantly heroic and the more clearly courageous piece he ever composed.

The powerful D minor prelude, a sarabande-like opening, sets the tone for the pair with its strongly accented and tenuto main theme and its maestoso yet pianissimo second theme. As he had in only a few of the other fugues, Shostakovich took one of the themes of the prelude as the subjects for his fugue. In this case, the pianissimo maestoso theme transforms into the six-bar opening theme which is fully developed in a D minor fugue. Yet not fully developed: when the first subject seems to be winding down, a seven-bar second subject built from sighing minor seconds over a striding bass appears and gradually accelerates the tempo until it is nearly twice as fast as the fugue's opening. At the height of the second theme's development, the first theme returns fortississimo in the bass. The double fugue blazes through to the most monumental conclusion to any of the fugues, a climax of both this prelude and fugue and all Twenty-four Preludes and Fugues.

The D minor prelude and fugue is by far Shostakovich's greatest work for the piano, one of his greatest works in any medium, and one of the greatest preludes and fugues for the piano since Beethoven's last piano sonata.



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