About this work:
Don Freund’s Piano Preludes are an ongoing series of annual short piano pieces, begun in 1990; counting the recently completed Piano Prelude 2013, there are now 24 of them. In addition to the scores and recordings here, Preludes 2008 - 2013 have score scrolling videos on YouTube:http://donfreund.com/?page_id=2902
Prelude ’90 (after Thelonius) explores a punchy chromatic lyricism — what Thelonius Monk might have sounded like if he listened to too much Schoenberg.
Prelude ’91 (collisions and canons) sports a perky multi-metric tune that eventually grows into a two- and three-voice polymetric canon. This growth only happens after a number of fits and starts and flash-forwards and rude interruptions.
Prelude ’92 (Intro/Tune/Coda) The Introduction is a succession of textural aphorisms; the Tune references a tonal progression to give its line cohesion through extensive silences; the Coda is a two-measure fortissimo cry lifted from the middle of the Tune.
Prelude ’93 (fluid, singing) combines two contrasting voices: one is a flowing 16th-note background line, while the foreground line is a singing, occasionally angular melody.
Prelude ’94 (incisive, bright) begins with a spunky repeated note fanfare, followed by a jerky little tune that is continually interrupted by disjunct sound bytes of development.
Prelude ’95 (Tune and a Half, for Elliott) is a transcription of a chamber piece written for a Merkin Hall (NYC) concert honoring beloved American composer and 20th-century music chronicler Elliott Schwartz on his 60th birthday. It alternates between a relatively extended playful, charming tune and a more mysterious, exotic, two-bar mantra.
Prelude ’96 (rough, ornery)focuses on a boogie-woogie moto perpetuo bass line, whose “ornery” roughness is amplified by a series of rugged textural variations before suddenly melting into a 4-against-3 walking bass line counterpointed by a pearly Baroque trumpet riff.
Prelude ’97 (slow, dark, deep) gradually moves from the depths of E-flat minor to fragile sharp-key brightness before falling back into the blackness.
Prelude ’98 (blurringly fast) is a disjunct narrative. There are clear thematic characters which move through musical and dramatic space. The featured idea appears at the start, etched in a "blurringly fast" figuration, emerges "indistinct, ghostly" midway through the piece, and finally appears quietly and forlorn as the piece ends. The disjunct quality is created by "twists of fate" the material encounters, unexpected right-angle turns in the music. One of these is a stuttering chordal motive which often interrupts the flow and "steals the stage" at the climax of the work.
Prelude ’99 (caffeinated) begins with a burst of nervous energy (marked “ caffeinated”) but suddenly shifts to something more laid-back, but just as curious.
Prelude 2000 (for Lennie and Lou) was composed after the composer gave a series of lectures on Bach’s WTC, and attempts to replicate Bach’s syntactic density in a contemporary dialect. It was composed to celebrate the 50th wedding anniversary of Lennie and Lou Newman, IU School of Music’s most prominent citizens (although other Lennie’s and Lou’s might come to mind).
Prelude ’01 (tender, tentative) starts with something like a 40’s movie waltz-noir tune, and gets dramatically darker.
Prelude ’02 (for SAmuel ADlEr) was written to celebrate the distinguished American composer and pedagogue on his 75th birthday. The capitalized letters in the subtitle provide the pitches for the theme (S = the German E-flat); although subordinate material references (á la Alban Berg) Sam’s students CB (Claude Baker) and DF (Don Freund) as well as Sam’s wife, conductor Emily Freeman Brown (EFB-flat).
Prelude ’03 (view from the top) focuses on the top range of the piano; its use of driving mixed meters is more Middle-East than rock’n’roll.
Prelude ’04 (second-hand emotion) Right Hand: pure, sweet, eternal, absolutely even; Left Hand: intensely lyric, impassioned.
Prelude ’05 (rolling darkness) A twisting chromatic melody line is embedded in dark, low rolling patterns, played without pedal but with every note held by the fingers, providing an always changing accumulation of sound.
Prelude ’06 (sweet refrains) Multiple repetitions of a strongly projected melodic line, with textural and contrapuntal variations.
Prelude ’07 (ring tones) “Like great bells.” As it begins, this prelude appears to be about the sound of isolated ringing tones reverberating in space. But as the piece progresses, the listener is invited to engage the melodic patterning, harmonic syntax, metrical implications and expressive context connecting the notes, despite the great distances of musical time and space between them.
Prelude ’08 (for Evelyne) was composed to exploit the brilliant pianistic flair of Evelyne Brancart. It features ideas ignited by Hispanic dance motives and hand-hocket piano figuration, all gone a little bit wild.
Prelude ’09 (winter whimsey) presents a G-major melody whose sweet but terse phrases are interspersed with contrasting fragments.Prelude 2010 (“chopping blocks”) uses an extract-and-expand form, using angular and explosive materials to project a street tough attitude.
Prelude 2011 (“brittlesweet”) begins with a brooding set of repeated chords which bookends the piece. The main material consists of 3 components: a singing melody, an accompaniment groove, and a turnaround lick that links phrases. Originally presented in their standard composite configuration, these ideas are subsequently taken out of their prescribed context and developed independently.
Prelude 2012 (“into dark”) opens with a plaintive tune that becomes progressively more expressionistic in character. The tune returns explosively at the middle of the piece, then becomes suddenly pure, but the motion towards darkness resumes, concluding with a startling lightening/thunderclap.
Prelude 2013 (“the plight of the honeybee”) is obviously a reflection of Rimsky-Korsakov’s magical warhorse. But the plight of the honeybee is no joke. The title comes from a cover article in Time magazine, which began: “You can thank the honeybee for 1 in every 3 mouthfuls you'll eat today. Honeybees — which pollinate crops like apples, blueberries and cucumbers — are the glue that holds our agricultural system together. But that glue is failing. Bee hives are dying off or disappearing thanks to a still-unsolved malady called colony collapse disorder.” We can hope that if this prelude in performed years from now, it will have a less tragic resonance.
Prelude 2014 (“dirty white-bread”) is about a tidy little C-major riff that can't find its way to its obsessive destiny without getting its hands dirty.