November 21, 2020

In August 2020, I finished writing my second book of 24 Preludes and Fugues. As with any large project, it takes a while after the music itself has been written to proofread everything, make a table of contents, decide on a cover for the book, and so on. The result is now available through Zwillinge Verlag.

Having given the book a final proofreading after its first printing, several minor errors were corrected, and a free PDF is now available on IMSLP.

The Prelude and Fugue in F Minor from this book was made into an animated video by Stephen Malinowski back in February (just after the music was written).

Recordings of the original drafts of most of the pieces have also been published on Soundcloud over the past couple of years, but many finished versions have not yet been recorded. At some point I will release a free recording of all the music on bandcamp.

I feel the book stands well as a collection, and may even show some improvement based on my studies over the past few years. The pieces are all intentionally quite short, intended for all skill levels including intermediate, though some pieces like the fugue in F-Minor are quite challenging to play up to tempo. Many of the fugues are written in only two parts, which makes them of course easier to play, and I think that's a very important quality since keyboard fugues in general have a reputation for being rather difficult to play. There are also many three voice and some four voice fugues, but in contrast to my first book of preludes and fugues which didn't have any particular plan regarding length or difficulty, here I aimed to keep the playability at a reasonable level, and I think that goal was accomplished pretty well.

I do know enough to know for certain that this music is not bad. I'm all too aware that it's never as good as I'd like it to be. Life-long learning hopefully also means life-long improving. I'm happy with this, but God willing, there will be better stuff yet to come. That's the plan, anyway ;)

Please be careful and stay healthy everyone,
Aaron