Before we talk about this piece, lets have some back story on the fugue.

Little Fugue

During the Baroque era, it solo keyboard pieces were not all that common. This is especially true compared to the Classical, Romantic, and Modern periods. Of course, some significant works for solo keyboard did exist, especially in the works of Bach and Buxtehude (for example, The Well Tempered Klavier, by J.S. Bach). Solo keyboard music became much more popular after the invention of the piano. They had the organ, the harpsichord, and the clavier. The problem with each of these instruments is that they had limited capacity in terms of volume control.

In the case of the organ, you could pull out more stops, but even then, you were talking about sharply graduated stages of volume, which could not accomplish the same level of artistic expressiveness as the piano. Once the piano (or, “fortepiano,” as it was originally called, which, in Italian mean “the loud-quiet;” getting its name from the fact that you could control how loudly or quietly you could play) was invented, composers became excited about the possibilities for the instrument, and the literature for solo keyboard music exploded.

The Period Before the Piano

Back in the Baroque period, prior to the classical version of the sonata form, which came to dominate two centuries of instrumental classical musical form in one way or another, a very popular formal practice was to take a form, such as a fugue, fuguetto, fantasia, toccata, passacaglia, etc., and put a prelude in front of it, to compile a nice little two-movement piece. The prelude and fugue, in particular, was a form that produced a lot of great keyboard music, mostly because of J.S. Bach’s The Well Tempered Klavier. This piece is a prelude and fuguetto, which is similar to a fugue, but shorter. “Fuguetto” literally means “little fugue,” which is what it is.

Why “Prelude and Fuguetto (Little Fugue)”

“Fuguetto” means “little fugue.” In this case, this is apt. Originally, the prelude was a short introduction to a somewhat longer piece. But this prelude is longer than the piece that follows it. As an aside, until the Romantic period, when Chopin published his groundbreaking book of 24 Preludes, it was considered improper to compose a prelude as a standalone piece. It was always a prelude to something. This means that a longer piece came afterward. Since then, however, composers began to write stand-alone preludes, and it became a form unto itself.

Some Notes on this Piece

The piece is in a minor, with some polytonality thrown in. The Fuguetto portion is in three parts. After the beginning, however, the melodic lines mostly fall into a quasi-polyphonic supporting harmonic role. I started creating the piece to express a sense of lonely, understated dejection. However, it ended up sounding sort of Baroque, so I decided to expand it. Now, it’s a two part prelude and fugue form, but the fugue part ended up being kind of on the short side. That makes it a prelude and fuguetto.