Australian Music Centre | Breaking sound barriers

Work Overview

Last century I was fond of presenting J.S.Bach's 48 Preludes and Fugues, The Well-Tempered Klavier, with all the fugues in the first half of the recital and the preludes after a short interval. My thinking was to give the fibre before dessert, as the pieces were achronologically conceived and assembled over Bach's lifetime, and so an alternative ordering, while controversial to conservative pedants, was not altogether wrong-headed I felt. Besides, it gave this dusty collection a fresh interpretation, very difficult to achieve with its centuries of gatekeeper authorities, who nevertheless turned a blind eye to its performance on a modern piano.

My Antinomic Prelude therefore is intended to be played AFTER my Empirical Fugue, and the paradox of this placement of a prelude is just one of its antinomic features. The tonality hovers in a space between tonal and atonal, as if struggling to maintain two contradictory belief systems; the idea of authoritative interpretations of baroque music on modern instruments say, or perhaps fundamentalist belief in an omniscient benevolent loving deity that allows the bombings of children's hospitals and other unspeakable war crimes in its name. The prelude's opening cascade outlines the dodecaphonic row that generates the material for the initial argument, which struggles to be harmonised, falters, then returns insistently, finally evaporating as if, like the idea of theodicy, morally unsatisfactory.

Work Details

Year: 2026

Instrumentation: Piano.

Duration: 6 min.

Difficulty: Advanced — Virtuoso technique needed

Dedication note: Dedicated to Coady Green

Commission note: Commissioned by Coady Green.