Preludes

On the Other Hand

Piano fingering is in my opinion very personal. Pianists vary considerably in hand size, flexibility, and technical skills, and these

1. Within my Nine Preludes for Piano Solo, Prelude No. 7 is symmetrically opposite the other scherzo-like prelude, No. 3,

The Circle of Fifths is usually used to illustrate the keys associated with key signatures, with increasing numbers of

The preludes in my set of Nine Preludes for Piano Solo can be played independently, but in some ways the

Sergei Rachmaninoff is widely recognized as one of the finest of all pianists, with technical and interpretative powers of the

The human mind thrives on perceiving unity in the midst of diversity, and that perception is at the core of

Composers of preludes frequently present them in a structured key sequence. The preludes and fugues in Book I of Bach’s

In medieval and Renaissance times, before tonality developed into its modern form, Western music was based on a system of

As I pointed out in my very first post to this blog, if two pitches are an octave apart, the

We saw in the last blog post how the melody “Puff the Magic Dragon” fits neatly in counterpoint with the

Most tonal pieces start in the “home key” — the “tonic,” as musicians call it — and return to it

I related the “Seven Plus or Minus Two” principle to pitches and harmonic centers in an earlier post to this