Prélude de la Nuit

Prélude de la Nuit for solo piano was written in February 2001.

‘Prèlude de la nuit’ was written especially for a Grade VIII piano pupil with the idea of introducing more harmonically elaborate music.  The style of the piece is based on Hindemith with an essence of early Schoenberg. 

The title of the piece hints at the atmosphere that the music sets out to evoke, that of the calm and stillness of night.  To do this, the tempo is deliberately slow allowing the pianist to make use of the resonance of the piano.  Resonance is very important to this piece, which contains long held notes in plenty.  Pedalling, although not always marked, is paramount in obtaining the mood as the sympathetic vibrations of other stings creates the fullness of sound needed throughout.  This music, although calm, is full of darkness, whether it is through the harmony or ‘muddy’ textures in the low range of the piano (b53-59).

 The piece is monothematic in the sense that only one real fragment of melody exists; the rest of the music is either created from that fragment or comments on it.  The main motif can be found in the opening bars.  Bar 3 also introduces the interval of the tritone (Eb-A) in the left hand.  This interval is very important harmonically to this piece and can be found throughout.  Another important feature of this piece is parallel chord progressions, usually moving chromatically (e.g. bar 15-20, 37-39, 47, 49-52, 56-58, 72-77.)

The piece, as a whole, was free composed with the middle section (37-) written first and the rest of the piece fitted around it.  An overview reveal that the piece falls into an extended binary form A: 1-36, B: 37-60, Coda: 61-78.  The material is being developed constantly over changing chromatic harmonies.
From my study of Hindemith’s ‘Ludus Tonalis’ and other piano works, I noted a harmonic technique he uses in writing codas.  On many pieces, he tends to cap them off with a hint of the original theme but either in a remote key or with an open ending.  ‘Prelude’ concludes in a remote key with the final ‘cadence’ being a variation or development of two earlier progressions (b 7-8 or 52-53).