Ricercare in C Major

As I was falling asleep a few nights ago, I was playing permutations of the Sonata Zero fugue subject in my noggin, and I came up with a version that is sort of an inversion, and sort of not. The head and tail figures are from the rectus version, but the middle line is ascending versus the previous decending one. Because of this, the subject must start on fa instead of sol to cadence to the tonic, and the answer starting on do creates a real cadence to sol instead of a half-cadence to the dominant chord, as the original did.

At first, I was trying out various inverted versions of the original exposition, but they didn't really work out: This subject demanded it's own special treatment. When I finally figured out what it "wanted" to do, it ended up working in C major starting out on the lowest F on the guitar. I was still able to incorporate inverted elements of the final fugue's exposition - so it is obviously organically related to that fugue - but the exposition is quite unique, as you can see. Since it is so unusual, I decided that it would be more appropriate to call it a Ricercare, which implies a degree of freedom beyond the stricter fugue.

The result is that I ended up shuffling the movements of Sonata Zero around yet again: It will now be laid out as Extempore, Ricercare, Scherzo, and Fugue, and the keys will be A minor, C major, B minor, and A minor. In terms of length, the movements will be 2:05 for the Extempore, circa 2:00 for the Ricercare, 3:33 for the Scherzo, and 2:05 for the Fugue: The entire sonata will be performable withinin a ten minute window. It will be a small fugue cycle with the Scherzo added for variety. Typical Hucbaldian approach. ;^)




This is all I have at the moment, but you can see how the exposition and first episode are related to the corresponding parts of the fugue, and yet they are quite different at the same time.


I have the first chapter of the next Convertible Counterpoint post almost ready - which covers the entire first chapter of the book - and I will probably post that sometime after midnight tonight when I get home from my gig.

I'm really thinking I'll need a vacation soon to avoid burnout.



I could make that work.