Liber Contrapunctum

Liber Contrapunctum is a collection of short contrapuntal pieces that seek to reinterpret harmonic material excerpted from Johann Sebastian Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier in new and interesting ways.  Similar to its predecessor, the movements of the Liber Contrapunctum are laid out in pairs that complement each other.  The first Praeludium is derived from the Fugue XXIV in B minor BWV 869 of the first book of The Well-Tempered Clavier.  In it, the violin and right hand of the piano engage in an augmentation canon while the left hand reharmonizes the violin introduction.  The second movement, Contrapunctus Primus, is also derivative of BWV 869.  A tone row extracted from the original Bach is the subject of a canon in which each note of the row expands or contracts in duration by a sixteenth note as the piece progresses, resulting in a simultaneous written-out accelerando and ritardando between the voices.  The third movement, the second Praeludium, is constructed from material from the Praeludium XVIIIBWV 887 from the second book of The Well-Tempered Clavier.  The left hand figuration of the original Bach is reinterpreted in non-imitative counterpoint between the violin and piano, which slip in and out of sync with each other in a swirling texture.  The last movement, Contrapunctus Secundus, utilizes source material from the Fugue VIII in D# minor BWV 853 from the first book of the Well-Tempered Clavier.  A type of hybrid mensuration canon is at play here: the piano presents the isorhythmin the left hand in mm. 59-62 with a talea of 28 eighth notes and a colour of 19 pitches.  After the first presentation, however, the first 8 eighth notes (or one measure in 4/4) are excised from the beginning of the next statement.  This process continues until only one note is presented as a statement in the left hand of the piano in m. 66, then it reverses the process.  The violin and right hand of the piano imitate this procedure at the respective augmented rhythmic values of a quarter note and a dotted-quarter note.