Kapustin, Jazz Prelude in D Minor; Op. 53, No. 24

Kapustin, Jazz Prelude in D minor, Op. 53, No. 24

The final piece in Kapustin’s monumental Jazz Prelude series is, in my opinion, one of Kapustin’s most profound musical statements. It’s over 50% longer than the next longest piece in the series, and of a rather different character than the 23 preludes that precede it. It appears to take its cues from several other memorable end-pieces in the piano literature by serving as an emphatic final statement (especially harmonically, with its strong emphasis of D-minor as the key of the final piece in a prelude series covering all 24 keys in clockwise order within the Circle of 5ths) while hinting at departure - at directions that will ultimately lead outside of the thematic, harmonic, semantic, emotional, etc. environment of the current series. I’m thinking here of Chopin’s “Ocean” etude which rounds out the Op. 25 etudes, Debussy’s “Passepied” as the concluding piece of the Suite Arabesque, the Toccata that ends Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin, and especially the epic finale to Schumann’s Symphonic Etudes. Technically, this final prelude is more “through-composed” than the other 23, relying less on repeated thematic material and thus possessing the shifting, surprising character of many pieces in the piano literature loosely given by their respective composers the “fantasie” label.

Appropriately, the piece begins with an upward “flight” of parallel fourths in D Minor - a flight that is punctuated with a chord built on two perfect 4ths (D-G-C). This flight leads to a characteristically jaunty and jazzy melody that modulates to B-flat Major and to a widely contrasting, emotionally laden secondary theme that suggests triumph mixed with regret at what one has had to sacrifice through flight. Thus far the piece, in striking contrast to the forms used previously in the series, appears to be the exposition of a movement in clear sonata-allegro form. But such expectations are subverted when the second third of the piece, occupying spatially what would be a traditional development section, veers off in an entirely different direction thematically, though subtly building both on the “upward flight” motif and on the “stacked-fourth chord” that becomes persistent and ends up leading things away from normative melody-supporting tonality into…for lack of a better term, “Kapustin space-age mode” - a deviation that will become common in many movements as Kapustin progresses through the 1990s and into the 21st-century and as his music flirts more and more with the sketchy borderline between advanced jazz harmony and “free atonality.” This middle section begins with ear-pleasing assonances, somewhat reminiscent of Debussy and Ravel, provided by arpeggiated runs consisting predominantly of perfect 4ths. The arpeggios are interrupted by a jarring staccato conversation between quarter-note unisons and dyads in the bass, into which Kapustin introduces some light chromaticism and segues into a series of phrase-by-phrase and contrasting white-key/black-key flourishes that utilize the “flight” motif; eventually the two textures - scalar runs and chordal structures based on stacked fourths - are combined into a mysterious sort of rocket-launch into the treble half of the piano that finally spills out into the harmonically normative music of the third and final section. But, if the listener was expecting a full recapitulation of the opening music, his or her expectation is thwarted, as what should be the “recap” melody is instead entirely new, though modulating back to a clear D minor for a repetition of the primary thematic material from the beginning of the exposition.

As an aside to indulge my fascination for peculiar “harmonic events” in Kapustin’s music…The 5-tone half-note chord in the left hand, combined with the f-natural/a dyad in the right hand (and also allowing for inclusion of the e-flat later in the measure) creates a spectacular 6-tone cluster that serves an obvious dominant function, particularly as the dominant A is still held in the bass from earlier in the measure, leading back to the D-minor tonic in the next measure - a standard V-I function as pieces return from developmental sections into the thematic and harmonic areas of their home keys. It can be interpreted as a “splash” of four notes from the tonic scale over the dominant chord, anticipating the formal restatement of D minor that follows momentarily, with the “extra” highly dissonant notes of E-flat and C-sharp resolving downwards and upwards respectively to D; as an added note, this cluster also brings two tritones to the delicious cacophony. An apparently random moment of breathless harmonic excitement…but one that is in fact expertly constructed. Sheer genius.

[Essay continued below as Comment.]

[gilchristhaas]

[Continued from Description:]

To me the music is saying, through refusing to recap the memorable second-theme “triumph” of the “exposition, ” that sometimes we need to move ahead without dwelling explicitly on previous triumphs and on what we may have lost to achieve them. There are points at which there can be no looking back. Repetition of satisfaction can lead to complacency. Or, as Pete Townshend in the late 1970s, “The music must change.” (Fortunately in art, if we long for a reenactment of that moment of triumph, the repetition of which we had to renounce, we can always listen to the piece one more time!)

Or, as I wrote in one of my early poems, “Perhaps it’s time to leave such things behind.”

Emotionally, I believe, this final prelude is one of Kapustin’s most profound pieces of music. I have benefited at both musical and extra-musical levels of reflection from spending the past month sorting out the meanings and numerous technical challenges of this unique gem. Long live Nikolai Kapustin!