HELEN 5/12: G# minor. Five sharps. A four voice fugue, written entirely in 5/4, extended six pages.
Discuss. I’m off to get some sleep after that thing.
CRAIG 5/12: After three separate sittings, I finally finished it. The final chord is really beautiful.
STEVEN 5/13: I really like the subject of #12. The syncopation and chromatic notes give it a very unique flavor. Unfortunately, my reading of it was an absolute trainwreck. I lost pretty much all the rhythm after the first statement of the subject and never got it back. Thankfully, the prelude was nice and easy.
GRACE 5/13: I think the thing that got me the most was the attacca out of 3/4 into a pickup on beat 4 in 5/4 where the theme is almost identical save for syncopation. I tried to explain why this was so interesting to my husband but he didn’t get it. I got through the first page stutteringly, realized there were 5 more, made some general complaining noises, and then just accepted that I’d be there for awhile, rolled up my sleeves, and finished it. There was this moment where he peels all of the voices away back to one and I was pretty surprised by that. Especially helpful because after so many difficult pages I felt I was losing the thread. Getting the theme back front-and-center helped me remember what the heck I was doing!
That final line is such a trip. As always, “how did I get here?”