Prelude (sonata?) in c# minor

It's been a while since I've posted anything here. Anyway, this is supposed to be a prelude (to an as of yet incomplete fugue), though it likely is significant enough to stand alone, unlike my previous preludes. For those who have listened to my previous works, this piece has considerably more classical/early romantic style harmony (as opposed to strictly baroque). Interestingly, I started this piece as an attempt to demonstrate how to properly use (and most importantly exit) long pedal points in the bass. I encourage everyone to try and find the common pattern between all of the pedal points in this piece.

I find it a very deep and interesting work.
But I have to say two things:
I think in many parts there is an excess of textural density. There are moments where up to 8 voices are counted. Especially I think that systematically doubling (octaving) the bass-pedal, and also some upper voices, brings confusion. When the voices are simplified it sounds much better. In fact there are parts where the intervals between the lower voices are intermingled.
Although the piece sounds good and smooth, and has a certain flow given by these changes of texture, it does not have a very defined structure. This, in a classical-romantic context, has to be taken into account.

Cheers.

Great work!

I didn't learn this too long ago either but generally there is no incentive to write in octaves because this is done when selecting the voices you want on a particular manual (referring to bars 7-11, but also the pedal sometimes in general) and you don't have the sustain pedal on the piano to do the legato for you.

Do you intend the whole movement to be played by flute or is it a software limitation lol

What do you want to do after this? a few more movements? or a fugue? or both?

4 hours ago, PCC said:

I didn't learn this too long ago either but generally there is no incentive to write in octaves because this is done when selecting the voices you want on a particular manual (referring to bars 7-11, but also the pedal sometimes in general) and you don't have the sustain pedal on the piano to do the legato for you.

I realized this a bit later, but yeah for organ writing especially in the pedals, I should have probably just specified when to use an extra octave in the registration (probably by writing forte and piano or something like that). My point of using octaves versus a single note was primarily for dynamic control, so if expressive pedals exist, that would almost certainly be a superior alternative. However, for the manuals, due to occasional crossing of voices, I intended for the organist to play octaves (this crossing is most easily observed at measures 11 and 12).

4 hours ago, PCC said:

Do you intend the whole movement to be played by flute or is it a software limitation lol

This was mostly a software limitation, though I expect that most organists who tried to play it would choose a quieter registration for the majority of the piece.

4 hours ago, PCC said:

What do you want to do after this? a few more movements? or a fugue? or both?

I have an incomplete fugue here (google drive folder), but to be completely honest this piece works just fine by itself, and I have no idea how any successive movements are going to be able to adequately continue what this piece started. It was never really intended to be this long, but just ended up this way in the process of writing it.

The problem with octaves on right hand is you don’t have the sustain pedal and it would sound choppy especially the octave leap… possibly mitigated somewhat but left hand sharing some notes but seems not possible for a lot of areas for this piece

the pedal octaves are actually doable (not me lmao) but you might want to play with different stops first (like adding 16’ (or in big organs 32’) or reed or coupling) before doing the double foot thing

but don’t take my word for it lol, i have so far meaningfully used the pedal for like less than 5 notes so far