N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov. Prelude and Fugue G major in the Composer’s Autograph

Abstract

Among the music manuscripts from the collection of N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov, stored in the Manuscripts Department of the National Library of Russia, Stock 640, manuscript No. 344 is of particular interest. This source includes sketches and completed works, of which three fugues have not been published to date, with one exception of the Prelude in G major, first published in volume 49 (A) of the Complete Works of N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov. The materials in autograph No. 344 refer to the composer’s productive period — the mid-to late-summer of 1897. The compositions he was working on at that time (including the opera “Mozart and Salieri”, Quartet in G major and Trio in С minor) were specifically reflected in the content of the autograph. This article contains a description of the manuscript Stock 640, No. 344 and the polyphonic sketches and compositions included in it. An analysis of the materials included in the autograph allows us to conclude that the manuscript does not belong to the educational works of Rimsky-Korsakov, and the musical materials included in it correspond to different forms of musical composition and are compositional manuscripts, that is, manuscripts representing the process of writing music. The specificity of the work on fugues observed in No. 344 allows us to identify among the materials a unique complex for Rimsky-Korsakov’s autographs of several types of composition of polyphonic works: sketches (mostly related to pre‑compositional work on fugues), contrapuntal probes (a term by M. Monich), analytical notes of various types and compositional manuscripts of completed works. Analytical notes of the harmonic reduction of J. S. Bach’s cis minor prelude (vol. I of “The Well-Tempered Clavier” — BWV 849) and a schematic representation of the composition of the double fugue from Mozart’s Requiem (KV 626/2) serve as genre-style models of the unreleased cycle by N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov “Prelude and Fugue in G major”. These considerations build up the second part of the article. Analytical notes of the harmonic reduction of the cis minor prelude by J. S. Bach (vol. I of “The Well-Tempered Clavier”, BWV 849) and a schematic representation of the composition of the double fugue from Mozart’s Requiem (KV 626/2) serve as genre-style models of the unpublished Rimsky-Korsakov’s cycle “Prelude and Fugue in G Major”. The second part of the article is devoted to these materials.