24 Preludes and Fugues (Shostakovich)

24 Preludes and Fugues, Op. 87 by Dmitri Shostakovich is a set of 24 pieces (that is, 24 prelude-fugue pairs) for solo piano, one in each of the major and minor keys of the chromatic scale. The cycle was composed in the years 1950/51 while Shostakovich was in Moscow, and premiered by pianist Tatiana Nikolayeva in Leningrad in December 1952; it was published the same year. The complete work takes about two and a half hours to play. It is one of several examples of music written in all major and/or minor keys.

Each piece is in two parts—a prelude and a fugue—varying in pace, length and complexity (for example, Fugue No. 13 in F-sharp major is in five voices, but Fugue No. 9 in E major is in only two voices).

The pieces proceed in relative major/minor pairs around the circle of fifths: first C major and A minor (prelude and fugue nos. 1 and 2), then to one sharp (G major, E minor), two sharps (D major, B minor), and so on, ending with D minor (1 flat). (Frédéric Chopin's set of 24 Preludes, Op. 28, is organised in the same way, as are the earlier sets of preludes by Joseph Christoph Kessler, Johann Nepomuk Hummel, and Shostakovich's earlier 24 Preludes, Op. 34.)

J.S. Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier, an earlier set of 48 preludes and fugues, is widely held to be the direct inspiration for Shostakovich's cycle, largely based on the work's composition history (see below).

References to and quotations from Bach's cycle appear throughout the work. For example, Shostakovich begins his C major prelude, the first piece in the cycle, with exactly the same notes that Bach uses in his own C major prelude, BWV 846, which likewise begins The Well-Tempered Clavier. Likewise, the composers' second fugues (A minor for Shostakovich, C minor for Bach) utilize very similar opening rhythms for their fugue subjects (two 16th notes followed by 3 eighth notes, twice in a row). In addition to more direct quotation, Shostakovich also at points imitates the various types of preludes found in the Bach cycle (and in other, similar, Baroque compositions). For example, his A minor prelude is a figuration prelude—a prelude in which the same hand position is used throughout the piece. Examples of this abound in Baroque keyboard literature from composers such as Johann Caspar Ferdinand Fischer, from whom Bach drew inspiration for his own figuration preludes (the C major and the D minor, for example).

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