Two-Bird Fugue for solo piano - dedicated to J.S. Bach

Program Notes

Two-Bird Fugue for solo piano is dedicated to the father of the fugue, J.S. Bach.  It incorporates an Eastern theme, bringing Eastern tradition to Western fugue form.  Bach’s musical philosophy is to use 12 equal temperaments which mean there are 12 different minor second intervals in one octave.  In Bach’s fugues, the melody line is always in single horizontal notes to represent the frequencies of notes in 12 equal temperament tuning.  Two-Bird Fugue is based on Bach’s philosophy, and also incorporates Chinese “just intonation” and Arabian 24 equal temperaments.  Though Bach never used vertical minor second chords in fugue melody, Two-Bird Fugue does, introducing the vertical minor second chord into the horizontal 12 equal traditional temperaments, and in doing so, it also destroys the 12 equal temperaments.  The Two-Bird Fugue score is still laid out in traditional 12 equal temperaments, the piano itself is a 12 equal temperament instrument, but the vertical minor second chords give us unequal temperament sounds, yet, they remain physically and mathematically equal.  Under these circumstances, the rules governing fugue pitch and fugue interval have not been broken, they have just been opened to variations.

Two-Bird Fugue has a more accommodating tonal system than the traditional fugue because when adding the vertical minor second chords to the voice, the intervals between the first voice and the second voice become another way to create variations of pitch and interval.  Thus, if given only one note in one voice, then we do not have the choice of reassigning a note for the other voice.  But if we have two vertical notes in one of the voices, then either of the two notes can become the main note, leaving the other to be an attached note.  In this, the other voice can also be reassigned a different note, making it possible to easily bring in a new key for itself and for the other companion voice without distorting sound.