Prelude

Prelude (Allegro, completed December 9, 1950) is a playful and joyful piece. The accompanying figuration evokes bagpipes and drums played at a festival. The gentle joyfulness that precedes it is abruptly interrupted towards the end by the insertion of a fragmentary chorale in a remote key, but it quickly returns to the original musical idea in B major, leading into the Fugue.

Fugue

Fugue (3 voices, Allegro, completed December 11, 1950) is a rapid and lively piece, based on a cheerful subject full of bouncing staccato and syncopation. A countersubject primarily consisting of 16th notes spanning four measures, and signal-like phrases containing quarter-note accents, also provide further impetus to the energetic subject.