Classical Classroom

Greetings listeners! We’re rerunning this episode of the podcast in honor of Karim Al-Zand’s recent premiere of the new work, “The Prisoner,” at the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music in Santa Cruz, California. The piece was inspired by the writings of a Guantanamo Bay prisoner.  This episode is about something else: pattern preludes. Pattern preludes are enigmas inside of conundrums wrapped in a warm flour tortilla. No – wait. That’s not right… Pattern preludes, according to composer Karim Al-Zand’s website, are, “…pieces constrained by a single idea (usually a rhythmic or textural ostinato) through which a composer expresses a narrowly focused thought. Patterning is especially well-suited to preludes, which are by convention short, concise and introductory.” Bach, Chopin, Debussy, and others wrote pattern preludes. These little pieces function as a tool by which classical music newbies can get to know a composer’s style. Learn aaall about them in this episode! Music in this episode: Bach’s Well Temper