Hiroshi Hara’s 24 Preludes And Fugues For Piano A Study Of Fugue Structure

Hiroshi Hara（January 24,1933-2002）was a famous Japanese composer who composed many works in different genres and styles during his more than 40 years of career.Among these musical works,the fugue suite 24 Preludes and Fugues for Piano is his most representative work in the field of polyphony.This work was composed between 1981 and 1982 and adheres to the concept of Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier,which also conceived and composed preludes and fugues based on 24 major and minor keys,giving each work a distinctive tonal character.On the other hand,this work mainly follows the compositional thinking and writing methods of Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier,and the fugue in it inherits the structural principles and technical methods of the traditional western fugue,so the composition of 24 fugue pieces reflects the composer’s rigorous structural logic and excellent compositional techniques.This paper mainly takes the structure of fugue in 24 Preludes and Fugue for Piano as the object of study,and analyzes and studies the structure of fugue from four aspects: the overall layout of fugue structure,the creation characteristics of exposition part,the diversity of development part and the flexibility of recapitulation part.The first chapter summarizes the types and compositional forms of fugue themes and the structural classification of the 24 fugue pieces,i.e.,two-part structure,three-part structure,rondo structure and sonata structure,and elaborates the characteristics of the overall layout of different structural types of fugue pieces one by one.The second chapter discusses the characteristics of the composition of the exposition from four perspectives: the structural arrangement of the typical exposition,the structural combination with complementary exposition,the composition characteristics of the sub-exposition and the use of connection.Chapter 3discusses the diversification of the development section from three levels,namely,the variation of the theme,the dynamization of the theme,and the composition form and technique application of the episode.The fourth chapter discusses the flexibility of the recapitulation section through three perspectives: the variation of the theme recapitulation,the structural characteristics of the counter-topic recapitulation,and the compositional characteristics of the coda.Through the analysis and study of the fugue structure of Hiroshi Hara’s 24 Preludes and Fugue for Piano,this paper seeks to deepen the understanding and knowledge of his fugue structure,discuss the historical inheritance and musical language characteristics of the structure,explore the composition style and writing characteristics,and thus summarize and conclude the composition forms and characteristics of the fugue structure from the whole to the parts.The purpose of this paper is to draw the academic community’s attention to this fugue suite through these analyses,researches and discussions,to fill the gaps and make up for the lack of domestic research on this fugue,and to sincerely hope that this research will serve as a kind of reference for the composition and theoretical research of fugue in China.