Jonathan Shaw

     Well, where to start with this one (as I hang my head in shame and embarrassment). Again, this was another piece constructed out of my obsession with Bach’s music, this time particularly his Fantasia in G Minor BWV 542, which I had not yet taught myself how to perform This was my longest work yet, and still holds some material that I actually find a likeness to as of writing this. Even in my arrogance of not knowing what a Fantasia actually was (the only knowledge I had was the music of Bach), I think there is some intriguing level of improvisation embedded within – although, most of my early compositions followed a similarly disconnected path.

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     Nevertheless, I constantly swapped between slower segments and more virtuosic segments, matching Bach’s contrast of slow and fast passages for his Fantasia, and ultimately I combined this idea at the end for a very cheesy climax with surprisingly smooth but extreme modulations to get back into C minor. You will also notice that at the passage beginning at bar 96 there is a near-exact quotation from Bach's Fantasia.

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     The reasoning of the title is something I should mention; as I was writing this, I had originally intended to compose one grand work for each of the Baroque styles, which I would give the forename ‘Elder’, much to my youthful arrogance again. As you will read, I thankfully never went ahead with any of the other ‘Elder’ works, at least not yet – I may have a look again when I can truly say I have at least some experience with these styles! I did, at one point, heavily consider writing an ‘Elder Fugue’, but ultimately I left this aside (for the greater good!)

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     I do recall using this piece as a 'Practice Room' test in my earliest days at college (the UK equivalent of Junior/Senior High School) to test the acoustics and available hardware of the practice rooms at the Music department where I would write several of my compositions in the following two years. It is evidently not the best choice to run this test, but I nevertheless blasted it out through the speakers of each practice room, much to the confusion of any poor soul walking through the corridor just outside.