Re: CHAT: A flat minor (was: ATTN: Pablo Flores (VIRUS WARNING))

I would have to check to be certain, but I believe that the most often-
cited example of the serious use of A-flat minor in the literature is a
fugue in that key that Brahms wrote while he was doing his "correspondence
course" in counterpoint and fugue with Joseph Joachim.  Poor Joachim; he
was hopelessly outclassed.  Can you imagine sending fugues back and forth
in the mail with Brahms?  The A-flat-minor fugue, I believe, finally drove
Joachim to call the whole thing off.  It is an organ work, long, intense,
and difficult, and as I remember, it modulates quite seriously into the
relative major of C-flat.  One organist I spoke to said that the piece
would be easier if a publisher would just reprint the whole thing in G-
sharp minor.

The one composer I can think of who lands in A-flat minor with any
regularity is probably Janacek (sorry for the lack of diacritics), who has
a tendency to modulate down the circle of fifths, and usually refused on
principle to make enharmonic shifts.  (Precise note-spelling mattered a
lot to him.)  As a result, passages in double-flats come around quite
often.  Again, I would have to check, but I believe that the wind sextet
Mladi contains passages in A-flat minor.

(No prizes for guessing what I do when I am not conlanging.)

- Nat

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