Prelude and Fugue in C minor

Vaughan Williams's Prelude and Fugue in C minor (1921) is characterized by a sense of drama and punctuated by bristling dissonances. The Prelude's ritornello-like alternation of chordal grandeur and rapid imitative sections recalls Bach's great organ Prelude and Fugue in the same key, while the rhythmically complicated Fugue, whose subject looks ahead to the composer's Sixth Symphony, displays great ingenuity in its counterpoint, fully justifying the assertiveness of its final peroration in C major.