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Ludus Tonalis ("Game of the Notes" or "The Tonal Game") is a collection of piano works by Paul Hindemith. It includes twelve fugues separated by less contrapuntal interludes and surrounded by a prelude and postlude; the postlude is a retrograde inversion of the prelude. The fugues are arranged according to Hindemith's Series 1, a system of tonal hierarchy detailed in The Craft of Musical Composition. It summarizes the composer's highly chromatic and contrapuntal style, and acts as a homage to the works of Johann Sebastian Bach (particularly, the Well-Tempered Clavier), whose influence can be traced through all of Hindemith's works. Unlike the Well-Tempered Clavier, though, the non-fugal pieces in Ludus Tonalis frequently repeat the work's main theme, which makes listening to the work as a whole slightly less daunting to the novice than it would otherwise be.
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