The building blocks of Prelude

"Prelude" is an instrumental piece written in a classical form known as 'theme and variations'. The "Loneliest" theme from "So Said The Lighthouse Keeper" forms the basis of the work and its use is very well thought out.

More than that, Prelude bears a solid musical relationship to the PRECEDING song, "The Loneliest Of Creatures". The melodic theme actually DEVELOPS gradually out of the SCALE used in that song (The scale is Db major with bVI and bVII making a strong iv chord sound)

The overall HARMONY of Prelude is based largely in F# harmonic minor. But it also spends a lot of time on the dominant chord (C#) playing the F#m scale from the fifth degree (fifth mode, also called hijaz scale). It is this second aspect which LINKS the piece very closely to the preceding song. The chords I iv and indeed bVI feature strongly in both pieces (assuming the root of Db/C#).

The opening 14 bars expertly merge the iv chord (Gbm) sound of TLOC into the F#m tonality of Prelude. Starting with the characteristic I iv chord progression C# F#m F#o C# and slipping into a descending minor chord progression F#m E D C#. This second progression is a tried-and-true standard for many prog-rockers of the period so Klaatu vary it thus:

|F#m   Bm    |%|E7    A     |%|Dmaj7 Bm6   |%|C#7         |%|

After the intial fanfare the clever stuff begins:
XXXX At 1:40 the "Loneliest" theme emerges. There is virtually no harmony, just the bare scale. The pedal point is in the lower register at this stage.
XXXX At 2:25 the guitar plays the theme followed by a wild variation harmonised with the I iv chord progression.
XXXX At 2:59 the piano restates the theme very briefly.
There follows some really inventive work with the outline of the theme played as variations over first the descending F#m chord progression and later a very dissonant variation on the I iv progression.
XXXX Finally at 5:21 the entire orchestra bangs out the "Loneliest" theme verbatim.

This of course sets up the next song "So Said The Lighthouse Keeper" and despite the iv chord featuring prominently in the chorus and Woloschuk's ubiquitous bVI and bVII chords in "Hope" and "We're Off You Know" there are no further melodic connections between the four pieces in the suite or the remainder of the album.

On the other hand ...could there be a connection in "Long Live Politzania"?