My first Prelude and Fugue

It's a choral prelude and fugue (played by organ). Nothing ambitious but when I wrote it I was basically looking for ways to play around with things like augmentation, inversion, etc... (although these were sparingly used and hard to pick out). I'm curious if anyone has been able to pick out where these have both been used. There is a brief episode which is an inversion canon of the subject and counter subject (4 in 2).

The prelude is very very basic and regrettably I didn't really spend as much time on it since the whole piece was just a learning exercise. I think it's a song I heard in church a very long time ago.

I've split the music so that they can be heard seperately.

Prelude:
my first prelude and fugue-prelude.mp3 - 0.77MB
Fugue:
my first prelude and fugue-fugue.mp3 - 1.58MB

Hi,

sorry for the delay but I've been away on a short holiday the last couple of days. I did attempt to convey my thoughts through use of my rare telekinetic abilities, but my powers have a limited range!

I enjoyed the prelude very much. I thought it could have been a tad longer; perhaps could have repeated but with slight harmonic variations. The chords used were very nice and flowed together very well. Although a few of the progressions were slightly predictable you tend to 'colour' some of your chords which makes things a whole lot more interesting to me. The slight level of predictability is therefore forgiven .

The opening theme/motif is a good one and allows for lots of development. I heard the theme reoccur throughout, giving the piece some unity. At the beginning the harmonies work well, and I especially like the resulting augmented chord at 00:11.

I love the chord progression at 00:28-00:32. It's sort of a cycle of fifths (B, E then A I think!) and resolves itself beautifully onto a chord of Fsharp minor. The progression works well I think because it is a bit unexpected, and also because you do not use 'straight' chords save perhaps for the resolution. If you ever write any non-fugal pieces, I'd play around with this progression, or perhaps use it as a launching pad for new ideas. When I first heard it I expected you to go into a cycle of fiths and then some ascending fourths, similarly to a passage in the sourcerer's apprentice I believe!

At 0:45 I think it gets a little bit cluttered harmonically in comparison to earlier on. However, the following sequential passage sounds a lot better to my ears!

The restatement of the subject at the end of the piece works well, and helps add to the overall coherence of the structure.

What I enjoy about the fugue as a whole, is that although you have used some convential chords you also reach for some pretty unconvential ones that add intrigue to the piece. I did think there a very small number of places where the chords might have clashed a bit too much, but this is just based on my own opinions about harmony!

Although I'm not an expert of fugues in anyway I think it's very well done on the whole, but perhaps some of the harmonies were slightly too dissonant for this kind of music.

Wow! Thank you so much for the review and feedback. I really appreciate it. I was trying to do something a little different than the stereotypical bach-like sound and structure and at the same time be strict about transposing the subject and keep the focus on key and point of entry. I can understand why some of the dissonant chords would not have gelled and sound disruptive to the flow and nature of the piece and I appreciate you mentioning that. BTW, the chord progression at 00:28-00:32 is actually the subject in very tight (quarter note) canonic entries. Your ideas and suggestions to push the envelope have me thinking! Maybe it's about time I started writing fugues again!