Young Composers' Fugue Challenge

Hey Brandon, I just listened twice to your fuge on the Cm theme and enjoyed it very much. Versatile subject indeed! I especially liked the different entries of imitative counterpoint between bars 69-84 and the sequence of quick sequential key changes I'm hearing around bars 108-112.

Aw man, great thread. Keep it up. Like... forever.
Of course if you want to please a guy like me up the tempo a little bit, I love the chaotic feeling that fast counterpoint gives. Its like you don't have enough time to listen to it all at once.

Originally Posted by J. Lee Graham

I agree. Pinned!

I take that to mean that we can still continue to post fugues on the subjects given by Brandon here? I've started working on the C minor subject, because I saw that many fugues had been posted already for that one and I thought "This must be a wonderful and inspiring subject".

Well, I've resisted the temptation to look at other fugues on the same subject to avoid borrowing material, even though I may unconsciously be borrowing from other material anyway.

I've decided to write a 4-voice fugue, but I have slightly changed the original subject: instead of ending with F-G-Ab, I ended it with F#-G-A, thereby making that subject modulating into the dominant. This allows me to make all voices enter without the need for a bridge. Of course, I've mutated the tail of the answer to modulate back to the tonic.

I hope it's OK to do something like that.

The good thing is: the subject being (slightly) different, the outcome will naturally be (enormously) different. .

Raphael

Hello,

Here's a subject in A minor which I invented last year. I have written a scholar fugue on it, as a mandatory assignment... It was my very first fugue, and it's certainly full of mistakes.

I'll post it here later, but I'd like to see how you would develop that subject.

Happy composing,
Raphael

Originally Posted by ram

Hello,

Here's a subject in A minor which I invented last year.

Oops, forgot to attach it... Here it is, in PDF and MIDI form.

Raphael

Here is my fugue on the (slightly altered) Cm subject from Brandon's challenges, a 4 voci.

You will find here:

Index of /music/fugues/challenges/cm

the score and two MP3 MIDI realizations of it: one for organ, which outlines the harmonic progression better, and one for 4 winds (flute, oboe, English horn, French horn) which outlines the individual voices better.

Please comment, this is the only way to progress.

Raphael

Well, I haven't got any feedback at all on the C minor fugue I posted a while back. I hope it's not a sign that my fugue was so bad nobody dares to say anything about it...

Anyway, I have completed a fuge on the C major theme, a 4 voci. You can get the score, the MIDI and an MP3 realization here:

Index of /music/fugues/challenges/c

I've chosen a slow tempo for that fugue, and therefore in order to keep it short enough and well-balanced, I have limited the number of episodes, sticking mostly to subjet expositions in various forms and other contrapuntal imitations. There's only one short modulating sequence at the end of the exposition, the other transitions being made via free material.

Although the C minor fugue was rather cheerful, this C major one is more expressive, showing that major does not necessarily mean "happy" and minor "sad".

Enjoy,
Raphael

Both of your treatments were enjoyable to listen to, though I am partial to the counterpoint in the C-Major one. It flowed well. It seems everyone only wants to treat the C Major and C Minor one. I wonder why that is.

Nice job!

Thanks for the feedback, it's always nice to get some.

I've had a private remark that my treatment of the C major subject (if you forgive the direct 5th at measure 8 between bass and soprano -- sorry, just put the previous A in the bass an octave above) was nice but not "fugal enough". I need to practice this art some more.

I intend to eventually write a fugue for all the other subjects, as part of my training. Not necessarily in the order they were given though, I will seek guidance from my teacher as to which one I should pursue next.

The reason I picked C minor and major is that there were some previous fugues posted here for these subjects, and that I could compare the different treatments once I was done.

I've never written a fugue before, but on sunday afternoon I randomly decided to try my hand at one - I wrote the subject not really knowing whether or not it would work very well, and I have minimal (or rather, nonexistent) background to counterpoint. Nevertheless, I've managed to finish a four-part exposition with which I'm quite pleased, but I don't really know what to do next. The 'crash-course' pdf. file seems to have dissapeared form its former page on the forum. . . .

I know it's supposed to be an episode involving flying through as many keys as possible and sort of randomly playing around with your subject's head and tail, but other than that, I'm clueless as to what I should actually do.

Any chance of some brief advice on what rules I should be following (bearing in mind I'm just about to have a cadence into the dominant). Do I need to get back to the tonic for the episode? What material do I base it on? What does it even include? What's with multiple episodes/developments?

P.S I just listened to Brandon's treatment of the C-minor subject. I liked everything except the start of the exposition - I felt it got hugely complicated far to quickly. I think I'm more partial to expositions that get exponentially more ostentatious and dramatic as they progress.