Young Composers' Fugue Challenge

Thank you for the encouragement
I see you've encountered the same problems I have Bach88, keeping the subject in the key of the moment. very nice moments and frases in it though.

Well I haven't finished my fuge yet. To be honest, its plane hard work. I get grumpy sometimes for the lack of progress
At the moment I've been staring to much at it, so I need a push.

Lot of ugly transitions/modulations , bar 16 for example
I tried to krampack it with all kinds of stuff like a stretto, imitation and inversion.
I put marks in the pdf file:
T is subject :
T inv is subject inverted :
t is imitation/partial :

apart from any welcome comment/ advice, I would like to ask if I can compose an end to the fuge now, or do I have to repeat the subject (in original length) once more in all 3 voices?
subject6.mp3

I just wanted to say great job to those fuguists who have posted fugues since I have been here last, they sound great!

-Brandon

* BUMP *

I want newer members to see this thread and try their hand at this. Besides, there are some very good fugue submissions here.

Brandon (aka Recursion and Puck) has wisdom beyond his years where composition is concerned, and he's right when he says that nothing will help you develop compositional technique faster and more effectively than exercises like this - even if you don't intend to include fugues in your output as a composer. If you want to develop strong bones and muscles, you exercise and work hard at it. This is the same thing.

I've been composing for over 30 years, and I know how to write a fugue. But something about these subjects engaged another part of my mind and opened up a whole new area for me...I don't know how else to explain it. Working on just two - TWO - of these subjects changed me as a composer forever, and very much for the better. I encourage you to give them a try.

*gulp* here i go writing my first fugue. I read the wikipedia entry, anything else i should know? Im not a classical kinda guy but we just played 'gevokna fanfare' by Jack Stamp for wind ensemble and it had a fugue, so im guessing you can have modern sounding fugues.

Good for you, Jay, and good luck. Yes, you can have modern-sounding fugues, but if I were you, I'd try a textbook one first, then move on to something freer and more modern. That's just my suggestion, though. Do as you see fit, and enjoy it. You won't be sorry.

I have become interested in the fugues and preludes by Shostakovich.

Does anybody know where I could get ahold of those?

Maybe we should disect one of Bach's Fugues and compare it to Shostakovich's and find what different principals each worked with, in other words what are the similarities and differences?

I have become interested in the fugues and preludes by Shostakovich.

Does anybody know where I could get ahold of those?

Maybe we should disect one of Bach's Fugues and compare it to Shostakovich's and find what different principals each worked with, in other words what are the similarities and differences?

I don't know where you can find them but today, I heard a 16 yr old kid playing one of Shostakovich's fugues. This kid was amazing. He played them nearly flawlessly. I say nearly because he missed a few notes. Which is expected because the performance before, he played rach's 2nd piano concerto.

I have a fugue based on no. 6 in E-Minor in progress, but could somebody just check I am doing the right sort of thing at the moment. I have never before written a fugue or had any real training on how a fugue is supposed to work, so I would appreciate some help.

Thanks

Also note that I know it is unplayable. I am not a pianist, and so I am doing this on Sibelius merely as an exercise with no intention of a performance.

I've tried only one, the C major fugue #1. the subject looks a lot like the subject of WTC 1, so I decided to treat it like the master did, with stretto. I also placed a retrograde in the soprano line. (and I can say I wrote it in an hour and a half )

I declare myself the loser for the C Major competition - But hey, I had a lot of fun writing mine, exploring more than a few genres on the way. It started out as a fugue, but very shortly became an excursion on a theme, but using quite a bit of strettos along the way, and augmentationa and inversion for kicks, forget retrograde (didn't get around to it) - and all coming back to the theme at the end, although not with your standard harmonic pallette. Can anyone else possibly like this?? I don't think my own mother could.