Organ Prelude and Fugue No. 2

fugue + tonal system , it is a very traditional piece , the key from the central have be confusing up by annoying sharp and flat whose you tried to add some color into the piece . but however they look like messed up the whole piece

perhaps, all they are is harmonic minor, melodic minor, and altered minor (raised sixth with normal minor 7th/3rd) notes though.

excellent! nice to see someone getting a mastery over traditional craft to give them more tools for their own future works!

Hi there! Interesting piece! Im not sure if this want ment as a baroque style piece, or a mix. I assume from the use of HW and BW that this might be intended for a baroque organ and therefor baroque style.

The prelude, a nice melody, but not very baroque. there are a lot of unbaroque progressions as well. The sudden keychange to gflat major is not very baroque, this key would sound like a nightmare if you played this on a baroque organ. You start in f major, goes to gflat major, then to g major, then fugue starts in g minor But you never go to the dominant key c major. You harmony is more romantic. The prelude should end in f major, and the fugue should start in f major.

The fugue. This theme could have been great, the first bar is very baroque, but then you wander off to modern times. A fugue is based on two themes, the subject, and the countersubject. I cant find your countersubject. Bar 42 is not very good. and when the pedal enters its not with the fugue subject. I think you should look up and learn counterpoint and harmony if you are going to write baroque style pieces.

There allso is a lot of parallels in the piece.

You seem to have a imitative mind, so fugal wiritng im sure will be a good thing for you, but first you have to get the harmony and countpoint field under your fingertips

Good luck, hope to hear more music from you in the future.

could you point out the parallels in the fugue? if there are any in the prelude it was intentional. It wasn't intended to be baroque, I guess it could be suggestive of baroque because it's an organ fugue and all that though. mendelssohn wrote romantic fugues for instance, heavy dissonance like this.

there are 2 countersubjects and a 4th free voice that almost seems like a very loosely treated 3rd countersubject, but it's really a very strict free voice if that makes sense. I just tried to corroborate what motifs the free voice used. I realize I have rather odd use of the pedal as well, in terms of tradition. I do not recall whether that was intentional or not, it's been so long.

I know counterpoint and harmony btw. In fact I'm going to be studying taneev's doctrine of canon and convertible counterpoint books soon, as I wrote this just after studying norden hugo's books on fugue and counterpoint.

Thanks for your help, I appreciate the interest and constructive criticism, which is so rare as to be unheard of on this site.

I will just say a couple things about the fugue because I want to point this out:

Harmony and Counterpoint:
You start the fugue strictly tonally. Bars 1 and 2 imply G minor. Bar 3, however is confused... It looks like you're using an F natural as a leading tone... which gives it a modal feel. At this point, the listener feels G dorian. From that point on, it vacillates randomly between being clearly common practice tonal and modern. For example, in measure 4.. I have no idea what's going on there because even if you're doing a half-cadence, it's happening on the wrong beats... the D is a passing tone. Which gives the next measure even more harmonic ambiguity because the real harmony in those two bars is [F# A C E] -> [G Bb Db E].. a very chromatic harmonic movement (not to mention really harsh sounding unresolved tritones). The resulting cadence sounds clumsy and forced. In measure 6, it's fine to have that dissonance, but you landed on another dissonance, which is to be avoided in common practice counterpoint. In measure 7, your harmony is extremely confused.. I have no idea what harmony is in that measure? It sounds like a major 7th chord to me: [Bb D F A].. which, followed by that C# (incorrectly noted, it should be a Db) gives a sort of augmented-leading feel to it. Last measure: measure 7 going into measure 8 is really.. really not very strong counterpoint, sorry. Parallel fourth - tritone - fifth descending is .. yeah not very good. In measure 8 what harmony are you implying? I have no clue... it's .. [G A C D] static the whole measure. This leads to an [Eb A Bb D] chord.. I have no idea where that comes from either sorry.

What I'm seeing a lot of is harmonic confusion.. Notes where they shouldn't be with not a very logical progression between chords. That and the contrapunctal lines are very clumsy with each other, which is probably a result of...

Rhythm:

So baroque fugues are also an exercise in rhythm. While each and every subject in the bach wtc may not readily appear to be a period, the harmonic rhythm still implies this. For this work, the harmonic rhythm is very confused and not consistent in the subject, which in turn lends the subject to being confused. Another thing is the actual melodic rhythm which tends to be preserved throughout a fugue (any of bach's fugues have this property). Any motifs that are introduced stem from either a characteristic harmonic rhythm or a characteristic melodic rhythm. Measures 1 and 2 are very good. Very clear harmonic rhythm and melodic rhythm. Measure 3, however, I don't know where that syncopation comes from? It's not from the harmony because the harmony is static.. it's not anything motivic from the previous section.. It just sounds like non-important meandering. In measure 4, you have that passing tone (D) which just stops and removes all your momentum you were building up.. and then in measure 5 you again start up with the eighth notes. This is very discontinuous and not good melodic writing. Measure 7 is probably the worst offender as you have a really weird melodic line coupled with these random rhythms that seem to have no connection to anything. Measures 9 and 10 are incorrectly notated. Oh and in measure 10 when the pedal comes in.. that's just wrong writing. Unless your whole piece is based on an octatonic scale and you're purposely trying to exploit the timbre of a Minor+b5+b6 chord, you shouldn't be writing the chord [F# A C C# D] it just sounds... bad.

Last thing I'll say is that if you're trying to write in a common practice style, then the assumption is that you follow all the rules to create a certain fabric of sound and then on top of that you write your art/story/whatever using themes and form.

If you're writing in a more modern sense, that doesn't mean write everything in a common practice style and then have a mish mash of wrong chord implications and wrong voice leading and counterpoint. If you're going to write in a common practice style, it usually only sound good if you follow the existing conventions (which were borne out of 300 + years of trial and error)

After listening to this and looking at the score, I would advise you first to read up on what a "Cantus Firmus" is to learn about harmonic abstraction and good melodic voice leading. Next, to read the Piston harmony book as it goes into some detail about harmonic rhythm. I would then also suggest you study some scores of some simple composers like Mozart/Haydn to get a better feel for how to write a period, or other theme constructions. Then, I would say read the Fux Counterpoint book to learn how to put it all together.

Good luck!

bar 7 of the fugue needs c#, as it was going to D major not Ebb major. bar 10 you can see how the first half in the manual is A7 and the the last half in the pedal is D7/DM7. I've literally read all those recommendations and then some, especially with counterpoint and form. I've read the piston book (and several other harmony books) several times. I think 100 percent of the confusion stems from my irregular harmonic rhythm, and the melodic writing is one's own viewpoint (I actually like the sound of the D hanging on a quarter note personally). Also, a lot of the notes are non-harmonic so some of your chord analysis is completely off. Is there no way to write a fugue other than in strictly common practice style?

I like this alot! the only thing i can say about it, is perhaps write a longer pedal part? other than that its very good!

Of course you can write a fugue other than a strictly common practice style! There are hundreds of great ones. But they never strictly follow structures behind harmony, voice leading, and counterpoint and then 25% of the time write very poorly. They follow the structures actually 100% of the time! The actual rules are usually quite different, but counterpoint and voice leading are usually nearly the same as older music. All melodic music, from Palestrina to Bartok to Perle follows the same ideas of melodic writing... the idea of motion and then pause, and the idea of momentum. It is a central principle in all of music. This is what separates someone who has never put notes on a page to a composer - they have control over the expression of their ideas.

See, I have always doubted that you actually read those books, but I'm starting to believe it when you say "a lot of the notes are non-harmonic" .... In a one-voice or two-voice texture, there's no such thing. Any notes on the strong beats, especially those with leaps, constitute the implied harmony. If you have a static set of chords underneath and a melody on top, then yes, a lot of those are non-harmonic. But when it's just one or two voices, it's all implied. I suggested those books to you again because it doesn't seem like, from the music you have shown me, developed a clarity of expression yet (which is the goal of all composers learning music theory). If you listen to Schoenberg or Stravinsky or Shostakovich.. most of their works (that I've listened to, at least) don't have random unprepared melodic rhythms or non-existent harmonic rhythm. I think the best example would be the introduction of Bartok's "Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta" which is one of the most beautiful melodic lines I've ever heard. The counterpoint is impeccable too, even in the baroque sense.

Like I've said earlier, writing contemporary or modern music doesn't mean writing older music very poorly -- it has its own set of expectations and heavily utilizes older techniques because they all have a specific purpose (like having parallel open intervals in a contrapunctal line destroys the texture). So if you're going to write a fugue in a style other than strictly common practice, I would expect there to be a very clearly implied harmony, great counterpoint, and in addition, consideration of particularly interesting textures and harmonic choices (either for timbre or pandiatonic).

I shall check out this bartok piece, thanks