Fugue in Am

Good job. It's always nice (for me) to listen to a well-balanced fugue in a piano (there are many pieces by Bach that I'd love to listen to on a piano instead of a harpsichord). It's very short, yet self-contained. The voicing is very clear and natural, as if free of the usual Baroque constraints so often found in fugues.

While good in execution, I lost the tonality by the third entrance of the theme and I never got it back, i.e. I couldn't hear the dominant - tonic relationship in A minor anymore. So the ending felt quite odd without some solid D and G# followed by A and C to clearly show the key center. I think it is the highly chromatic nature of some of the lines that obscures it. This isn't a bad thing in and of itself, but used in excess, can cloud the tonal structure. (Do note this is different than tonality itself. Wagner clouds the tonal structure all the time but not the tonality, i.e. triadic nature, of the music.) In fugues, the tonal structure is very important because it denotes the points where the material changes or it the type of variation changes. Sometimes it is not so easy to hear this without a tonal clue. Tonal progression also makes the varied material interesting. That's why Bach changes the key within his fugues quite often, to give the fugue interest.

Apart from those quibbles, I think you've done a very good job. Your counterpoint is spot on (with a few less thirds can I'd like). You might be wise to review your notation of dynamics, however, because it is sometimes ambiguous to which voice they belong to, or if they belong to all three voices. Same with the staccato markings.

You clearly have a gift for writing fugues, so I encourage you to keep on writing them!

Tokkemon, I really appreciate your comments. I understand your point about tonality, but this is totally intentional. I used to write fugues in an academic way, but I'm really trying to change it. That's why you hear this fugue so lost in the tonality. I don't really want it to be that clear.

I LOVE fugues, that's why I write them compulsively. I'm glad you've liked it and also encouraged me in continuing composing them.

Thanks again

Nice work... I am fan of baroque music, well, I think we allways have a little influence from baroque, and I love fugues too ( Realy baroque nature )
Of caurse we see this is not from XVIII but what I want to say is that you have done a realy nice work!


PS: excuse me bad english Im french

Counterpoint is spot on? What about hidden fourths in the third beat of bar 3, first beat of bar 4, and second quaver of bar 6? The consecutive fourths at the middle of bar 5? All of these before a third voice enters. There are more after the third voice enters too, if you happen to be wondering. Not spot on if you're talking about conventional counterpoint writing.

I don't like that you start in E minor then have the answer in A minor. The effect is that the key is in E minor, because you are in E minor when you first state the subject, as well as the when the third voice comes in after the codetta. Both are very important places in giving out what the key of the piece is supposed to be in.

Another thing I didn't like regarding keys is that all, I think, of your entries have the subjects stated in A and E minor. I would have liked the more common choice of having only the exposition and final entry be in those keys. What you did is a little lazy, since it is easier to have brief explorations in the episodes only to comfortably return to a close key, instead of planning the entire middle of the piece so that it travels and satisfactorily returns for the ending.

Something clever like inversions, stretti , augmentations, and suchlike would have been nice too. Maybe I simply didn't spot them.

I rather agree with Ian on this one. My main gripe, apart from the technical issues, is the lack of variety in the fugue. I've never really thought of stretti or inversions as decoration -- I was taught to understand them as potentially important structural elements of a fugue, which I now know is very unconventional. These devices lend a certain tautness and economy of elaboration to the music, which I always find quite sexy.

Also, more tonal movement would be nice! This sounds quite static otherwise.

I'm not trying to justify myself, but here's the thing: I'm trying to achieve 24 Fugues in all keys! That's a hard work, and sometimes I check out the Well tempered clavier for some guidance. Here we have a Permutation-fugue, in which Subject, C.S.1 and C.S.2 change positions everytime, separated by episodes. This is inspired by Bach's Cm fugue, from WTB book 1 (BWV 847). The lack of stretti, augmentations and so on are intentional. You can see all of these resources in these other fugues:

In G: http://www.youngcomp...fuga-no-3-in-g/

In Em: http://www.youngcomp...76/fugue-in-em/

In E: http://www.youngcomp...515/fugue-in-e/

In C (with prelude): http://www.youngcomp...ugue-no-1-in-c/

About the "octaves", "forths"... I really don't take them as problems anymore! I used to do it when I was studying counterpoint, but now I count them as possibilities. You know, I believe that on XXI century, we shouldn't listen to music and try to spot parallel octaves, hidden fifths and counterpoint "errors". In older times, these were "proibition"; now, they're possibilities! Schoenberg explains about these "prohibitions" in harmony and counterpoint in his book "Harmonielehre". From that book on, I know that I have written octaves, fifths and fourths, but that's because I want them to be there!

I really should have put subject entries in keys other than Am and Em (although theres is an entry in C-G by the bar 21).

I thank you all guys for having listenend to my work and having commented too!!!!!

I think that once you know what "the rules" are, for a certain piece's style, that you can break them how you please. So if you first know what is considered proper in a strict fugue, then you can choose voice leading that would be outside that train of thought.

This is why I honestly hold myself in pretty low esteem, composition-wise -- I hardly know any rules about anything, musically, aside from the table scraps of music theory I've picked up here on the site. Any contrapuntal sections I write are "free-form", then, to avoid the harsher-but-truer term of "going-purely-by-ignorance-and-hoping-to-stumble-on-something-acceptably-ok".

You seem to know what a strict fugue would entail, so I'm not put off by the relative "third-less-ness" of this fugue. As long as I feel there's enough harmonic power in the trains of thought overlapping, I'm a happy camper I thought you succeeded on that front, personally.

This piece is on the relatively "light" side, which I find refreshing. But I think that your other pieces should have more complexity and "meatiness" to it, so that this can serve as a contrast to your other pieces. By "meatiness", I mean more daring choices of voice-leading, harder dissonance/consonance play-offs, bigger, more unorthodox structures that still work, etc. You don't want to be static, as Xiang brings out -- and I feel that even though this piece is short enough to get away with the "lightness", you shouldn't make a whole lot more of these kind of pieces in your set, but sprinkle them sparingly as a "palate cleanser" for the tougher sections

Thank you so much for sharing this with us! I really enjoyed it