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Hallo @Fermata! Your asking about the issue of „monotony“ in your fugue. Sometimes it is not an issue with the composition itself, but rather a question of the interpretation or recording. Since you are using four string instruments „played“ by your notation software, you „naturally“ encounter the problem that the entire piece sounds somewhat monotonous. Even real string instruments blend the sound very well, in my opinion, but are not as expressive for individual voices. I can imagine, when played on a piano, the impression would be totally different. As currently discussed in another thread @PeterthePapercomPoser suggested to improve the recording by “fine-tuning” the articulation, dynamics, and tempo for each individual hand or even voice. I also had a fugue which I considered to be „boring“ and I was nearly to get around and throw it away. But then I applied such tiny adjustments in the tempo, for example to make the first bar of the subject a little bit „swinging“, which dramatically changed the perception. Since I do so now with all of my piano works, I know that it is a lot of work to literally maintain two scores, one for the printout and one for the recording. But it's really worth the effort to achieve a sound that is much closer to a live performance. Concerning the composition „as is“, I think there are no issues. With a short overview on the score I see that you already applied the necessary counterpuntual techniques (such as tonal answer, a recurring countersubject, inversion, augmentation, stretto). As in 6/2 meter with mostly half and quarternotes (perhaps in an older, more Palestrinian style), it would be not appropriate to add passages (in episodes) or countersubjects with a faster rhythm. Perhaps one could introduce a kind of diminution which doesn’t increase the rhythmic pulse by doubling the speed but is merely a rhythmic variant of the original subject preserving the quarternotes as the fastest ones, finally resulting in a 1.5x diminution (such as in Bach’s D# minor fugue from the WTC1 BWV 853).

Well! That quite possibly might be the most interesting thing I've heard in a long time. A very tricky thing to put together. Myself, I've always found canons far more difficult to write effectively than fugues, so therefore I must commend you. This is a very effective little piece. I must say, I don't much care for the sopranino clarinet up top, far too shrill, and I find myself wondering if the whole top part mightn't sound better on a regular B-flat clarinet an octave down. I suppose the texture is more modern for it though as is, and therefore part of your plan. Great work!

Thanks for your detailed thoughts! When I mentioned monotony, I was referring more to the process of working with a long, slow subject - after a while the contrapuntal development itself felt a bit repetitive to write. The fugue was an exercise I worked out on paper with pen, mainly as a kind of contrapuntal puzzle, which I've always enjoyed doing as a hobby. That said, you're absolutely right that the playback could be improved. I didn't add any articulation or dynamics, so the notation software makes everything sound much flatter than it would in a real performance. I'll try revising it along the lines you suggest to make it sound more natural. Thanks again for taking the time to comment!

This time I wrote a piece inspired by an exercise from Chapter 2 of Persichetti's "20th Century Harmony" on Scale Materials for 2 Bb Sopranino Clarinets and Bb Bass Clarinet. The prompt was "14. Construct a canon for three clarinets in which each performer plays a different synthetic scale on a different tonic." Synthetic scales are scales that are "specially constructed, often non-traditional scales created by altering, adding, or omitting notes from standard diatonic (major/minor) scales." I chose to use the written C Acoustic Scale, F Ukrainian Dorian Scale, and B Phrygian/Dorian Scale. I've been told that I should have perhaps tried to choose scales that would sound more harmoniously with each other. But, funny enough, that's exactly what I was trying to do. I didn't choose scales at random but tried to tailor each part of the canon to the previous material by improvising a scale and only later figuring out what scale I was using. But let me know what you think! Thanks for listening! P.S.: I have added a 2nd version of the piece where I have changed the relations of the tonics to each other to be tertian rather than quartal as in the 1st version. In the 2nd version I use written C Acoustic Scale, E Ukrainian Dorian Scale, and G Phrygian/Dorian Scale. Let me know which you prefer!

This exercise is awesome, so I could not longer resist to break my silence! By the way, all your exercises from Persichetti's "20th Century Harmony" are very interesting and inspiring – and I have already looked on many of them, while not yet thoughtfully. I think I will study them all in the next time and try to give a review whenever I can. Whereas composing a canon is complicated enough (not to mean the funny children’s chants but a perpetual one), having three different scales and tonics is a real challenge. Usually, one would expect that the harmonies of that different keys would constantly clash each other, but the usage of different modes, or – as here - different synthetic scales interestingly mitigates that problem, so that in the end a common harmony is achieved which, however, sounds a bit weird in classical sense, reminding me on Klezmer music. But that probably expresses the mood of the F Ukrainian Dorian Scale. When I attempted to create a fivefold stretto in one of my fugues, I discovered that it is required to alter the subject for harmonic reasons at some notes. But as I studied the result, it was not an „adjustment“ of the subject but rather a transformation to a different mode (for example B minor, G lydian, C sharp locrian, A mixolydian and D major), so that I had finally well crafted and not „twisted“ subject entries. Very enjoyed!

My most recent Muzoracle casting has constant accel.'s and rit.'s throughout:

I hadn't even noticed that! But you're right. I guess it just worked out that way by accident. I'm glad you liked the changes of time signature, as I wasn't sure about some of them. I did think of using more ottavas; but found I could read the ledger lines quite easily when playing it through myself. Will add them if the pianist requests it. N.B. The composer who inspired me to write this piece was Julian Scriabin, as I recently discovered his preludes on You Tube. Think my piece maybe sounds more like Rachmaninoff though? Many thanks for your interesting review! Alex

Many thanks Peter, for taking the time to listen and review. Yes please do! I'll be getting a real performance from a pianist in May: so I'll probably just wait for that, rather than trying to massage the midi rendition. Will bear your points in mind for the future though. That 9/8 bar originally had a short fermata on the middle note; but I decided to use a time signature change instead. Then I reproduced the same 4/4 to 9/8 in the recapitulation: so it is reflected later in the piece.

Very nice dreamy, yet mysterious and passionate prelude! I like the frequent changes of the time signature. While initially looking complicated, the rhythm of the piece has an intuitive pulse and a continuous flow. I noticed, that your score is without a key signature. But since you often change harmony from keys with sharps to keys with flats, this decision avoids that the score is cluttered with natural signs. And when listening and reading the score I like that the more serene passages correspond with the flats, while the more passionate passages feature more sharps! In some bars, I would like to see more octave brackets to make it easier to read when playing. Personally, I refuse to read more than three or four ledger lines. However, I agree, that too many octave brackets disrupt the visual impression of the runs in the score. I completely agree with @PeterthePapercomPoser's suggestions for improving the recording by “fine-tuning” the articulation, dynamics, and tempo for each individual hand or even voice. Since I do this with my piano works, I know that it is a lot of work to literally maintain two scores, one for the printout and one for the recording. But it's really worth the effort to achieve a sound that is much closer to a live performance. Thank you for sharing!

Thanks for the comment! You’re absolutely right that thinning out the texture can help keep things fresh — that idea crossed my mind as well while writing. I treated it more like a fugue d’école rather than a stylistically Baroque fugue (the subject itself is a 20th‑century textbook theme), so I kept the four‑voice texture going longer than I normally would. I also thought about extending some of the three‑voice spots, but the subject is already pretty long and the tempo is on the slower side, so the whole thing was starting to feel a bit too stretched out. Still, your point is totally valid, and I appreciate you mentioning it. Glad you enjoyed the fugue!

For future fugues, to break up the monotony, maybe you could have more sequences with less voices? For most of Bach's 4-voice fugues, like half the fugue is for less than 4 voices. So having lots of 3 or 2 voice sequences and switching which voice combinations are doing said sequences really helps with monotony. Thank you for the enjoyable fugue 🙂

Here's an unlisted video of a track from another album I wrote themed around crime/spy thrillers that will be out later this year probably via my usual publisher, but after the gothic/dark neoclassical album I wrote for them. So I'm expecting it to be out around summer or fall. This in particular is the first electronic-driven tune I've composed in I don't know how long, since I had abandoned that genre since I wasn't really good at it (and didn't enjoy it as much as the orchestra anyway) and hate designing synth timbres, but writing this one I was kinda like See what you think. Side note: I expect most of my YouTube DAW videos going forward to be unlisted. YouTube has kind of become a joke since the AI slop takeover you just get buried in the algorithm; better use of time to just show these to film directors and such, which has been going much better anyway.