Fugue in D Major

Hi everyone,

I'm new to this forum, which I discovered recently while surfing the net for interesting sites on composition. Although I can no longer describe myself as "young", I am most certainly inexperienced as a composer.

The fugue I've posted is only my only 5th ever composition - the other 4 were also fugues, but not particularly good. This one is I think at least worthy of letting others hear it.

One thing I'm going to try to work on in future works is acquiring a richer harmonic vocabulary. I find it almost impossible to introduce anything vaguely chromatic without it sounding "wrong". Also, I have difficulty in working out more than one harmonisation of a subject, so all my entries sound very similar, which gets a bit wearing as the piece progresses.

Thanks in advance to anyone who takes the time to listen and provide feedback.

Regards

Nigel

Fugue D Major.sib

Fugue D Major.mid

I would go for tighter harmonies and expand the harmonic palette to cover a wider use of the keyboard. Adding some chromatic modulation (such as fifths) and including a minor rendition would be great!

Thanks for sharing your works, and I hope this helps!

Thanks for taking the time to listen and provide feedback. Much appreciated. If I may ask, what do you mean by "tighter" harmonies?

Also, my first middle entries are in B minor and F# minor aren't they?

Less stop and go rhythmic motion, your motivic development sounds very repetitive and becomes tiring as well. I would work on increasing flow, your first modulation is very convincing, but as I said because the flow doesn't help clarify the form, it suffers as a fugue.

Also, an anticipation in the upper voice of the tonic at the end via 16th note motion would further clarify the 16th note motion and also give a more directed and resolute finish.

I modified your fugue with my suggestions. This may not be the ideal version, but I feel it's closer.

http://www.box.net/shared/ilyhi5ymyu

What can I say?! That's absolutely fantastic, thank you.

I'd identified the stop/start rythmic motion as a weakness myself, though this fugue in it's original version suffers from this much less than the other ones I wrote. Your version is definitely stronger, and really shows how I should be looking to revise a work once I have complete draft.

Likewise motivic development. Even I was starting to get bored by the time of the G major entry in my original, and the stretto at the end is much improved by your embellishments, heightening tension, thereby counterbalancing the relaxation inherent in what is the longest passage in the home key in the piece.

Once again, thank you for taking so much time with this.

I'm not convinced by your slightly faster tempo though - I prefer both versions at the original 50 crotchets a minute.

Actually, on second thoughts, I'll take that back. Perhaps slightly faster is better after all.

It thought it was a nice composition and your theme was good. Some small points:

I would have preferred if your 3rd voice had entered in d maj and not in the implied bm. Also there are parallel 8ves between bass and soprano at this point (in Examinous' version).

The entries in bars 7 & 8 are very effective are their flow has been improved by examinous.

The episode based on a new idea in bar 13 works well.

Probably the fluid type counterpoint as demonstrated by Examinous would help forward momentum (but watch out for 8ves).

Still a very good job for your 5th ever composition.

Very Good!

Thanks for your feedback guys. All very encouraging!