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Modern Fugue Composers


mmf1

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Who are now considered very good living composer of the fugal form by the professional composer community?

Can some fugues you can refer me to which are written in the past few decades and is now part of the standard reportoire.

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I think this is a hard question. And it raises more questions than will answer:

  • Considered by whom?
  • What is modern?
  • Is a fugue (strictly speaking) a form? (maybe, but it is used more as a texture as well)

So if you are looking for living composers I cannot really help you. Maybe there are living composers that write fugues like Hindemith, Shostakovich, and Barber did. Do you consider that modern?

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To the OP:

 

What you are asking is quite confusing... do you want a MODERN fugue? Or do you want a CONTEMPORARY fugue. I can give you 200 examples of modern fugues. But not so much on the contemporary side. Remember that modernism refers to certain types of music composed during the modern era, which has passed a long time ago. We're probably past the whole post-modern shtick now also... Just use the word contemporary next time.

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Dear all,

 

I'd like to refer you to a very detailed account in an article by composer David Matthews:

http://www.david-matthews.co.uk/writings/article.asp?articleid=42

Do read it - it's fascinating and very good!

 

There is a real diversity of contemporary composers who are writing works under the name 'fugue.'  However, just like poets constantly rethinking what a poem really is, these composers are constantly thinking about what 'fugue' means and how they can reinterpret the basic elements of it in a way that's relevant today.  Some of the pieces described in Matthews' article would not be easily recognisable to us as fugues. 

Like someone said earlier in this thread, 'fugue' is not so much a form as a way of composing, or else a texture.  That's not only true in contemporary music - think of the fugue in Strauss's 'Also Sprach' as an example to show how the form can be taken wherever you want it to. 

 

Personally, I find the whole idea of polyphony and counterpoint really exciting.  The world (human or natural) is full of a multitude of voices, a multitude of happenings, characters, threads, etc., and I love music that reflects this.  I am working on a set of three fugues for piano at the moment, and counterpoint in various different guises has been a regularly recurring feature in my music. 

 

Who else loves weaving polyphonic threads of simultaneous ongoings into their music?

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Dear all,

 

I'd like to refer you to a very detailed account in an article by composer David Matthews:

http://www.david-matthews.co.uk/writings/article.asp?articleid=42

Do read it - it's fascinating and very good!

 

There is a real diversity of contemporary composers who are writing works under the name 'fugue.'  However, just like poets constantly rethinking what a poem really is, these composers are constantly thinking about what 'fugue' means and how they can reinterpret the basic elements of it in a way that's relevant today.  Some of the pieces described in Matthews' article would not be easily recognisable to us as fugues. 

Like someone said earlier in this thread, 'fugue' is not so much a form as a way of composing, or else a texture.  That's not only true in contemporary music - think of the fugue in Strauss's 'Also Sprach' as an example to show how the form can be taken wherever you want it to. 

 

Personally, I find the whole idea of polyphony and counterpoint really exciting.  The world (human or natural) is full of a multitude of voices, a multitude of happenings, characters, threads, etc., and I love music that reflects this.  I am working on a set of three fugues for piano at the moment, and counterpoint in various different guises has been a regularly recurring feature in my music. 

 

Who else loves weaving polyphonic threads of simultaneous ongoings into their music?

 

Yes, great article. I direct listeners and friends to this article when describing fugue.

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