Prelude and Fugue in F major

Hey everyone! I'm a novice composer, so critiques are much appreciated! Thanks for listening!

Here's the sheet music for my composition.

• Overall this is a fun little piece, you clearly understand the essence of what a prelude and fugue is meant to be. 👍
  • The prelude is fun. the metric feels contemporary and clean, using (2+2+2+3) time was unique. I like that you were confident in your writing for it. Also ending with a quartal harmony made it feel very contemporary.
  • I can't say too much on the fugue since I don't have a very deep knowledge on baroque music. Although I felt you were less confident in your writing compared to the prelude-I think that there was a lot less direction with the harmony which made it feel unsure. 
    • On my first listening I think I heard parallel octaves in m46. in voice 1 and 3. I'll have to take another look to skim for any voice leading slipups.
    • I was a little surprised when I didn't hear a third voice come in at m42, it is a bit of a jump for the second voice (maj 11 interval)

PS: I think I'm going to try writing a fugue now, you've inspired me 🙂

EDIT: have a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugue#Musical_outline, I completely forgot that fugues have an actual structure 😛 

Hello! Very nice work! I think you have som great musical ideas. I dont know if you goal was to write at prelude/fugue or a baroque style prelude and fugue. Even so i would like to give you som pointers on fugal tecnique.I will not go over the usual stuff like voice leading and parallell octates and fifths. What i will do here is to give you some principles of fugal writing.

Traditional fuges are often developed form the initial idea, and keeps to the figures and rythem from start to finish. It is offcourse possible to write contrasting sections in a fugue, but i will keep it simple here.

The theme:

You have a great  fugal theme, it sounds baroque and has common rythem and figures. Things to pick up from the theme is:

Bar 1: Downward steps (C - B - A,), Eight note rythem (5th 4th 3rd)

Bar 2: 16 notes in upward and inversed motion.

That means that your rythem later in the fugue should have these elements.

As a said you theme is great, but also a bit difficult arranged. You start the theme with a uppbeat that goes to the 5th in you harmony. So on the first beat of the bar (the strongest beat in the enitre bar) is on the most unstable noe of the tonic triad. This also gives you a challange when the subject is going to enter in another key (you enter in the subdominant, ill come back to this later).

- What you can do is to cut the upbeat and start on C. Or you can change the C from A or to F. What I would do is to start with a rest. So bar 1 would look like this:

The structure and harmony:

This is a three voice fugue. The voices are often in the ranges of choir voices, but in intrumental and keyboard fuges it does not have to be this way. Use the range of the instrument, but try to keep the voices in correct range. The fugal exposition is  1st entry in the tonic, 2nd entry in the dominant, 3rd entry in the tonic. Its possible to dem all directly, or to have eposides between them to set up the entry og modulate.

What you do is the enter the tonal answer in the key of B flat major. Why? There is also a issue with the harmony from bar 35 - 36. Last beats of bar 35 is the dominant of F major (c major), and its expected to resolve like a cadens (either to F major or d minor). You resolve it to B flat major. So that does noe work. When you har writing tonal music like this you allways have to look at the prevoius harmony to see where can i go next. You can allways move logicaly in seconds, fourths, firths and sixths form your harmony (in both minor and major).

Harmonic rytem: What you really ned to keep in mind is the harmonic rythem. The timesignature dictates this. 3/4 time The most important beats in the 1st and the 3rd. Keep the harmony clear in those beates for the most part.

In bar 37. second and third beats the harmony should be F major (the dominant of the tonic at the time, b flat major). But what is the harmony here?

To me it looks like b flat major in the soprano voice and f major in the alto voies. And the bar resolves to B flat major without the root note (bflat on the strongest beat). This goes for the whole fugue. Here again its very important to look at the previus cord to see where you logicaly can move (or phrase).

Enry of the third voice: In bar 38 the voice does not enter with the fugue theme, why?

Example of baroque fugal writing:

I wrote a little expample on your theme for you to look at if you want. Its very simple counterpoint. What i have done is to keep the three charateristics of your theme present when the 3 voices are togheter. (One voice with forth notes, one voice with 16 notes. one voice with eight notes).  I hope you found this helpful. And good luck with you music. You clearly have an ear for this stuff.

SimenN