2-part invention in E minor

Another small invention I created in 2022. The motive is in me1-2. When I saw it I thought 'what the hell am I gonna do with this thing?' And to my surprise, something came out. I couldn't help but bring variations to the motive's repetitive notes. I think the result is somewhat funny.

Hallo @Frederic Gill!

I have read the thread about your „2-part invention in counterpoint“ and since there had already been lively discussions I decided to take a look on another piece which has not got a review yet.

I like the motif (or „subject“) which is indeed somewhat „stubborn“ because of its repeated notes (but there are many famous fugues with repeated notes in the subject). And so, your decision to vary the motif sometimes to avoid that repeated notes is quite a good idea.

The counterpoint is well chosen rhythmically, giving the entire piece a continuous flow and its „funny“ character.

As far as I remember from the other thread, there were some dispute about „parallels“ and „octaves“ which was – also in my opinion – somewhat „overteaching“ (I couldn’t follow all arguments or „issues“ without going into detail too deep), so that I can understand that you’ve deleted most of the posts.

But to be honest, after listening to your E minor invention, I can understand what the other commenters meant: Not „parallel octaves“ (or „parallel fifth“ as to be avoided in counterpoint generally) are problematic, but only the occurrence of the same note (in an octave) on a strong beat that makes the piece sound something „thin“ at that particular note. This is the case in a two-voice counterpoint only. If you had a third or fourth voice there would be enough harmonic material overall (and that might be the reason that writing a two-part fugue is much more challenging than a three- or four-voice fugue and why there are so few of them).

I think, you can solve the problem, for example by varying your counter-motif in that places where it creates the octave. You will then lose the smooth motion at these points and have to insert a leap, but that might emphasize the humorous character of the entire piece!

58 minutes ago, Wieland Handke said:

(...) the occurrence of the same note (in an octave) on a strong beat that makes the piece sound something „thin“ at that particular note. This is the case in a two-voice counterpoint only. If you had a third or fourth voice there would be enough harmonic material overall (and that might be the reason that writing a two-part fugue is much more challenging than a three- or four-voice fugue and why there are so few of them).

I think, you can solve the problem, for example by varying your counter-motif in that places where it creates the octave. You will then lose the smooth motion at these points and have to insert a leap, but that might emphasize the humorous character of the entire piece!

 

 Thank you for this 1st positive feedback. It is comforting  :)

You make it clear about the accented P8ve. I had never seen anything negative on that in Goetschius books (So I blame him!). The proof is that I have accented P8ves EVERYWHERE! LOL. In the deleted piece (#20) I had one per bar! And in this one, I have about 9 among 24 bars. I will have to update many pieces!

The original motive was given an 'allegro' tempo, which should be 125bpm. Ridiculously fast. So I chose 85bpm (moderato). If I had slowed it further downto 60bpm, I would have had a different, non-humorous approach to it.

I will make corrections to this #10 and get back. See you!

Here is v3, an improvement to v2 of #10. I removed all accented P8ves, also some parallel 8ves and 5ths. And other little things. The changes are in RED on the score.

The plot: The leading tone, being absent from the motive, takes its revenge in the counter-motives, sometimes in obstinate ways.

It's a huge improvement from the previous piece. The countersubject you've written is very melodious, and you've exploited its scalar nature and its rhythm very well for the rest of the piece. The harmony in your counterpoint is very apparent and well-constructed too: the first bar outlines descending thirds, and the second bar is a dominant chord. The issues regarding accented 8ves are also no longer there.

You can refine your countersubject slightly though. All of the semiquavers in bar 4 should be raised by 1 pitch. This will both highlight the underlying dominant harmony, and also lead to the E in the following bar more smoothly. With this change, your solution will be perfectly acceptable, but a slightly more musically "interesting" solution will be to turn the beginning of bars 3 and 4 into 4-3 suspensions.

Then I'd raise the following points about the rest of your piece:

• As mentioned before, your piece needs strong cadences to serve as musical punctuations. You need a V - i (or I) in the tonic key at the end. You also preferably need another in a different key somewhere else. The tonal scheme of your work is perfectly sensible: tonic - dominant - relative - tonic, and so a second V - i at the end of either the dominant or relative section is desirable. A third or fourth strong cadence may also be added at your discretion.
• Your subject + countersubject together is invertible (in the sense of exchanging bass with soprano and so on) and so you should invert it! Every opportunity you've had (bars 7, 13, 19) you've presented us with a modified version of the subject and countersubject instead. You are allowed to do these pitch modifications (and I indeed like them), but given you have presented the theme consistently throughout the work as soprano -> bass pairs, you should also present these modified themes as pairs. Utilising these modified pitches as new motifs in your episodes would also be desirable.
• Whilst you will find episodes like these (i.e. repetition of one passage, with slight modifications) in the oeuvre, far more commonly you will see different episodes being constructed completely differently. They have different lengths, and are based on different harmonic progressions. Melodically they generally still play from the pool of the motivic material in the theme, but the exact details vary from episode to episode. The reason why is not because repetition is bad - repetition is good if done sensibly! But the journey you take to get from the tonic to the dominant must clearly be different from the journey from the dominant to the relative, so a different approach is needed each time. Writing different episodes will also allow you to place the much-needed cadences at will. When you can employ this repetition technique however, is when your starting and ending keys are separated by the same interval. In your case, this means you can reuse your episode between the dominant - relative (v to III) as an episode between the relative - tonic (III - i). If the subdominant was part of your tonal scheme as well then it means you can reuse a tonic - dominant (i - v) episode as a subdominant - tonic (iv - i) episode.