How to write a fugue

Reddit how to write a fugue. How to write a fugue pdf. How do you write a fugue. How to write a good fugue subject. How to write a fugue poem. Rules for writing a fugue. How to write a fugue exposition.

How to write a fugue episode. How to write a fugue answer. How to write a fugue countersubject. How to write a double fugue. How to write a simple fugue.

7 February 2017, 10:52 | Updated: 17 March 2017, 05:52 You are 10 simple steps away from ultimate contrapuntal glory. This is all thanks to our (almost resident) musicologist William Godfree. Fugues sound awesome. Here's one of the finest by the contrapuntal master JS Bach - it's part of his Overture in the French style, BWV 831, here in an
incredible accordion performance by Guillaume Meral. What to write one of your own?
Oh course you do... Fugues are interweaving, flowing lines of music based on a common musical theme. Though they've inspired some of the greatest artistic creativity in music history, they're actually structured in a very logical way - it's the composer's challenge to make it all link up in a harmonious, musical way. A fugue is built from a short phrase,
called the fugue subject. The subject begins in one part and is then subsequently taken up by the others. Baroque composers like J.S. Bach did a lot of it, sometimes in very complicated, chromatic forms, but fugues are found in music from across history, from Beethoven quartets to Shostakovich. We wanted to know the secrets to the puzzle of a
writing a fugue - and we knew just who to ask. Composer, conductor and musicologist William Godfree was the talented chap who wrote a fugue called 'Fuga Camerata', a fugue based on that theme former Prime Minister David Cameron hummed when he entered the door of Number 10 Downing Street. William has given us a step-by-step guide.
Three sections and around 10 steps in all. From subject to final pedal note, here it is... Composing a Fugue, by William Godfree Find a subject The fugue subject can be anything. Mr. Cameron was kind enough to give me mine, which I transcribed in the noble key of C minor: In itself, not really substantial enough for a fugue subject. So I extended it
to cover 7 bars and began it in the tenor part: Now, there is a sort of implied harmony here... ...which is going to come in handy when you bring in the subject in a second voice, in this case in the bass part. This version of the tune is in G minor, a fourth below the original: Compose a counter-subject Now this is the point where you must dream up a
second tune which will fit with the first. Something like: Now you're good to go. When the third and fourth voices play the subject, the previous voices all move on one: Write developmental episodes There comes a time when you've played your subject enough, and you can play around with your existing material with all manner of musical devices
such as canons or playing your tune upside down, backwards etc. For this fugue I chose a Sequence, where a fragment of the subject is repeated, in this case descending step-wise: At this point I chose to reintroduce the fugue subject in a major key... ...echoed by Sopranos and working its way back to the C minor of the original fugue subject, and
using a device called Stretto where the subject tumbles over itself much more rapidly than it did at the beginning: ...and with the help of a sustained Pedal note in the bass, finally bringing the C minor Fugue to a C major conclusion. Done. Easy. And what does is sound like? ...and a but of it sung: A fugue is a piece of music of contrapuntal texture
which is predominantly based on one theme called the subject. It’s important to note that a fugue isn’t really a form, it is a way of presenting a contrapuntal texture. Overview A fugue has three main sections, the Exposition, the Middle Section (sometimes referred to as the modulating section) and the Final Section. The sections in a fugue refer to
contrasts in key rather than theme. The exposition begins the fugue and a single voice plays the subject establishing the tonic key. Another voice enters with the answer which is the subject transposed up a perfect 5th (or down a perfect 4th) into the dominant key. As the second voice plays the answer the first voice can play either a free part against
it or a counter-subject. The middle section consists of entries of subject and answer in keys other than the tonic separated by episodes. An episode is a modulating link between the entries of the subject and answer to make a change from continual reiteration of the subject. They are usually based on a figure from the subject or counter-subject. The
final section begins where the subject or answer returns in the tonic key. The section will contain at least one entry of the subject in the tonic and will usually end with a coda (which can vary from a few notes to a few bars). Here is an example of a fugue structure: Techniques During the middle and final sections, various “fugal devices” may appear.
They are: Stretto Augmentation of the subject Diminution of the subject Inverse movement Stretto occurs when entries of subject and answer overlap each other, the second beginning before the first is finished. A close stretto is one in which the overlapping is considerable. Augmentation of the subject means statement of it in notes of greater value,
usually double. Diminution of the subject means statement of it in notes of smaller value, usually half. Inverse movement means statement of the subject upside-down, upward intervals become downwards ones and vice versa. This is sometimes called “Inversion” but “Inverse Movement” is a preferable term since it avoids any possible confusion with
inversion of subject and counter-subject. These devices can be used in combination, e.g. the subject can appear simultaneously in Augmentation and Inverse movement (its notes are twice as long and upside-down). Summary Utilizing the techniques above and the example structure you’ll be on your way to writing your first Fugue. In the future we’ll
be giving a step by step guide to writing your fugue beginning with constructing your subject. Stay tuned! The best resources I know are a pair of books by French composers, André Gedalge's "Traité de la fugue" and Charles Koechlin's "Étude sur l'écriture de la fugue d'école". This is possibly because scholastic fugue (fugue d'école) is very much part
of the French Conservatoire system's curriculum, while it seems to be very uncommon in the English-speaking world, so it helps if you can read French.
(If not, Google Translate doesn't cack up French to English translations too badly.) The Gedalge book is available at IMSLP, specifically here.
If you haven't already bookmarked IMSLP, do so: it's the largest repository of Public Domain music literature around. It not only has scores, but books on music and music theory in PDF form. (I'd link directly to the category indexes, but this is my first post here and I haven't got the rep points yet for lots of links.) I can pretty much guarantee you'll
find other books on fugue there, in English and in other languages than French. You'll certainly find fugue scores there, and that is even more important. The idea of fugue is pretty straightforward: it's a procedure rather than a form, really. You introduce each voice with imitative entries of the subject, usually at the tonic level and transposed to the
dominant level (subject and answer), and each voice continues fairly freely after exposing its subject entry. The initial exposure of the subject in all the voices is called the exposition. You may need to make tonal adjustments to the answer to keep it from modulating away from the tonic too quickly. (The Gedalge book goes into how that's done in some
detail.) The continuation of a voice after the subject may involve a countersubject that is played consistently against a subsequent entry of the subject in a different voice. (That is to say, one voice exposes the subject, then continues with the countersubject as the next voice comes in with the subject.) If you already know your invertible counterpoint,
this isn't particularly tough to manage. Between groups of subject entries (and sometimes between single entries), you have freely-written material (episodes) that may involve sequences and invertible counterpoint, and are usually based on motifs from the subject and/or countersubject and/or free material from the exposition. These episodes usually
serve one of two functions: modulatory or cadential (i.e., as a kind of codetta). Note that the bare minimum fugue involves an exposition, subsequent entries of the subject, and episodes between these. Everything else is optional, whether countersubjects, invertible counterpoint, stretti (overlapping subject entries; the singular is stretto), or multiple
different subjects (double or triple fugues, etc.). Sometimes, for stretto fugues (i.e., for fugues that continuously overlap subject entries), even episodes are optional - see Bach's Fugue in C Major from WTC I for a stretto fugue that has very little in the way of episodic material. Now, from a practical point of view, variation in the sense I think you mean
doesn't enter into the writing of fugue too much: variation at the thematic level is rather rare; variation at the motivic level, quite common, but not of the subject itself (except when the variation is used to form a distinct section of the work, each varied subject in effect starting a small fugue within the piece - see J. J. Froberger's canzonas and
capriccios, which can be found on IMSLP, as examples). The biggest problems I usually see are problems of handling the composite rhythm of the voices when played together: either the voices all move in lockstep (which is really just writing in block chords), or they articulate every quaver (or semiquaver, or whatever the unit of background
movement is) between them (counterpoint by Singer sewing machine, so to speak).
Your voices are freely expanding melodies, so you do want some rhythmic differentiation within them and between them. If one voice is using straight quavers, for instance, arrange that the other voices are using longer and more irregular rhythmic values. This is where your counterpoint studies come into their own: all your appoggiature,
suspensions and passing notes will not only allow you write the voices melodically against the implied harmonies, they will allow you to articulate the fugue rhythmically. This is no less important in a fugue than in a sonata. You want your voices' rhythms to come together to put weight on important cadences; you want enough rhythmic incompletion
and momentum that the voices don't come to a complete halt at an internal cadence. Are you finding specific problems when you try to write a fugue? When to bring a voice in with the subject? Most of the time, when a voice drops out, it does so on a cadential melodic note, usually the tonic or dominant of the current key. When it comes back in, it
usually does so with a subject entry, and, of course, the entry is going to come in when the harmony and beat can support its incipit or opening motif.
Subject entries usually stand out when they are at the top or bottom of the texture. For alto or tenor entries that need to stand out, it is usually a good idea either to drop out the voices above or below that might obscure the entry, or to hold them fairly static (so that the melodic changes in the internal voice are noticeable). If you have specific
examples of problems, they're usually easier to address than trying to explain by elaborating the big picture.