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Post by king2b on Aug 31, 2017 11:07:35 GMT
I have tried and failed in the past. Is there anyone that would like to take the time to guide us mortals through the process using simple english!
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Post by Mike Hewer on Aug 31, 2017 12:12:23 GMT
Hey King,
A good knowledge of harmony and counterpoint is a pre-requisite for doing it well. Using simple English is not so easy as the process is technical as well as musical, but without knowing your level of technique it's difficult to point you in the right direction or help in any way. Perhaps you could tell us about yourself and even post a failed attempt for assessment.
Mike.
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Post by king2b on Aug 31, 2017 14:31:01 GMT
That is probably why I could not get my head around it! I manage to compose a lot of music writing in a way that pleases me and my listeners but I have been told that my knowledge of harmony is poor and counterpoint about the same. I might have to give up on the idea!!!
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Post by Mike Hewer on Aug 31, 2017 15:10:35 GMT
...or,
you could start a programme of study! so long as you are prepared to put the time in as it will be a long but ultimately rewarding and edifying haul. No easy way I'm afraid. There are good textbooks out there and one can teach oneself with the right mindset.
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Post by fuguestate on Aug 31, 2017 16:29:12 GMT
Actually, writing a fugue is not that hard once you understand its structure. The hard part is in writing a good fugue. To pull that off, you have to have a pretty good grasp of harmony and counterpoint, and also be willing to learn some more advanced techniques that may help spice things up. But for a completely new beginner to fugue writing, these advanced techniques can be overwhelming. So why not let's just start with the bare-bones basics? The following these points won't (necessarily) make a good or even passable fugue, but at least it should get you off the ground: - The first order of business in writing a fugue is to write its subject.
A subject is basically a short musical idea, a melody fragment. Can be anywhere from just 1 bar to maybe 3-4 bars. Could be longer, but for a beginner I recommend sticking with a short subject, and one with relatively simple harmonic implications (to make it easier to write counterpoint for!). Should be pretty easy to come up with one (though again, coming up with a good one takes more skill and experience -- but we gotta start somewhere).
The main thing to look out for in a fugue subject is that it should be easily recognizable, because in the course of the fugue, it will appear in the middle of a complicated contrapuntal texture, so it must "stick out" so that the listener can notice it above all the other stuff that's going on. - The second order of business is to decide how many voices your fugue will have.
This may be variable if you're into more modern-style fugues, but for starters, let's just stick with the simple case of a fixed number of voices, usually 2, 3 or 4. Can be more, but as a start, I recommend 3 or 4. (Why not 2? Because it's harder to make convincing chords with only 2 voices. Definitely possible, but harder if you're new to this.) - Once you've written a subject and decided on the number of voices, it's time to write the exposition. Basically:
- Start with 1 voice playing the subject, while the other voices rest.
- Once the 1st voice is done playing the subject, the 2nd voice enters, also playing the subject, while the 1st voice continues playing in counterpoint with the 2nd voice. But usually, the 2nd voice is playing the subject in a different key (or mode). Usually, this different key is the dominant key of the original key, so if your 1st voice started in C major, your 2nd voice would (usually) start in G major.
The entrance of the 2nd voice is called the "answer", because it "answers" the subject played by the 1st voice. (There's a lot to be said here about "tonal" vs. "real" answers, but let's not get lost in details here. We can talk about this later. ) - After the 2nd voice is done playing the subject, the 3rd voice enters, also with the subject, while the 2nd voice continues playing in counterpoint against the 1st and 3rd voices. Usually, the 3rd voice will play the subject again in the home key (so C major, if your 1st voice started with C major).
If necessary, insert a short bridge (basically free counterpoint between the end of the subject in the 2nd voice and the start of the subject in the 3rd voice). This is especially helpful if you're having trouble transitioning directly from G major back to C major to prepare for the 3rd voice to enter. - Wash, rinse, repeat, until all voices have entered with the subject. Once the subject has been stated by all voices, your exposition is finished. Woohoo!
- Following the exposition, a fugue contains any number of episodes.
An episode is free counterpoint of any length, leading to one or more entries, i.e., appearances of the subject, in any voice. There is a lot of leeway here, so this is where you get the creative freedom to do whatever you want. But the main idea of fugue episodes is to make your subject appear in different ways, e.g., in a different key than it has appeared in the exposition, or harmonized differently, or maybe changed to minor instead of major (or vice versa), or transformed by various "fugue devices". So the "purpose" of each episode is to modulate to the key the next appearance of the subject will be in, to provide a musical bridge to segue into the next appearance of the subject.
And generally speaking, as the fugue progresses the episodes should get more and more interesting, so usually in the first few episodes you'd just do something simple, like having a subject entry in a different key, but in later episodes you start throwing in more interesting stuff, like strettos, augmentations, diminuations, etc.. (I'll explain what these terms mean in a later post. Let's not lose ourselves in details here just yet.) - Once you've exhausted your ideas in episodes, you can bring the fugue to a close with an optional coda. A coda is not strictly necessary, but may be helpful to impart a sense of closure.
And that's it! That's the bare basics of how to write a fugue. Of course, there are many details and issues I didn't even mention in this brief sketch. But it makes little sense to talk about these issues until you've actually run into them in the course of following the above outline. So if you have any previous fugue attempts or rough sketches, etc., it would be helpful to post a specific sample so that we can discuss these issues in a more concrete way. Or if you have a specific question or problem that you encountered in your attempts to write a fugue, ask away and we'll try to answer them.
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Post by king2b on Aug 31, 2017 16:36:48 GMT
I will have a go at this when I get back to work next week. After reading this a problem I am going to have is the counterpoint bit. I can come up with a subject it is going to be writing the counterpoint to that.
I shall have to read up about counter point!
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Post by fuguestate on Aug 31, 2017 17:05:49 GMT
To be quite frank, most of the time when writing a fugue I just follow my ear. If something sounds good, it's good. If it doesn't, I rewrite it. Of course, the theory of counterpoint comes in useful when I hear something that sounds bad, but I don't know how to fix it or I'm not sure what exactly is causing the problem. At least as far as the neo-classical idiom I usually write in is concerned, the problem often boils down to breaking one of the "rules" of counterpoint. So the theory of counterpoint is useful in this sense, as a tool for troubleshooting when something doesn't sound right, a guide to how to solve the problem, and also rules of thumb on how to avoid running into problems in general. But if something I wrote breaks the rules yet sounds good to my ears, I say screw the theory, I'll go with what my ear tells me.
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Post by Dave Dexter on Aug 31, 2017 19:54:16 GMT
One of these days I'll try it, and probably use this advice.
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Post by David Unger on Sept 14, 2017 11:44:57 GMT
It is good advice indeed. But just creating the first subject can take a lot of hard work, since it has to have certain built in possibilities for the coming reworkings of the surroundings. I have written a few (rather poor) fugues, but am now starting all over again with very basic learning of stylistic melodic writing and so forth to prepare for a sounder study in counterpoint. Where did you learn it? What sources have you used for your study?
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Post by Mike Hewer on Sept 14, 2017 13:18:29 GMT
Hi David, The 2 text I learnt from - The Examination Fugue by William Lovelock and especially The Technique and Spirit of Fugue by George Oldroyd. The latter is freely available online just google and I'm sure you'll find it - it is heartily recommended. It is good advice indeed. But just creating the first subject can take a lot of hard work, since it has to have certain built in possibilities for the coming reworkings of the surroundings. I have written a few (rather poor) fugues, but am now starting all over again with very basic learning of stylistic melodic writing and so forth to prepare for a sounder study in counterpoint. Where did you learn it? What sources have you used for your study?
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Post by fuguestate on Sept 14, 2017 21:03:19 GMT
I second Mike Hewer's recommendation of Oldroyd's book. It gives an IMO broader view and better historical perspective of the subject than what has come to prevail as a rather narrow and pedantic definition of fugue as touted by the academically-inclined. David Unger: To be honest, I don't feel qualified to speak of fugue-writing techniques because I never learned it "formally" in a classroom setting, neither from a standard textbook. What I know, I gleaned from numerous online sources (Google is your friend ), from transcribing several of Bach's WTC fugues into my notation software, and from my own attempts at fugue-writing. My first attempt at fugue was scored for a string quartet, but it wasn't very good. The subject wasn't chosen well, and the structure didn't really work very well either. Plus, at the time, my understanding of just what a fugue is was rather blurry, so it ended up being more like a strange hybrid between a canon and a fugue that doesn't look like either. But it was a start; it taught me what to avoid in fugue subjects, and it brought me to more awareness of important issues that need to be considered in fugue-writing that I didn't realize before. My second attempt was slightly better, the subject was at least somewhat more amenable to fugal treatment. However, my inexperience still showed in my overzealousness in throwing in the subject everywhere, so that there was hardly any episodic material, and I crammed too many fugue devices too early near the beginning, so there wasn't much left to use when I needed a climax. Also, this attempt also exposed weaknesses in my countersubject, another valuable lesson learned. In my 3rd attempt, I started with a rather short subject -- and revised it until it was harmonically rather simple. This was a culmination of the struggles I had with my earlier attempts with long, complex subjects. I also gave myself more liberties, realizing my own inexperience, so there is actually a short bridge between the first appearance of the subject and the answer in the exposition, which is probably verboten in the pedantic interpretation of fugue. The subject is also tainted with its implication of the tritone, which probably sets it outside the bounds of what Bach would write, for example. But I wanted to find my own way, so to speak, rather than just slavishly follow the textbook. The result is much better than my previous attempts, and it is, if I may say so myself, my first "successful" attempt at fugue. Its structure somewhat resembles a sonata-form -- in going along with my experiments at the time with the idea of hybrid multi-forms, where a piece may simultaneously have more than one form. My 4th attempt at fugue was an exploration in a different direction: still keeping with a relatively short subject, I had the answer enter a minor 3rd above the subject, an unconventional scheme that required much more meticulous planning of the subject than I'd done thus far. And once I sacrificed the sacred cow of answers entering in the dominant key, I decided to go all the way -- making the structure of the fugue revolve around answers to the subject entering in the "wrong" keys, at all kinds of intervals relative to the subject: a minor 3rd below, a major 3rd above and below, major 2nd above, even a tritone above. Then in a mischievous nod to tradition, the very last answer finally came in the dominant key (the "right" key) but never finishes, being interrupted by a few deliberately-awkward pauses before screeching to a sudden stop. There was a 4.5th attempt at fugue where I played around with the idea of a fugue in 1 voice -- I suppose you could say it was my way of learning fugue by learning what it is not. The result probably can't be called a fugue, but it does at least represent the longest unaccompanied melody I've ever written that isn't boring, so there is that. "Exuberance" is my 6th attempt at fugue. (There is a 5th attempt but it is currently unfinished, and on the backburner for the moment.) This time, I didn't actually set out to write a suitable fugue subject; it was merely something I was humming to my son while changing his diapers, preparing his food, washing his hands, y'know, a random tune while doing mundane, parental duties. Later on, the thought occurred to me that this little tune had a nice, catchy rhythm that might work well as a fugue subject competing for attention in the middle of an elaborate contrapuntal texture. So one day I sat down and tried to work out some suitable counterpoint for it, and really liked it, so I kept going. There were many major roadblocks along the way -- I was stuck shortly past the exposition for at least 2-3 months -- but many, many revisions, abandoned drafts, and dead-ends later, I finally got something I can say I'm pretty proud of. So TL;DR: it all came down to hard work and past experience. I don't think I could have pulled off Exuberance if I hadn't had the accumulated experience of my previous attempts at fugue. And I wouldn't have been able to finish it if I hadn't persisted and worked at it until I got through the roadblocks. (There were many times when I was tempted to just give up and bin it out of frustration. I'm very glad I kept going.)
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Post by Mike Hewer on Sept 15, 2017 17:58:41 GMT
Teoh, I think I said this before in another forum but you are as capable and in some cases more so than some contemporary composers I know at writing fugues. You are living proof (like me) that autodidactism (is that a word!) works with the right mindset. David, you too I feel, will be able to work through a text and come out at the other end all the better for it.
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Post by David Unger on Sept 15, 2017 18:07:44 GMT
David, you too I feel, will be able to work through a text and come out at the other end all the better for it. Well I don't know if the saying exist in English, but in Swedish we say: "Hope is the last thing that abandons man" (Well in fact we do say: "Hoppet är det sista som överger människan" but I thought I'd translate it for you so you will actually understand it :-) )
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