Fugue in E minor

Hey Gx, thanks for your feedback! I conceived of the piece as a depiction of a series of memories or recollections (in the abstract sense; these are not actual, real-life events), like someone sitting in an armchair as the sun sets, contemplating events from the past. Hence the itinerary-like structure of the piece. There are moments of joy and moments of grief, but overall mixed feelings about these events, hence the overall ambiguous, shifting mood. I don't know how convincingly I pulled that off.

The half speed at the end is kinda my way of pulling all the threads together. Perhaps I went a bit too far in the open questions earlier, so it took some effort to wrap it all up, and this is what I came up with. Re: the strettos: probably I used up the strettos too early in the piece, so I was out of juice in the last section. :-( If I felt like rewriting the final buildup, I'll definitely keep this in mind, though!

Originally I had a partial retrograde inverse entry underneath the first augmented entry in mm.69-72, but afterwards realized to my chagrin that there were serious voicing problems that could not be resolved, so I had to take it out and rewrite the voices. I did manage to sneak in a (partial) retrograde entry right at the end, though. But it's not really noticeable unless you knew what to look for.

Re: the tempo at the end: one of my drafts did actually have a tempo ramp back to A Tempo at m.67; perhaps I could somehow work that in so that the end doesn't feel too sluggish. The tricky part is the denoument in mm.67-68, though: they feel a bit too rushed at the original tempo. I'll have to play around a bit to figure out what's a good way of working in a return to A Tempo.

There's still some work to be done; there are a few places where I'm not entirely happy with the voicing, and where they may be problems with inadvertent parallel 5ths and the like. Mm.40-41 have been especially giving me a headache, I even revised m.41 after I posted the piece here because it just didn't sound right. Even as late as yesterday I was still rewriting the melody at the end of m.6. I'm pretty sure I'll find other issues if I look closely enough.

Re: the ambitiousness of this piece: initially I actually didn't plan for it to go quite for this long. I actually had several drafts where it ends shortly after the climax in m.45. But none of them felt right; the music just wasn't quite done yet. So I wrote the slow section as a continuation, with the initial idea of it being a short-ish coda of sorts. When I got to m.63 I actually had a perfect fade-to-darkness ending: except it was in the wrong key! I thought about adding an additional modulation around m.51 so that I could transpose the entire slow passage to the subdominant, so that it would end in the home key. But before I got to it, the present version of mm.64-67 came to me as a better way of returning to the home key. Then I wanted to end it at m.69, but none of my drafts worked until I chanced upon the augmented entry. So that's how the present ending came to be.

Anyway, I'll definitely think about how to fix the tempo at the end so that it doesn't feel so slow. Thanks again for taking the time to listen to this piece!

I think the tempo adjustment does work better...
Listening a few more times. Ok, just my opinion, mostly addressing the emotional flow - as I mentioned earlier.
This may seem a bit severe, but maybe there will be something useful for you.
There is an arc which peaks at bar 45. After which, there seems to be a winding down, until the section starting at bar 53 - where the tempo drops.
Personally, I would have a much smaller transition than the one you have (b. 45- b.53).
After hitting the peak at b.45, I would wind things up in pseudo cadence at b.46. Then I would add (your )bars 51 and 52 - in some fashion - tweaking a bit to dovetail with the pseudo cadence.
Then I would start the section beginning at b.53.   (I put the wrong bar line, initially. Now fixed)
(I wouldn't drop the the tempo.)
There might be a few other little things I would change, but I wanted to address larger structural flow.

Uploaded new version:

Score: PDF
Audio: mp3

I cut out the original mm.47-49 and replaced it with a modified version of the original mm.51-52. The new version flows better, I think. Less dragging after the climax in m.45.

This also allowed me to somewhat increase the tempo of the slow section. I tried getting rid of the tempo change altogether, but it just didn't work -- the whole passage sounded too rushed. But I did reduce the slowdown so the slow section is somewhat faster than before. Also, got rid of the tempo ramp for the concluding passage: the reduced slowdown let me actually get back to A Tempo, but I decided that I didn't like the ramp; so instead I just cut it straight back to A Tempo when the subject appears again in the top voice in m.62. Not sure how well this works, but it didn't sound too bad on several trial listens.

Also, small tweak in m.71 so that the rhythm of the stretto entry in the 2nd voice in m.72 is more immediately noticeable. It's still hard to pick out the stretto entries in that bar, though. Maybe I crammed too many of 'em in there too suddenly. But I like the current setup: 2 stretto entries in m.71 under the entry in the top voice, then the concluding full entry in the top voice overlaps with the tail ends of the two inner stretto entries, with a partial retrograde entry sneaked into m.75 in the 2nd voice right before the big cadence. Well, it looks good on paper anyway... whether it makes sense aurally, I can't say.

Also, added some reverb as suggested by someone on the Other Forum. Sounds somewhat more realistic now.

Haha, m.13 is one of those problematic bars that's been giving me lots of headaches. I've been having a lot of trouble figuring out how to write the bottom two voices in a way that links nicely to m.14, doesn't have voicing problems, and continues in the character of mm.11-12. The top 2 voices are essentially fixed since they are the subject and 2nd countersubject. But they constrict the counterpoint quite a bit, so it's been challenging to come up with something satisfactory in the bottom two voices.

Curious to hear what ideas you have about fixing it. 🤔

Yes, I think this new transition is the best version. Sounds natural.
Bars. 52 and 53 - I don't quite get - musically.

They are just the melodic extension of mm.50-51 until the 2nd voice reenters in m.54. The D natural in m.52 (and also m.51) is especially intended to establish the modal feel of the section. Not sure what else to say about it... the melody in m.52 may have been a subconscious quotation of some modal melody from somewhere, but I can't say for sure.