I have always liked Handel's fugues. They may not match Bach's in complexity, like those in "The Art of the Fugue", but that doesn't matter at all because it's not about competition, it's about composition. Especially the fugues for harpsichord, respectively piano, are a delight: they have their very own characteristics and stand out clearly from fugues by other composers. It is simply the purest pleasure to listen to them. I was happily surprised that you used a Handel fugue as an example instead of the usual suspects by Bach! Only to prevent an uprising of Bach fanatics: I love Bach too and can't stop listening to his works, especially fugues, but I don't close myself off to those of others. I also see fugues as creative compositions, where things can sometimes be less complex, because it's all about the joy of listening!
Your analysis is (sometimes too) profound and (usually) clear; which is due to my limited knowledge in comparison to yours. Although I will not be able to compose a fugue in the near future - the gap between theory (reading) and practice (writing) is still quite wide - watching your elaboration inspires me. Thank you for teaching; I am not yet done studying.
Thank you Dr. Gran for yet another fantastic video. I particularly enjoyed your Heinrich Schenker series! I have a few comments that may or may not interest you: 1. I believe Handel only gave the title "Messiah" to his famed oratorio (HWV 56), sans the article "the" which seems commonly applied to the beginning of it. 2. I am a professor of music at a private university in St. Louis, and when I teach Fugue, I also share the same piece with my students: "And With His Stripes." - I also enjoyed your dry, witty, and humorous comment "not to be confused with "Whip It" by Devo!" - very nice, very funny! 3. I present the fugue subject from "And With His Stripes," and then we discuss the "all-interval" opening four note subject theme: C to A-flat to D-flat to E-natural. These intervals AND their respective inversions present an all-interval pattern (cardinal, not quality of course), with the exception of the octave/unison. C to A-flat = 3rd/6th; A-flat to D-flat = 4th/5th; D-flat to E-natural = 7th/2nd, and the characteristic d7th leap down is adventurous, ominous, and emotional; even forbidden in strict counterpoint! 4. After I share this information with my students and we've listened to the work, I present Mozart's "Kyrie," from the "Requiem in D Minor, K. 626." I ask them to compare the two fugue subjects, and the discourse and dialogue unfolds in wonderful ways, as Mozart clearly utilized the same subject, but presented it in a different key. As you are aware, I'm sure, he was rather fond of fugue and invertible counterpoint at this period of his life. 5. I would love to see someone present the comparison of these two fugue subjects, and more importantly, reference the d7th leap from its Baroque (or earlier?) origins as a Crucifixus/Passion theme, as I am aware it exists as such from other Baroque works. 6. In two places in the score presented (m. 35 in the tenor, and m. 87 in the bass), I noticed "2nd-voice augmentation dots"-the dots were placed below the staff lines next to the notes. When single voices are written onto staves, as presented here, this convention is not necessary (or accurate) and the dots should be placed above the respective staff lines. Please don't misunderstand me, I'm not placing blame, and I'm not even certain that you crafted this score. I'm merely stating the tenet for the writing should anyone else notice this. Thank you again, great stuff! I am a subscriber and I look forward to your work!
Thank you! Your points are well taken. I plan on covering Mozart's Kyrie and also Haydn's double fugue from op 20 no 5 in future videos in the series. They all use nearly the same subject, but they produce completely different fugues, and I find it instructive as to exactly how the composers accomplish that. Prout pointed out another fugue with the same subject: the A minor from Book II of the WTC. It's important, I think, for students not to get hung up about accidentally plagiarizing a subject, or not inventing an extremely original one; it's more important to think about all the things you can *do* with the subject and produce a good piece of music with it!
@@JacobGran @squaresunmusic I love this theme and all it's "cousins" - in (the) Messiah, in WTC, in Haydn's quartet, and in Mozarts Requiem. Speaking of it, You can also mention the Andante from Mozarts F Major quartet KV 168. It's not exactly a full fugue, but it also uses the subject (in the version identical to Haydn's quartet), also imitated in all voices.
🫂 thank you for your videos. Music theory is profoundly difficult to understand as it is, but you make it somewhat more intuitive. Given that I want to be a composer someday, it’s important that I do intuit this information.
I have had trouble with many things related to fugue, the whole process of writing a fugue is like a foggy maze for me where I can't even see where the next step is, the next note, it's so foggy. But the part that gets me almost every time and the part that differs a good fugue from a fugue that's not worth the effort, the subject, that's my strongest weakness with fugues. Like, I can improvise a great melody, just in general or even for a canon or a not so strict contrapuntal work(all free counterpoint I'm good at). But I try to improvise a fugue subject, and it ends up being terrible. This was even worse back in 2018 when I started composing and still had that strong opposition to harmonic minor in keys from D minor to Bb minor and thus my C minor pieces would end with a minor dominant cadence or a Subtonic cadence, which sounds good outside of fugue, but not really within a fugue. My first year, I tried so hard to write a fugue, I must have had at least a dozen attempts in different keys, C minor, G major, and Bb major just to name a few. And none of them turned out right. My first one, I made it the furthest on, but looking back at what I have left of it, it's probably my worst ever fugue subject, C minor with no leading tone, Bb everywhere. My fugue attempts with already written melodies haven't turned out much better. Twice, I tried doing a fugue on the BACH motif, and I always ended up with these weird harmonies that don't make any sense in the key(for reference, both attempts were in Bb major, or supposed to be anyway) and my countersubject *becoming* the subject because I have the motif in like half notes or some other long note value and the countersubject, especially the second countersubject if there is one, tends to rhythmically take over and become the subject. And I'm not even going for a double fugue in those attempts where I might want a fast and slow subject, I just have a single fugue gone wrong basically. And then of course, there's the Beethoven's Fifth Symphony Fugue that I've tried 3 times now. This is, I think the best out of all of them, especially this third attempt with the subdominant answer that you suggested Jacob Gran, but it's still coming out a bit weird with my attempt at adding a countersubject to it. I always try to add at least 1 countersubject to my fugues on any fugue subject, improvised or not. And this weirdness is not from a lack of study, when I see a counterpoint course, I tend to watch the fugue videos more than anything, because the rest of counterpoint, you know, canons, free counterpoint, species counterpoint, I find easy, almost too easy. But fugues, that's really been my goal as far as counterpoint, and it's incredibly hard for me compared to canons, which some people say are harder than fugues. And I will listen to Bach's WTC fugues and the analyses of said fugues, maybe even a Beethoven fugue and I still don't get it right after years of study.
I think this is a common frustration. I tried to teach myself counterpoint when I was in high school by reading textbooks on the topic (for reference, this was back when RU-vid was only for cat videos) and I never managed to write a successful fugue. I have definitely come around to the way that Fux teaches it as the culmination of the study of species counterpoint. His title "Gradus ad Parnassum" says it all; you have to walk every step, without short cuts, and no one else can walk the steps for you. Just to get the monkey off your back, so to speak, I would recommend composing a simple fugue in the style of the last video. All it requires is a command of florid counterpoint in four voices. No countersubjects, and it wouldn't be a bad idea to work from someone else's fugue subject. There are a bunch of them on my Patreon page. Don't view it as a reflection of your artistry and don't worry if it's a masterpiece -- it probably won't be (just listen to my demo fugue from that video!). But you will be able to say that you have finished a technically correct fugue in the traditional style, and you can branch out from there.
@@JacobGran I've never thought of using a subject from another fugue for my own fugue, with maybe the exception of the BACH motif that's been used for more than one fugue by multiple composers and that I get weird harmonies and the whole "subject doesn't sound like the main subject" problem with. Melodies, yes, that's why I have the Beethoven's Fifth Symphony Fugue I've attempted 3 times, but fugue subjects? It just feels like I would do it injustice to write a fugue based on another composer's subject. Especially since Beethoven and Bach are my main exposures to fugue, and are so different in style and what they allow(Parallel octaves is the biggest difference I've noticed between Bach and Beethoven fugues, Bach only uses it for depth purposes in fugues, as a doubling of a preexisting melody, whereas Beethoven will happily include parallel octaves between 2 different melodies as well as use it for doubling purposes), it feels like even more of an injustice, because their fugues of Baroque and Romantic style are just so perfect, that it feels wrong to risk imperfection to either of the composer's fugue subjects, especially Bach. And on the other hand, Beethoven's fugue subjects seem so complex relatively speaking, that despite how much I love Beethoven that he is my favorite composer, and the fact that my compositional style has Beethovenian tendencies, it feels like Beethoven would not be an ideal start if I do use fugue subjects by another composer and that the simplicity of Bach's subjects might be a better starting point.
Do you have any advice for the tonal structure of a large scale fugue? Im working on a fugue in d minor but it might as well be in A minor because that's the majority of it so far. Also, any advice on how to modulate, my process so far has just been to modulate by fifths, which naturally works with fugues.
That’s hard to say in general. I would say that one should not be shy in modeling an aspect of a composition (like it’s large scale key design) after a master example you admire. “Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal.” According to Stravinsky. If your fugue is drifting too far north on the circle of fifths, try throwing in a sudden shift into a flatward key region in the second half of the piece (Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge, or the whole three movement design of the Waldstein sonata). Keep in mind also that the ear can tolerate chromatic subjects staying in one key for longer than a diatonic subject, which will become stale quite quickly if it doesn’t modulate. Several of the contrapuncti from the Art of Fugue have an almost trancelike feel because they drift effortlessly into chromatic regions without sounding like a full modulation (one measure in D minor, the next suddenly in C minor, then back just as quick)
Are fugues with a fixed countersubject called "double fugues" because I'm often confused when watchig Richard Atkinson's videos as he refers to the seeming countersubjects as "2nd subjects" as in a double fugue.
That's a great question. It is a very inconsistent thing in music history. The most common distinction between subjects and countersubjects depends on whether or not the theme occurs independently, either a) simultaneously with the primary subject during the exposition, or b) n its own exposition and then the subjects would later be combined. That is the distinction that I am going to make in this video series. The French in the 19th century were extremely consistent on this, even going so far as to distinguish between a "Fugue a Trois Sujets," and a "Fugue avec Deux Contresujets." But on the other hand, Knud Jeppesen refers to the fugues at the end of Gradus ad Parnassum (including the one shown in this video) as "double fugues," even though Fux himself used the Latin term "contrasubjectum." Ultimately, the contrapuntal technique of invertible counterpoint is identical, and so the naming convention is not so critical in my opinion.
Hello I have a problem with this sort of thing. When I take the countersubject and put it pretty low as bass it sounds a bit "dissonant" if you know what I mean. Why does it sound bad as bass? Because it's second inversion?
If it is truly a second inversion, they are harmonically weak and are used to bridge to a more stable chord. It also depends on if you are using voice leading to go to the nearest tones in the following harmonic chord, otherwise it might start to sound unstable and listeners may get confused or stop listening.
