How to Compose a Simple Fugue || Imitative Counterpoint 5 

Older music student here. I WISH I had such a resource back in 1989 when I was studying classical theory. What a treat this is!

Bruh this tutorial fugue actually is a great piece and you shouldn't be discouraged if its a banger or not, because in my opinion it sounds amazing! I enjoy your structure and your teachings thank you!!!

Thank you very much for this channel - I'm a private music instructor and it's really nice to be able to drive my students to resources like this to supplement their learning

I love this kind of tutorials. Thanks for sharing.

Best counterpoint channel on youtube!!!

21:46 Thanks for the tenth Dr. Gran. It wasn't a surprise at all when trying to sight-read it. Then a twelfth in the penultimate bar, ruthless

I really thank this videos, I haven't studied any formal introduction to music in my life but I always managed to learn from my own compositions and from what I could found on the internet. These are great videos for free that allow me to take professional lessons, and I really encourage you to continue with this because I know I'm not the only one who thinks this

Thank you very much for this great lesson! Small suggestion: I would love to hear the score played not only after, but also before you start commenting it. It would "frame" your explanation, maybe making it more concrete and easy to grasp

Very enjoyable and informative production. Many thanks.

You are literally educating a lot!!!!!!!!!

5:38 In the hall of the mountain king!!!

Thanks for the information!

Thanks a lot for such a valuable tutorial!

Your videos are fanatastic thank you so much.

I wrote about your channel in my college application! Thanks for everything! Also that Dorian Subject and florid counterpoint reminds me of Bach e major fugue book 2 (as well as Michael Haydn's 23rd Symphony finale in D)

Man, this video is amazing

This is great stuff thanks. I also recommend " Glenn Gould - So You Want to Write a Fugue"

Beautiful

The issue that fugue is not a musical form but a process, or a composicion tecnique is interesting, I learned in this way too. But sometimes we see around musician dealing fugue as a form. If I am not wrong there is a letter by Mozart talking about fugue on which he calls it as musical form. Well, I desagree to Mozart in one point about music, so. :)

Thank you

I'm waiting for new episodes!

Please make more videos. Period.

Lovely Christmas present from mr. Gran

countergirrazos 🏅🤘

I would be interested in coding some of these into an improv software, and play around generating fugues and counterpoints out of any sequences of notes. Also can generate improvs from an existing set and yet deform them into interesting new forms. Just some thoughts on the matter have been play with for past 5 years or more.

The deceptive cadence in the 3-voice fugue that you talk about around 10:50 was so baffeling to me when I first saw it; it still is really. The soprano leap from D (as the top of a diminished 5th) up to F seems so foreign to me.

Lovely video! I wish I could make videos like these but...I'm not confident in myself to explain the concept. Keep up the great work! I'm glad to have found your channel.

Can you criticize my fugue? I wrote one watching your videos! I love writing fugues now, a short theme can change into magic playing around with harmony! Experimenting with suspensions these days. Next I want to learn more about the pedal points, not sure if I fully understand it yet. The music in the opening of that video by CPE Bach, on True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments, I'm obessed with, even if it's like 3 measures.

hello professor. i have studied the species counterpoint videos closely. might have jumped a little, i got excited. would like to ask about the suspensions. for instance in the first example, the first episode: soprano has an unprepared suspension against the e in the alto. why is this? because it is being sequenced? thank you.

This dorian cantus firmus in this series is like truck-kun in isekai animes.

Question about Fux's Gradus. I have Alfred Mann's english translation of his study on counterpoint. I have not seen Fugue studies in this edition of Gradus. Is there an edition that is a complete english translation?

What edition of translated Fux's Gradus contains this section? Alfred Mann's translation "The Study of Counterpoint" does not.

I feel like all of this is far to advanced for me, but I really want to learn composition. I'm only at grade 3 in piano as an adult learner, would it be possible for you to please recommend some resources where I can work my way up to understanding your videos?

All is good, but I have to ask you about adding an empty bar rests in voices where is no music

Would you recommend a nice counterpoint book to pair with your lessons? I'm thinking Fux which seems good but I would love to know one book in particular that you like

I noticed that in the video a lot of times you have considerations which are not contrapuntal but structural. For example deciding where should be a weak or a strong cadence or changing up the keys for variety... Are there any guidelines on this? How did you arrive at those conclusions?

No development secctions? That requires you to think a little more about the large.scale form and the harmonic scheme you use, I guess. But I admit that as an exercise, this is, undoubtly better to start with. Also, I guess they more or less stayed in the same key originally, but this is of course, not the case later in history (say 19:th century) , where you can have large fuges with seccions in very distant tonal regions. I think there is a weakness at the end of bar number 20 where some kind of fluidy is called for, in my opinion (something that is very easy to fix). You don't want the rythmic flow to halt just before a new entrance, espeically not when you have a theme with long note values like this.

Have you studied Taneyev, sir? Terribly sorry if this is an already-answered question-I am new to the channel.

What about the terms of Dux and Comes..didn t Fuchs knie Them?

1:26

It seems to me that those simple fuges by Fux contain a series of voice conduction problems, and some “semi-errors” in counterpoint

On fugue as process, or compositional technique and not a form. Well, for Bach, it seems to be the highest form of musical craftsmanship - to him it seemed to define what counterpoint is in its fullest expression. So to me, to say a fugue is not a form, and only a process or composition technique, is to reduce fugue to simply a type of counterpoint. In the form, concerto grosso (the overture to Handel's Messiah is in this form), Opens with a very rich hymn-like composition (in Em) akin to a slow movements from Bethovens concertos or sonatas, then after a perfect cadence in B, it pauses and breaks into my favorite fugue - the ending is awesome. It is a 4 voice fugue. We could argue that the form of a concerto grosso is a way of combining smaller compositions into one. He called this piece t an Overture - which can be in almost any form. By Bach's time, fugues were out of style but he loved them and devoted a lot of work to the form and we could say elevated it to its rightful place as the most beautiful form of counterpuntal compositions (he never shy'd away from using canons in his fugues which demonstrates absolute counterputal mastery). It is icing on the cake when a composer is aiming to highlight or flex his compositional skills, or demonstrate the depth of his subject by writing a fugetta (short fugal section of a larger composition - Bethovens 3rd symphony 2nd movement uses this form before the climax of this funeral march) . Seems like when a composer want to go deep, he writes a fugue (bethovens 2nd movement to his 7th symphony). I would argue that Canons and Fugues became after thought in comparison to the sonata and concerto, the form is too pedantic to stretch into a 10 to 15 minute piece. However, Bach was a master of using every bit of a themes possibilities within a fugal framework - what a master. Check out his Passacaglia and fugue in Cm - so beautiful and monumental in its scope, it starts with a pasacaglia (similar to the cantus firmus, just longer) and ends in one of the most epic fugues I have come across - only the 3 movement of Mahler's 9th symphony comes close (Mozarts double fugue from his requium in Dm is a very close third - also masterful in its use of stetto and canon. As you can see, I love fugues. But bachs fugue in this piece uses almost every possible permutaion imaginable - stupendous creativity. Also, the C major fugue from book 1 of his, Well Temperered Clavier is an excellent and masterful example of stretta. Keep up the good work Gran.

countershreds

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You have a parallel fifth.

How tf could Bach write a cantata like every week?

E' vietato fiorire l''unisono battuta 8 e battuta 9

Quite instructive and very much appreciated. I have very good relative pitch, and can follow what you describe on staff, nevertheless your lessons would be greatly enhanced by aural examples at key points. Describing music without sound is as poor as describing a Van Gogh without a picture. I would suggest you visit Dr. Seth Monahan's channel and listen for yourself. You could also stand to loosen up your bowtie just a wee bit. Don't ya think, DOCTOR?

First

Wouldn’t it be better to teach using examples by JS Bach? JS Bach was writing perfect fugues before Fux even published Gradus. I feel like since Fux based this off Palestrina’s work its teachings are invalid it you want to write real fugal music. Many valid Fugues by Bach “breaks rules” in Gradus, but are more valid because Bach wrote them, so they must be valid.

Could you teach us how to get a gf on the next episode??? Please??

actually is not a good subject because it has no difference to the counterpoint line, it has no character. It is good and easy to compose , but for the listener is bad. The listener will see the counterpoints as thematic material, and the counterpoint will have to be also more interesting, making it harder to compose the counterpoint .For improvisation is excellent.