Discover more music with Apple Music Classical, the streaming service for classical music. apple.co/InsideTheScore For more on Fugues, you can search for Bach, or my secret favourite fugue: Holst's Fugal Overture. (Not to be confused with his fugal concerto). Enjoy!
@@etiennedelaunois1737 At the very beginning of this video you can hear J.S. Bach's toccata from BWV 565. It is a separate compositional form and is not a fugue. Typically, when the entire BWV 565 is performed, the toccata which is about 133 measures long is followed after about two minutes and forty seconds by the fugal part of the piece. So, what you first hear at the beginning is a toccata.
J.S. Bach could literally improvise fugues on subjects given to him on the spot then write it down later from memory. There is a reason why composers after him idolized his music.
@@jasonmurray4714 the difference between bach's and jayz's brain is like comparing human's brain to an ant's. i know u were just joking and i get it i dont take it serious but still this was the worst metaphor dude :D you disrespect Bach
@@carteralita5377 What exactly do you know about Jay-z's brain? Or anybody's brain? Furthermore, the type of elitism you display here is probably why classical music is selling so little and not as some of you would think because the masses are "too dim". Bach was one of the greatest minds of his time when it came to music (I'm unaware of him excelling in other fields) and he wrote music popular in the style of his day. Jay-z is also one of the greatest minds of his time when it comes to music and he writes music in the style of his day. Bach according to sources could improvise a fugue which is a complex musical form usually written with much premeditation. Both Jay-Z and Black Thought can improvise rap verses which are often both lyrically and rhythmically complex musical forms usually written with much premeditation. The presupposition that one is inherently better than the other is merely down to Eurocentric cultural domination in the Western world which values things of European descent above things that are not. In reality, better is of course subjective. The saddest thing is when someone tries to put classical music in terms that could be more digestible to the average person living today, you shut this down with prejudice. You speak about "disrespect Bach" while disrespecting Jay-z who has made incredible contributions to music and has managed to build an extremely diverse fanbase. And speaking of intelligence, this is a man that went from a poor housing project to becoming one of a handful of musical Billionaires surpassing such figures as Paul Mcartney and Julio Iglesias. Not bad for someone with an ant sized brain.
Fugues are such a natural musical expression to me; they're supposedly constructed under strict rules but always sound so natural... I guess when done well everything is...
Damn. I was writing a fugue this whole time without even knowing what it was called! This video probably is going to help me quite a bit with writing the composition.
Same, haha!! I was writing a fugue way back, and never knew it was this. I kind of stopped before, since it became so complex that my brain hurt, but it was really fun to make!
I don't care about whether this video is too hard for beginners or not, I feel like my music A-level result has been saved by your video, that it rly rly made what my teacher didn't explain clear much clearer. Thank you a lot!!!
I've fell in love with classical music and opera about two years ago. I have always analysed the emotion it gives, but thanks to you I can have a deeper look at the work that has been put into a piece. Thanks!
Well done! A nicely compact and elucidating look at the apotheosis of Fugue writing that emanated from J.S. Bach. The way you employ musical examples is very effective. Nary a boring or repetitive moment.
This video makes my preparation for Theory of Music Grade 7 an absolute breeze at the University of South Africa... your lessons are amazing. Thank you so so much
Inside the Score. Well- presented and explained. Voice, no pun intended, was clear and succinct. But I wish I was musically-trained to appreciate and understand it well!
I’ve also heard what you’ve here called inversion described as mirroring. I learned that invertible counterpoint was switching voices registrally,say the subject and countersubject, to get a new relationship between the voices while still maintaining “good” counterpoint. Bach uses invertible counterpoint at the octave, tenth and twelfth in places throughout his fugal writing. Check out the g minor fugue from WTC, bk. 2.
Well we spent 8 years in music school studying nothing but that , or harmony. Around year 4-5 you typically “explode” and begin harmonising like crazy.
This is BRILLIANT! My musical brain completely got it! It's like an embroidery, or collage. Stitching different patterns, threads, materials onto a canvas which look nothing by themselves, but in composition make the complete image... and images within the image. I came to here after just discovering that humans can also have a mental state called 'fugue' too. I'd heard of musical fugue - but not what it meant - so looked up both, and yeah, I can see how the brain (also the organ which creates musical fugue) can be affected by the condition, and in short - I think the genius composers were creating in music what was happening in their brain! It's only my spontaneous thought, so please don't anyone slap my wrist. :-)
Great info... I'd love to hear about modulation in depth, how each composer approach this, and I mean specially the melody not the chords because harmony will follow the melody
One double fugue that always touches me every time I hear, it is in the 5th Symphony of Anton Bruckner, on the development of the 4th movement. It is a an extraordinary, beautiful and spectacular example of counterpoint mastery.
I think that in practice they followed the dynamics of painting a picture: they decided the subject, then the background colors, then they went adding layers or veils, they decided which parts were light and which were dark, The answer went up or down an octave, staying on the scale, and making agreement at the counterpoint to avoid outbursts, and to preserve emotional and ideological congruence. In Painting the "fuga" ergo "vanishing point" is a concept that alludes to depthness, to the inertia of contemplation.
Whooosh. That was the sound of most of what you said going over my head. My understanding, based on this video, is that a fugue is: 1: Jargon, 2: Some more jargon, 3: A bit more jargon, 4: Things I'd understand with a deeper understanding of music, and 5: Jargon. I love classical music, I'd love to understand the mechanics of it better and I really hoped to come out of this video experience knowing more about a term I've heard often. But I didn't. (I enjoyed the music, though. Thank you).
I found out what a Fugue is by listening to them on a Columbia 33 1/3 Record with no interruptions. The performance was by Glenn Gould and the recording was from the old Columbia Record Cub.
I must admit, as someone who has not much knowledge in the classical field, nor very good musical hearing, I foud this video too complex. Maybe a video named "how to listen to classical music:fugues for dummies? " would help :D My brain can't identify and compare the the similarities and differences of a melody consciously his fast, and on top of that you expect to remember all these new terms. :D
@@deliseovpstudio2978 even with rewind i can't follow the language of the speaker. He speaks in musical terms that are unknown if you are not a musician or study of music yourself. To claim that this video is a good starting point if you want to get into classical music is bs.
Now I see why Mendelssohn sat surrounded by Bach scores and studied them, fascinated. Only a mind like Mendelssohn's could understand the underpinning of Bach.
The so-called "rules" are after-the-fact descriptions, they are not prescriptive a-priori rules. Also, creating great music, fugue or not, is mostly the work of the subconscious, whose workings are orders of magnitude more complex (not to mention also more meaningful) than our conscious rational minds. If composing a fugue was like solving a sudoku, as this video claims, then all fugues would have to be very simple and short. A sudoku that would yield a complex fugue would be too difficult to be solved by human pondering. The fact that we cannot name the rules enough to program them into a computer and rival e.g. JS Bach is proof that writing fugues is not about applying rules. The video says "logic", "thought" and "development" but if we were to use just those mental skills we would be like the proverbial monkeys typing at random into infinite time to produce the works of Shakespeare (or the great fugues of Bach).
Subconsciousness does indeed interfere with composition, otherwise ideas won't proliferate using only the consciousness which is surrounded by rules and boundaries
Thank you. I am beginning to understand. After a few listening sessions, I think I will understand completely. Thanks again. You are an excellent teacher.
I happen to like fugues and other types of music written by a Bach admirer: Max Reger, who added some "new music sound" of his time, quite unique to Reger, making them sound spectacularly complex, with hidden beauty, making them a true adventure to listen to.
Great lesson for a university student recaping for a counterpoint class in fugue writing, but just on thing in the techniques, you forgot retrograd, playing the subject backwards. But i loved the video xD!!!!
I sang Lobet den Herrn Alle Heiden and the full St. John's Passion mass by Bach. Little sons of a ***** to learn, but unbelievably satisfying once you get the hang of it. Recommend 100%
Nice introduction but it would really help if you didn't talk over the music. You should let your examples be clearly heard and even repeat them for educational purposes.
Play it with talking, then play it again without talking and with text, but make sure you post the time which only the music plays, us classical dodos will greatly appreciate the priority, elaborate this structure in a ten second intro that the vets may skip immediately, every1 happy, for the most part
Bach doesn't use countersubject very much in wtc II c because it was originally a 3 voice fugue that he expanded to add the 4th voice. It's not his best but It's pretty amazing.
Since the word comes from the Latin fuga -- to flee or run away -- should we understand the musical term to imply a "running away" from the original theme into all of its permutations?
music is almost one dimensional, so I understand a melody with it's supporting harmony and even with some counterpoint is great like the fugato but when I get to a piece that is all in counterpoint like the fugue I sometimes don't know where my attention should shift, yes it is beautiful, yes it's a fancy creative idea, but I don't think I can make full emotional sense of it, I feel like it's an incomplete art because we as humans can focus on one thing at a time. I loved bach fugue in D minor but I played it and think the fugue concept is light easy and understandable in that peace, but others are beautiful incomprehensible chaos. so let's go easy and say there's a difference between musical mathematical fascination and musical emotional fascination. I'm not being insulative, but if someone shared this problem and find a way please share it with me
I think you're being to specific. You're only looking at it as multiple voices, but if you were to look at is as chords, I'm sure you would feel at least a bit more at ease. Personally, I try to hear the entire piece as it is, but even when I listen to one voice, the other voices are background music and serve to aid the main voice, which is, really, what is happening.
Thank you so much. Musical composition can be so inscrutable but your video has made this complex subject very understandable. I can now listen to fugues with a new frame of reference.
Anyone ever hear that one critic's explanation of the Fugue? A piece of music where one part enters after another,and one audience member leaves after another. Kidding aside,the Fugue is a pretty arcane area of music studies,however anyone serious about composition MUST gain some modicum of familiarity with the procedure. No less than Mozart would recommend a fairly thorough analysis of J.S.Bach's Well Tempered Clavier Books I & II. It can seem daunting,but start with a few that grab you and go from there.There's also some great books which point out which fugues highlight specific procedures(stretto,contrary motion,voice inversion..) The hard part is to keep your composition spontaneous and accessible to the listener while creating a sturdy fugal texture and form,which Bach did abundantly.
One thing about Bach is that while he's interesting to listen to, he is much more interesting to play. Of course, much of it is truly difficult, but some is relatively easy, such as the Prelude in C. Now, while I can play it (more or less), I still have almost no idea about what is going on in those two pages; the chord changes are baffling, if pleasing. Thing is, if you can read music, it makes it much more interesting. This is even true with, say, Stairway To Heaven.
Handel wrote a quadruple fugue in his oratorio Alexander`s Feast . Most of the time it is two double fugues until they are combined twice in the climax.
Okay but What is a discussion, and what is a voice, and what is a definite or indefinite voice, . Also, What is a melodic """idea,""" and What is imitation and how can music be "in" it. What is a musical line and how is it different from a bar. Why can't sheet music just be legible half-steps Why is sheet music tailored for the piano and other related instruments while the rest of the ensamble has to back-translate to the language of an instrument they aren't even playing? Why can't anyone making these kind of videos relate to the audience by speaking plain english instead of sounding like a Wikipedia article that forgot to bluelink anything whatsoever
You can't comment under a video on the fugue without having a few notions of music theory, that you seem to lack. The subject (get the joke ?) is incredibly complex.
Thanks for proving my point. Music theorists are the only group of hobbyists that talk to laypersons like this btw. Even borderline aspergers computer geeks know to bring down the idiosyncrasies when talking to the less tech saavy.
@@PopcornBunni That's as simple as you can make the explanation. Your parallel with the computer geek is quite random as, I guess, you roughly know how a computer works (CPU, GPU, RAM, all that jazz ...) So you already have basic notions. Same with the fugue, you need to have basic notions to understand how it works.
Ben Ça-alors Well I disagree. There are many people that have no idea what CPU or RAM is. Some of them even work with or at least use computers. Also, there are very talented people that can make up great melodies and chord progressions without having studied actual music theory. I can see the point of the original comment but I don’t think the tone of it was needed because to explain all those terms in video would make it....well, another type of video. A long one lol.
