Explanation video / tutorial on this Partimento: • Counterpoint in a Part... Instructive PDF with pre-exercises on the fugue subject and its implied counterpoints: www.patreon.co... Keyboard realisation by Michael Koch.
Hi Michael. This fugue is brilliant! Just to give you an idea on a future video, I would like to hear your thoughts about Chopin prelude op 45. Thanks and keep sharing!
OP. 45 is on my list anyway... :D but I gotta do one after another... when the next Chopin-related video drops, it's gonna be on the preludes and their context
He must have read Nicola Sala's counterpoint treatise (e.g. search for "Sala: Disposizioni a tre" on youtube - fugal example with the same subject, 2:10 - I can't post the link or youtube deletes my comment). Took me a while to figure out what was going on in that treatise. Basically, you're given species counterpoint exemplars, but they're intended for memorization for the purposes of fugue and Bach style inventions. Various cantus firmi, starting with the scale are placed in canon against each other e.g. Do-re-mi against itself, with the second do-re-mi starting on mi). Then, in the remaining voice, there's a voice with diminutions, giving you first order defaults for diminutions. These can form a countersubject against the cantus firmus in canon, although in this case, it happens to be the subject of a fugue. For each species, there are variations on the counterpoint against the cantus firmus, but you can also mix-and-match species to form a countersubject. I guess if you're going to memorize counterpoint in your fingers, you might as well memorize the highest yield stuff (the material that is purpose built for imitative counterpoint). The subject of this fugue is one of the "standard counterpoints" in the first pages of Nicola Sala's treatise - it's one of the second species diminutions counterpointing the scale.
Interesting... I didn't know about that. I have both of the Sala volumes of the Van Tour edition though. I'm not sure if Zingarelli "must have read" any Sala at all, this kinda subject is part of a whole family of generic fugue subjects that suite a beginners level in fugue improv, so total common sense and not a specialty of Sala. For my students I compiled a whole table of those subjects as they more or less imply very similar contrapuntal environment. Memorizing in the fingers: since I started doing this I noticed as well an improvement in my writing and my musical imagination (not creative wise though, but contrapuntal wise).
@@en-blanc-et-noir You're absolutely right :) I think it was an oral tradition, and it was unusual that Sala wrote everything down systematically in his treatise.
@@en-blanc-et-noir It felt very uncharacteristic... I hear it as a half-cadence, acting as one of the pillars of the form. With the 7th, I think it feels much too unstable to be a pillar. I'd love to hear your reasoning!
well, I still hear it as half cadence, and you obviously as well haha… I cannot name you an example on the spot but I‘m pretty sure I‘ve seen an amount of half cadences with a 7th in it. I tend into a Vivaldian direction and especially in operatic genres… I‘m pretty sure that one would easily find some similar examples. Didn‘t I even play an augmented 6th before? You will see me doing this on very rare occasions as I usually don‘t like this sound in baroque music, but here I wanted it to be a little rough or operatic😅
