Week 9

Due Wednesday, May 27

Read an excerpt of the Kent Kennan textbook, Chapter 13.

Write one short fugue subject (1.5-3 measures) in minor, fitting the criteria of those that tend to produce “tonal answers”. Write a tonal answer to it, a fourth below your subject (i.e. “imitation at the 5th”), and write a good invertible counterpoint above that answer. You should spend no more than 1/2 hour in this process (after you have absorbed the reading) — do your best with what you know, and bring your effort to class on Wednesday for discussion. You will not be asked to turn it in, but I will ask some students to write their work on the board.

Due Friday, May 29

Compose two short fugue subjects (1.5-3 measures, mostly eighth notes), and one long subject (3-4 measures, mostly 16th notes). Write answers to each, at the fifth, and compose invertible counterpoint to each. At least one answer should be tonal and at least one should be “real”; you may use the tonal answer you composed for Wednesday’s meeting, provided you revise it if necessary to reflect Wednesday’s discussion.

Choose one of your three subject-answer pairs, and revise it to connect the answer’s counterpoint (the “countersubject”) to its subject, fluidly. Extend the answer with a very short sequence that reaches a cadence in the tonic.

Optional: you are nearly done with the three-part fugue exposition. Shift the sequence so that, at the tonic resolution of your short sequence,  the “missing” note could be an octave transposition of the first tonic triad note of your subject. If you achieve this, you’ll be ready to

(1) add the third subject entry

(2) extend the “answer” in a manner that loosely imitates the countersuject, and

(3) add a third voice.

When the third subject entry is then extended (along with its two accompanying voices, without deviating from the basic character of the subject), to reach toward a strong cadence in a related key, you have completed a “fugal exposition.”

Fugal expositions count among the most significant musical passages composed by Bach, Haydn, Beethoven, and other composers; they represent a demonstration of a kind of mastery, a balanced synthesis of both the horizontal and vertical dimensions of musical experience, in a single, unified expression. Meanwhile, they provide one of the richest opportunities for melodic development in a short form — each restatement of the subject-answer combination, or fragments thereof, is cast in a new harmonic, registral, and contrapuntal “light”, so that the whole form embodies a unity of concept, or affect, through a narrative of changing perspectives. What a way to end the school year!

Comments

[Jay B.]

Wonderful post... Very informational and educational as usual!

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