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A four-part fugue exercise composed on a given subject, with no particular instrumentation in mind. Developing the subject contrapuntally wasn’t difficult, but after a while it became rather monotonous. The labels A1, A2, B1, etc. indicate the various fragments on which the episodes are built. (The slurs are only meant to highlight motifs for my own reference.)

Very nice dreamy, yet mysterious and passionate prelude! I like the frequent changes of the time signature. While initially looking complicated, the rhythm of the piece has an intuitive pulse and a continuous flow. I noticed, that your score is without a key signature. But since you often change harmony from keys with sharps to keys with flats, this decision avoids that the score is cluttered with natural signs. And when listening and reading the score I like that the more serene passages correspond with the flats, while the more passionate passages feature more sharps! In some bars, I would like to see more octave brackets to make it easier to read when playing. Personally, I refuse to read more than three or four ledger lines. However, I agree, that too many octave brackets disrupt the visual impression of the runs in the score. I completely agree with @PeterthePapercomPoser's suggestions for improving the recording by “fine-tuning” the articulation, dynamics, and tempo for each individual hand or even voice. Since I do this with my piano works, I know that it is a lot of work to literally maintain two scores, one for the printout and one for the recording. But it's really worth the effort to achieve a sound that is much closer to a live performance. Thank you for sharing!

Hello @Alex Weidmann! Nice mysterious Prelude! I'm surprised that @Henry Ng Tsz Kiu hasn't reviewed it yet since it's in his favorite key! 🤣 I have a few technical nit-picks: I've recently changed the way I write for piano through Musescore Studio 4 which I think might benefit you to hear about. If you favor the Musesounds Piano as I now have come to prefer, then in order to have more control over balance between the most important melody notes and less important background chords/figurations, you could actually load up two (or more) separate pianos and change the way they're displayed in the Layout section of the program (by deleting the bass clef portion of the right hand piano and deleting the treble clef portion of the left hand one). Then, not only will you be able to change the balance between the hands in the mixer, but you'll be able to give separate dynamics to each hand - an amount of control which you would lack with just one grand-staff track. Although you'd have to put in pedal marks for both tracks, and hide them in the top track. As well as hiding dynamics that are redundant. But I think bringing out the most important notes in each chord and passage will greatly improve at least my impression of the work. Another thing is the tempo. I noticed that you're trying to create a sense of novelty through the use of unusual rhythms and meters. I think it could be even more effective if you included an ebb and flow to the tempo by simulating a sort of constant rubato with choice accel.'s and rit.'s here and there. I can refer you to examples in my own catalog if you'd like, where such rubato gives a very satisfying result (at least in my opinion) and cases where the piece would suffer greatly from the mechanicality of the rendition if not for the rubato. Some places to consider including an accel. and rit.: bar 30 accel. into 31 I think would be a nice paired with that crescendo you already have. Other than that, nice job! I also question the interruption of the expected 4/4 flow of the beginning melody with the 9/8 measure - I think that's unnecessary. Thanks for sharing!

What about 'better than Peter'? @PeterthePapercomPoser

Hi there, @MinGry, welcome to the Forum! This is a decent piece of music, for a start, although, I do realize there a lot of compositional errors too. Bars 1-2: One of my favourite parts. It kind of has a nice, catholic tone to it. I would say, this quiet opening really fits my style. Appreciate that, though stop writing tempo numberic markings, and start using muiscal terms more. (eg. Allegro; Fast, or Largo; Slow, etc.) Bars 2-4: This is where thngs start to get messy. (not done yet, gonna come back later)

Hallo @Fermata! Your asking about the issue of „monotony“ in your fugue. Sometimes it is not an issue with the composition itself, but rather a question of the interpretation or recording. Since you are using four string instruments „played“ by your notation software, you „naturally“ encounter the problem that the entire piece sounds somewhat monotonous. Even real string instruments blend the sound very well, in my opinion, but are not as expressive for individual voices. I can imagine, when played on a piano, the impression would be totally different. As currently discussed in another thread @PeterthePapercomPoser suggested to improve the recording by “fine-tuning” the articulation, dynamics, and tempo for each individual hand or even voice. I also had a fugue which I considered to be „boring“ and I was nearly to get around and throw it away. But then I applied such tiny adjustments in the tempo, for example to make the first bar of the subject a little bit „swinging“, which dramatically changed the perception. Since I do so now with all of my piano works, I know that it is a lot of work to literally maintain two scores, one for the printout and one for the recording. But it's really worth the effort to achieve a sound that is much closer to a live performance. Concerning the composition „as is“, I think there are no issues. With a short overview on the score I see that you already applied the necessary counterpuntual techniques (such as tonal answer, a recurring countersubject, inversion, augmentation, stretto). As in 6/2 meter with mostly half and quarternotes (perhaps in an older, more Palestrinian style), it would be not appropriate to add passages (in episodes) or countersubjects with a faster rhythm. Perhaps one could introduce a kind of diminution which doesn’t increase the rhythmic pulse by doubling the speed but is merely a rhythmic variant of the original subject preserving the quarternotes as the fastest ones, finally resulting in a 1.5x diminution (such as in Bach’s D# minor fugue from the WTC1 BWV 853).

Hi to all my fellow musicians. Here's my latest piece for piano, that I spent the last two days writing. Haven't quite finished the phrasing and dynamics yet. I may possibly extend the work; but I'm not quite sure yet. Hopefully I haven't accidentally stolen ideas from other pieces I've heard? I know the initial chord progression of C#m to Am(maj7) came from a You Tube video; but can't remember which piece they were discussing. (Pretty sure it was from a film score; but can't remember which one.) Anyway, hope you like it. I wrote it for a concert in May. P.S. Can you guess which composer inspired me to write this? (N.B. Revised scores will be posted below.)

I'm on a trip lol

It's been too long! I thought I would share this piece written for my theory and composition class at Berklee. We were asked to work with a couple of "exotic scales" from a selection including the whole-tone scale, the octatonic scale, and modes other than those derived from the major scale. I felt drawn to the Lydian Augmented and Spanish Phrygian modes. I ended up with a contrapuntal rock instrumental in rough ABCA' form. The A section is in B♭ Lydian Augmented, the B section is in G Spanish Phrygian, and the C section an unbroken transition into D Spanish Phrygian. Finally, I modulate with the common tones D and A back to B♭ Lydian Augmented, for the A' recapitulation. The title (Iridescence) was inspired by my understanding of modes as a concept. With many modes sharing the same collection of notes, the tonic note that each mode centers on is what makes it unique -- gives it a unique color. And, iridescence is when something appears in different colors depending on the angle of viewing. I see that as a fitting metaphor. The artwork is my own, made with ProCreate. I didn't paint it for this track, but as a birthday present for my mother, inspired by Kate Bush's song "Kite". She is a massive fan of Kate's and introduced me to her when I was a little girl. I rediscovered her recently and I've been spending a lot of time with her early work. My current favorite album is Never for Ever...whose influence I thought was bleeding into this track. So, in the end there is some relation. 🙂 I hope you enjoy! Any feedback on both the mix and composition is more than welcome. ~ GP P.S. I was required to include a detailed score for the assignment. It might be too precise for a rock track in general, but if enough people are interested I will upload that, too.

I think I got the idea for n.2!

On playing this through myself tonight, I noticed a few further corrections and cautionaries that were required. So here is my latest version of the score.

The fugue subjects are from Marchant's collection 500 Fugue Subjects and Answers, which you can also find online. It was a very long time ago when I studied counterpoint; my teacher recommended Jeppesen’s Counterpoint, which I used. It deals with 16th‑century vocal polyphony, but the fundamental principles remain valid in later centuries as well. From a didactic point of view, I would definitely start with the vocal counterpoint idiom—either Renaissance practice or the tonal counterpoint foundations laid out by Fux. I would only move on to Baroque / Classical instrumental practice (such as the approach in Goetschius’s book) after you’ve mastered the basics of pure voice leading.

No invention themes/fugal subjects begin on the 4th degree of the scale. The theme does recur throughout but it also must be stated at the beginning of your piece, and here, the presence of the 4th degree is detrimental to establishing the home key of your piece. If you wanted to write an invention you would raise this note to the 5th degree instead. The themes of inventions are based on simple and common harmonic gambits (I-V-I, I-IV-V-I, I-VI-II-V and so on). This theme strongly suggests I-IV-I-IV in the first bar which I have never seen before in a theme/subject. It's nonetheless possible to write an invention here, but it'd require a few tricks. A possible solution for the countertheme is: The anacrusis has been raised by a tone, as discussed before. Note the presence of an inner pedal F in the first bar. This serves three purposes: it strongly establishes the tonic key, it introduces the semiquaver rhythm to be used throughout the rest of the piece, and it reimagines the otherwise problematic I-IV-I-IV progression as a simple decoration of the tonic chord I. The second bar uses scalic passages, and is essentially a decorated dominant chord V. Together with the first bar, what would be an otherwise very unwieldly theme (if harmonised at quaver or crotchet speeds) is now a simple I-V gambit. There is a nice phrase ending at the beginning of bar 3 with the bottom F reached by the bass. The counterpoint here is fully invertible. There's much material here that you can take for your episodes: the scalic passages, the lower mordent-like figure found in bar 2 of the main theme, and the bariolage introduced by the inner pedal in bar 1. Bariolage especially is an absolute motivic goldmine that you can and should exploit in the episodes. It's C and B-flat. Also this kind of dissonance, treated this way, is completely allowed. Take a look at BWV 773 (Invention No. 2) for some beautiful examples. There's nothing wrong with the fast passing vii6. No. Note that the imitation enters 2 crotchets earlier compared to the other solution. You can in theory not do this, and write a 2 crotchet-long continuation, but this is unnecessary for imitation at the fifth here, and therefore slightly inelegant.

Unique and very calming. The crescendo and decrescendo throughout gives the piece an interesting sense of grounded emotional instability.

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only listen to this if you'll listen to it all the way through

Since this book is a fairly comprehensive text in harmony, you should keep what you've learnt from this book in mind - not only for these counterpoint pastiches you're writing, but for everything you write from now. The reason why I'm mentioning this is: 18th-century counterpoint (which is what the Goetschius book deals with) and all of the counterpoint-employing music that comes after, is completely interwoven with harmony. All of the harmonic devices/features you have learnt so far, you should find readily in these inventions. And so with this in mind, you can hopefully see the two major problems: There are no strong cadences (V-I in root position etc.) anywhere in the piece. This is the musical equivalent of writing a paragraph of text with no punctuation whatsoever. Some of what you write is either harmonically ambiguous, or does not follow common harmony rules. Examples: - In bar 6, what are the first two crotchets supposed to be? Is this V-IV? This is a forbidden progression. Is this I-IV? Then why is the root of I missing? Contrast this with the last two crochets of bar 7, which clearly spells out a C major chord and is well-written. - What are the last two crochets of bar 12 trying to spell out? Is this V? vii°? i? - What is bar 16? You start off with a G chord (fine), introduces the C# in the upper voice which strongly suggests a chord that is the dominant seventh in third inversion of D minor (also fine), but then this dominant seventh resolves to a B natural chord (?) Point 1 can be easily fixed. Regarding point 2: if you look at Bach's 15 Inventions, you will find that 14 of them have semiquaver prevailing rhythms, and the remainder uses broken chords extensively. This is completely deliberate in 2-part writing. Writing in semiquavers gives you more notes to work with, and one advantage of that is it allows you to trace out chords easily thereby making your harmony unambiguous. I would recommend a similar approach here. The other problem here is form. The main material in a 2-part invention is a section of invertible counterpoint, which is then repeated but often inverted (in the sense of two voices exchanging the material they play) and/or transposed, often called the theme. You have indeed written this. But you also need material between these sections, called episodes. These have multiple functions: they serve as modulatory material, they provide a break from the theme, they introduce devices not often found in the theme such as sequences, they allow motifs found in the theme to be presented in a new context (e.g. harmonised differently), they facilitate strong cadences mentioned above, and so on. You need to write these episodes in for your invention to adhere to the form.

Noticed a few hand clashes and enharmonic spelling errors today: so here's a revised draft. Also made a tiny change in Bar 8 (left hand). Hopefully better? It's still a bit of a beast, with awkward hand-crossings; but I wrote it for someone with great technical skills!

Thanks for the comment! You’re absolutely right that thinning out the texture can help keep things fresh — that idea crossed my mind as well while writing. I treated it more like a fugue d’école rather than a stylistically Baroque fugue (the subject itself is a 20th‑century textbook theme), so I kept the four‑voice texture going longer than I normally would. I also thought about extending some of the three‑voice spots, but the subject is already pretty long and the tempo is on the slower side, so the whole thing was starting to feel a bit too stretched out. Still, your point is totally valid, and I appreciate you mentioning it. Glad you enjoyed the fugue!

For future fugues, to break up the monotony, maybe you could have more sequences with less voices? For most of Bach's 4-voice fugues, like half the fugue is for less than 4 voices. So having lots of 3 or 2 voice sequences and switching which voice combinations are doing said sequences really helps with monotony. Thank you for the enjoyable fugue 🙂

Hey, guys! I'm an amateur composer who recently attempted Celtic music for the first time. I thought it would be a fun idea to see if anyone would want to make their own version of it. 😄 I'm curious how you'd enhance the orchestration or add your flair. Feel free to experiment and share your versions! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFX2w9EWaGs

By the issue of 'passing quavers,' I meant the following. Take a look at the attached example. As you can see, the G quaver connects two consonant intervals, while it forms a seventh with the upper voice, which is a dissonant interval. Technically this is not incorrect, but musically it's very disadvantageous — since we're dealing with two‑voice counterpoint, the musical texture is very 'thin,' and this dissonant friction becomes quite audible. The same problem occurs with the other G as well. Regarding the A marked with the exclamation mark: the harmony is too 'empty' this way. If you put the subject into the bass and try to harmonize it on piano, it's obvious that an F-major (first-inversion) chord should be implied there. I think most of these issues (including the ones I mentioned earlier) can be corrected fairly easily.

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There are some problematic parallels, such as the G–A octaves in m. 6 (this corresponds to m. 7 in your score — the notation software misnumbered the measures because the initial upbeat should not be counted as a full measure), or the E–F♯ parallels in m. 9 [m. 10 in the score], and so on. Also, you can’t reuse the countermelody that you introduce just after the lower voice’s entry simply by transposing it, because it is not written in invertible counterpoint. For example, the fifth on the fourth beat of m. 4 [m. 5] becomes a fourth when the two voices are inverted. You can see the result of this in m. 7 [m. 8], where an A–D fourth appears. The interval of a fourth is always treated as a dissonance in traditional two‑part counterpoint. A passing fourth may sometimes be tolerated in the instrumental style, though. You may also want to revise some of the crotchets in the countermelody to avoid frequent dissonant clashes with the passing quavers of the theme (see the example below).

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I don't think this theme was meant to be treated as the usual antecedent/consequent imitation at the octave, like in Bach’s two-part Inventions. The subject comes from a harpsichord suite by Sheeles (not by Händel); the ascending F–G–A–B is actually a codetta leading to the real answer a fifth above. As for your solution, it keeps hitting the octave far too often — you should avoid that, as it’s too harsh for two‑part counterpoint (and there are a few voice‑leading mistakes as well). The modulations to related keys could be prepared more effectively, for example by using simple sequences built from fragments of the theme. Introducing the inversion was a good idea; it adds a bit of variety.

Hi Everyone!, Acceptance is the first multi instrument character piece I have written. It is part of a broader concept: a Cycle of Death, in which I explore the theme of mortality across three pieces: Denial, Acceptance, and Rest. Using the Dies Irae as a harmonic backbone. In this piece, each instrument has a distinct role: The piano represents the truth of death that must be accepted. The flute embodies the human conversation with oneself: longing, hoping, and ultimately accepting. The violin and cello symbolize the path toward acceptance, guiding the listener through the journey. It was very fun composing this! Especially love bars:29-36 and 53-60 Let me know what you guys think! Hope you enjoy it! YouTube link Acceptance.mp3

@TristanTheTristan Thanks for the welcome! and thank you for taking the time of your day to check out my music! I really appreciate any feedback and looking forward to hear what you got say more! It's already been very interesting composing for multiple instruments my primary background is piano. I especially am blown away how much you can get away with modifying the motifs cause it feels like the instruments themselves can ground a motif pretty well.

This is a good motif, supported by interesting harmony! This would work well as a jazz piece. All you'd have to do is change up the harmony, and add some drums. But the rhythms and theme can remain the same!

Hello, this is my first time writing for choir. I am being commissioned by a local middle school to arrange Umbrella. I have just the bridge and a final chorus to add, but I wanted feedback. My background is percussion so I don't want to accidentally make anything to jumpy or impossible. Please be specific in critiques, I'd appreciate it! Thank you!

@Frederic Gill inspired this one. He wrote an invention as an exercise from one of his Counterpoint books on the same motive that you can hear here: I was inspired by his attempt so I decided to give it a try myself. Thanks for listening and I hope you enjoy and let me know what you think!

Oh sorry 😔

Hello I've recently decided to take orchestration seriously. Just as I did with counterpoint back in the day... Yes, although I study on my own, I have always been self-taught, at some point you need guidance from an expert. So I am taking a course in orchestration. It is really for a very small group (only four people), which means the feedback is very powerful, as each person's work is reviewed in depth. I've learned a lot about the classical style (paradigm: Mozart). Why and for what purpose each thing is used. And here I share my version (reviewed by my teacher) of the orchestration of the first movement of Mozart's Piano Sonata No. 5. Now I'm working on Mendelssohn.

“Good evening, dear friends. Here is the scherzo from my third Sonata. I hope you like it.”

Here's an unlisted video of a track from another album I wrote themed around crime/spy thrillers that will be out later this year probably via my usual publisher, but after the gothic/dark neoclassical album I wrote for them. So I'm expecting it to be out around summer or fall. This in particular is the first electronic-driven tune I've composed in I don't know how long, since I had abandoned that genre since I wasn't really good at it (and didn't enjoy it as much as the orchestra anyway) and hate designing synth timbres, but writing this one I was kinda like See what you think. Side note: I expect most of my YouTube DAW videos going forward to be unlisted. YouTube has kind of become a joke since the AI slop takeover you just get buried in the algorithm; better use of time to just show these to film directors and such, which has been going much better anyway.

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Sounds good. The 13th bar is strange, but I see you've made a correction. I think there's some pretty good imitative treatment, characteristic of the Inventions. So many colours confuse me a bit. I suppose they highlight imitations or motifs, but as I'm colour blind, I can't tell. Best regards.

I just had a really dumb idea, that's all. https://www.veed.io/view/1666613d-b7f2-40da-8444-d9c0ecb3484b?panel=share

It's a G minor 9 chord! Did I win?!?!?!