Fugax Contrapunctus

Buenas Luis, I wholeheartedly appreciate your honesty and sincerity, and looking back at it I can see what you mean by describing it as "lacking passion". I might be wrong, but I now feel such a label maybe could just as easily apply to every single of the fugues I have composed throughout the years, in more ways than one. I doubt this is a localized issue specific to this one fugue, though I might be wrong on that front. As much as it hurts to confront the truth sometimes, this one might as well be little more than a counterpoint exercise indeed, even if I did not perceive it as such when composing and revisiting it. The past weekend has been as though a devastating tornado leaving once bountiful fields barren, as I was informed with a week's delay that a childhood friend of mine whom I had lost contact with for the last couple years had died by suicide the previous Monday. To say visiting the family to offer my condolences was tough would be a heartless euphemism, even more so given what irreparable anguish they must have gone through and have still to endure for such a long time. As such, I did what I could with how little inspiration came from the couple last sleepless nights this turmoil has deeply troubled me with: given my current mental instability in light of it all, what tireless hours of composing have yielded this output may as well have drained how little remained of my capacity to express all these bottled-up feelings. To me, it honestly matters very little as of now what this work of mine may be considered or held as: by its own nature, my personal evolution within Bach's style as I sought to adopt it has made excessive expressiveness of far lesser interest to me than to the common romantic acolyte, however moving and attractive their corollaries may still seem even nowadays. This, in turn, often makes my music and its computerized renderings sound mechanical and unabating, which I know I must seek to refine gradually or eventually, at the cost, perhaps, of polyphonic density and contrapuntal complexity. It is thus that I strive to emulate one of the core ideas I cherish to be found at the heart of Bach's quantitatively and qualitatively nigh unrivaled production: the search for the Golden Mean, balance and temperance simultaneously in their purest and most embellished forms. The road extends a long way ahead yet, and the end is not to be found at any of the ends of the Earth, nor the Universe even, dare I say. Nevertheless, I shall still devote my efforts to pining even for the slightiest, least relevant approximation to that immortal spirit and legacy that has granted us all so much more than just perfect music: for as Emil Cioran once uttered with such unbound wisdom and the everlasting reverence I believe we all share, "Bach's music is the only argument proving that the creation of the Universe cannot be regarded as a complete failure. Without Bach, God would be a complete second-rate figure".

It feels almost shameful of me not to have reviewed this absolute masterpiece before, but now that I have listened to it three times in a row I won't let this mistake go on in vain, even if my rather modest review barely adequately captures but a millionth of the emotion and awe this movement has so profoundly stirred within me. Unfortunately my Mandarin probably wouldn't be accurate nor fluent enough to convey but a fraction of my thoughts properly, so as much as it pains me, for the sake of avoiding messy syntax and cumbersome grammar mistakes I shall stick to English instead. It feels almost unreal how seamlessly you have managed to blend such a relatively obscure and challenging mode as is the Locrian with all manner of bright, tempered Chinese melodies worthy of the very Heavens, all coupled in with such balanced, smooth transitions between the different sonata sections, the precious, flowing cascades of Chopin-esque embilleshments, and all the crunchy, adventurous disonnances peppered in add so much color an flavour throughout in their various uses, at times delicate and brittle, by the end of the middle sections powerful and assertive as the materials' complexity wells... With this mountain of motivic and harmonic winks and references to feast on, this moderately eclectic style you have crafted is so distinctly and unambiguously yours: so refined, formally impeccable and still never failing to draw great interest and engagement at every turn, in every single bar. It is bewilderingly mesmerizing indeed. It almost strikes me as admirable how strong and powerful the parallel fifths sound 3:50, a perfect example of strategic "rule-breaking" to the benefit of dramatic tension, as well as the prolific usage of Phrygian cadential formulae throughout which so intimately remind me of my own country's music. I find such confidence commendable in more ways than one, in large part because of how starkly contrasting yet effective and mighty it sounds. And still what I admire most from this is the motivic and thematic development, striking a nigh unbeatable balance between repetition, variation, dynamism and novelty potentially rivaling that of the most renowned classical composers in its own unique essence and flavor. A more thorough analysis of this movement would most likely reveal jaw-dropping levels of integrity with the slight yet fully justifiable deviations that only amount to greater complexity and mastery of this titanic work. Even if obvious and perhaps even redundant at this point, for me it is worth saying once more: you may as well be the Master of our time. The heights reached by your music hardly know even the furthest bounds of quality, so much so that I find it hard to even dissect the piece and hear its sections separately because of how well they all connect and blend together, it makes me want to fully listen to it in its entirety every time. 我衷心感謝你天才譜寫這麼又優雅又秀麗的音樂。

After a series of somewhat unexpected and tumultuous events taken place last weekend, my sleep schedule suddenly got inverted again, and the subsequent rush of inspiration has resulted in this fugue being conceived and finished in under three days (or perhaps, rather, sleepless nights, should I say). Now that something productive has come of it once again, I can finally take some time to rest in whatever meager capacity I may. Enjoy! YouTube video link:

If you ask me, it sounds more mechanical and way less fluid to me. But I guess it can stay that way for the sake of your preference.

@chopin Thank you so much for your input! Just two minor clarifications: The harpsichord soundbanks used in the video are, in fact, identical in of themselves to the ones used in the MP3 rendering. The latter however, being the original soundfont, was set to A =415 (a staplemark Baroque tuning) in 1/5 comma meantone temperament, whereas the twin soundfont used for the video was tuned to a more conventional A = 440 in equal temperament. The recording attached below is in ♩ = 78. Is that better? I hesitate to even dial the tempo down even further, lest the piece might start sounding way too mechanical.

Completed for the most part in under five hours, this one could as well have been left with countless other unused fugal expositions, had inspiration not readily struck me in the middle of the night amidst a bout of insomnia. Enjoy! YouTube video link:

Thank you! I'm glad the pervasive articulation didn't end up feeling too tiring or mechanical. Speaking of crab, I wonder if a crab canon using Bach's signature motif could be considered a Krebs im BACH canon. 😉😆 Even then, neither MuseScore 3 nor 4 have coherent thoroughbass notation implemented, let alone playback support for such a feature, which means my only way of adding the basso continuo's harpsichord sound has to be by reducing the score. Perhaps such wide intervals could be just as easily covered by a pedal harpsichord, considering we're only dealing with a 3-voice setup at a relatively moderate tempo. Either way, I don't believe it would make that much of a difference, and given my situation the only way to please the theorists who wrote those textbooks would be to scrap the harpsichord part entirely, which, even if viable, I would rather keep in the score just for the sake of its unmistakeably Baroque aura and timbre. Thank you very much for your input. 🙂

As implied by its title, this arrangement was based off my Crab Canon (aka. Canon Cancrizans) a 3 in C minor ( • Three-voice Crab Canon in B minor.): Since its initial publication, it has been transported one half step upwards to accomodate for the ranges of the instruments involved in this double trio, with the full realization played by the Continuo harpsichord part (which may be omitted entirely on account of the extremely wide intervals between voices in certain invertible configuartions making it rather difficult to play). Enjoy! YouTube video link:

Technically devised for a string quintet subtype including two violas (which unfortunately still get porbably eclipsed by the violins), this one got wild with the voice crossings. Since it was conceived as a instrumental canon from the very start, I doubt that might be a problem, specially considering the caveats of 5-voice counterpoint. But I suspect the digital performance might not be able to fully capture potential friction points to be expected with rampant voice crossings within such a dense contrapuntal scaffolding, so any criticism concering that aspect of this composition is more than welcome. Enjoy!

After another seemingly unending period of stagnation and lack of inspiration, one of the fugues I had been recently working on has finally come to fruition. To be quite frankly honest, I am still not entirely sure on how I feel about this one. Admittedly, some passages might require better connectivity between them, as some of the free counterpoint sections and pedal points might sound a tad too sudden and are perhaps in need of some reworking. But for now, this is all I can provide. Enjoy! YouTube video link:

Thank you for pointing that out, it will be corrected right away. You're right actually, I did overlay the original MuseSounds choir rendition over the main Cantāmus rendering in order to further enrich the sound and add a semblance of a reverb effect. I'm still not entirely sure just how noticeable this might be to the ears, but overall it was very much intentional and I'm pleased with how it turned out.

Nearly two months after taking down the original, I have decided to re-upload a revised version of this motet, with all contrapuntal flaws present in the first video having been hopefully corrected, as well as the main key having been changed from C minor to C-sharp minor and the Cantāmus rendering accordingly modified. The soprano line stands as a nigh unadulterated version of a theme I had been working on for years now, for diverse purposes and with varying degrees of success, as this is the only piece I have managed to finish featuring it. I guess it took me a while to realise just how fitting a religious hymn such as the Stabat Mater would be for this configuration, notwithstanding the slight redistribution and duplication of certain verses which in the end does not severely modify the text, save for the metrics of the original first three stanzas. Enjoy! YouTube video link:

Honestly, it may be both, though perhaps the modification at the end (which can totally be omitted by the way, as its purpose is merely to enrich an otherwise strict, though lackluster ending) makes it more of a round, as most proper canons in strict imitation opt instead to have each voice gradually fade out in order of entrance. I cannot really recall having had classical notions of harmonic phrasing in mind when composing this one, though I must admit the longer values at the 2nd half of each measure of the original theme are quite noticeable, so perhaps a little more internal motion between voices would have been preferable. As I will most likely end up revisiting this composition in the long term, I shall take your criticism into account once I set out to do so. Thank you both very much for your reviews of this humble work of mine.

First off, I hope you do realize you are referring to a very specific kind of motet. The term has been in use at least since the very inception of the Notre-Dame school of polyphony and ever since, the form covered by the usage of this term has undergone nigh constant change and evolution. I take it you may perhaps specifically be alluding to post-Palestrina motets. Even then, I wish we could move past the nitpicking over non-contrapuntal elements in music. Like you seem to have appreciated, counterpoint is the main focus in these compositions of mine. To me, contrapuntal standards are the bare basics from which form can deviate in whichever way I see fit. If it were the case that I was studying Palestrina's motets under Fux's tutelage roughly three centuries ago, then I would have no chance but to accept said constrictions in form. Thankfully, after all the evolution that has taken place in the history of classical music, only in exercises are such strict rules expected to be upheld without the slightiest deviation, which is one of the main reasons why I refuse to accept the labels "exercise", or worse yet, "pastiche" stapled onto my compositions. Had every composer since Palestrina or Fux followed the same set of rules without letting their own originality redefine them, at best we would still be stuck in the Early Classical period. I can, to a degree, understand the formal expectations when it comes to this kind of pieces. I shall not, however, blindly acquiesce to every single one of them. In case you are interested in checking out other pieces of mine which follow your purported guidelines, you can check these out:

Dear Henry, I am deeply sorry that my remark caused you distress. I had no way of knowing there were other reasons beyond my direct statements for you to suddenly stop reviewing my works, so I assumed it had to do with disagreements over ideomatic compositional criteria, which has managed to become the trademark criticism offered towards my works. Never have I requested nor taken for granted any reviews, the same way I feel there's barely anything left for me to add almost everytime I come across pieces I could be capacitated to offer criticism for. I simply had an (ultimately wrong) inkling that the reason for this situation was of my own doing, my fault. It seems I have been wrong from beginning to end, and as such I can only apologize for the impression my words may have caused and hope to clear up the misunderstanding. Best wishes, Pablo