Kevin Forfar

Thank you for complimenting my piece!

Thank you for the compliments! I was inspired by the simplicity of menuets such as BWV Anhang 132. Yes, I agree that 1:1 counterpoint is difficult to compose despite looking simple. This is largely due to the fact that each part still needs to stand on its own melodically while still making sense harmonically when played together. When composing second or third, etc. species counterpoint, it becomes much easier to create melodic independence between parts. With 1:1 counterpoint, it takes more effort to make each melodic line distinct enough such that the listener is able to hear two separate melodies at once. Like you said, with 1:1 counterpoint, it's easy to fall into composing too many parallel notes which ultimately make the melodies lose independence (thus defeating the purpose of counterpoint). Thanks again for complimenting the piece.

Hello everyone. This is the first piece I have posted to this website. It is a menuet in two-part counterpoint composed for the keyboard, baroque in style - partly inspired by the menuets found in the Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach.

Even when composing a multi-instrument work, it's still often best to work it out on the keyboard first - at least for the outer parts (bass and soprano) and then later arrange it for different instruments. This is what I and many other composers do. But yes, if you use midi software, you won't be able to quickly try out different musical ideas like you would by improvising at the keyboard. The faster that you come up with and discard bad ideas, the quicker that you'll eventually come up with a good idea to expand upon. Often, I will compose the entire "rough draft" of a composition at the keyboard, and then I will plug the rough draft into Finale, then, making use of the playback feature in Finale, I'll make some changes to the composition here and there to polish it up. I should add that when students in the Baroque era were being taught how to play thorough-bass at the keyboard, they were only just starting to learn how to play the keyboard as well. Some teachers at that time even taught students how to play thorough-bass before they learned any full solo pieces for keyboard. This is because thorough-bass was considered the foundation of music (teaching one the fundamentals of composition) and a prerequisite to learning how to play music in general. Yes, when learning how to compose and improvise, one should begin with simple musical ideas (simple harmonically and structurally) that are easy to play. I have attached a few tiny pieces I composed which exemplify the kind of pieces that I'm talking about; the kind of pieces that beginners at composition should compose. When learning how to compose by studying the works of others, it's important to study works which are not too complex musically for your own skill level. You mentioned the easy pieces by J.C.F. Bach. I, personally, have used the pieces in the Notebook of Anna Magdalena Bach to study composition from. I have used these small pieces as models for my own compositions. For instance, I have composed several arias using BWV 515 as a model as well as using BWV Anhang 132 as a model for menuets.

If you want to compose in the baroque style, the most logical thing to do would be to research how composers like Bach learned how to compose when they were young and then for you to use the same pedagogical methods that they did. J.S. Bach himself taught his students in this way: his students would learn how to harmonize chorale melodies which they would be given. At first, Bach would provide a bass part to the given chorale melody and the students would have to fill in the tenor and alto parts. Later on, the students had to compose the bass part themselves. But more importantly, composition students in the Baroque era were taught the practice of thorough-bass. This was an accompanimental practice where the keyboardist was given a bass part (played in the left hand) that included figures which indicated which harmonies to play in the right hand. This right-hand part was essentially improvised (but in accordance with the underlying harmonic structure and the rules of composition). The student was required to learn the principles of composition (voice-leading, preparing and resolving dissonance, etc.) so thoroughly that he was able to apply them in real-time when improvising these thorough-bass accompaniments. The whole point of composition students learning this practice was so they assimilated the rules of composition so thoroughly that they became second-nature. There are various treatises which teach one how to learn the practice of thorough-bass, but perhaps most relevant is Friedrich Erhard Niedt's "The Musical Guide". There is evidence that J.S. Bach used this treatise when teaching his students. Besides this, you can find plenty of modern resources on this subject as well. As for the best way to improve your skill at composition, it would no doubt be through practicing the skill of improvisation; a skill which many of the greatest composers excelled at (including Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven). Learning how to improvise is like learning how to speak a language fluently (as opposed to merely learning how to read and write in that language). The more you practice improvisation, the more naturally that musical ideas will come to you. Improvisation is a powerful tool to generate musical ideas, allowing you to try out different ideas very rapidly, allowing you to hear them in real-time before you write those ideas down. Improvisation is a skill like any other in that it needs to be practiced; you get better at improvisation through actually practicing it. If you have not practiced improvisation before, start by trying to improvise very simple melodies, making use of just the I and V chords, then move on to more complex ideas as you gain experience. This was the advice that C.P.E. Bach gave: to become a good composer, it's better to learn how to be great at improvisation than to study the rules of composition (that is, studying through reading and written exercises). This was his reasoning: if you become great at improvisation, then it's merely a matter of writing down what you improvise at the keyboard in order to make a composition out of that improvised material. However, if you were only to learn the rules of composition through reading and written exercises, then you still wouldn't have gained the invaluable skill of improvisation through this kind of study. In other words, you naturally learn the rules of good composition by learning how to improvise well. If you have any questions about anything I mentioned, feel free to ask.