I'm trying to learn how to compose fugues for the Pipe organ

I Like composing music for fun, but I am trying to learn how to compose Fugues like J.S. Bach.

I have tried composing a few and I've been trying to learn how to have independent voices. I still need to perfect counterpoint and harmony and there may be too many consecutive fifths and octaves. Does anyone know how I can improve my fugue composing skills so this can actually be called a fugue?

Ed's_Prelde_and_Fugue_in_A_major.pdf

The audio for this score can be found here.

https://musescore.com/user/10553021/scores/4692441

It sounds nice.

I didn't check for parallels and that stuff. But I think the subject is the most important thing. Perhaps if you write a rhythmically richer subject, your development may improve. I mean, the subject here is mainly made with fourths and eights if you put some dots and some sixteenths you can do more with the motives.

Just a question: can the organist play trills with the pedals? 

I'm not actually an organist, but I am a pianist.

I learned half of the keyboard and a tiny bit of the pedal technique of Toccata and Fugue in D minor in on my spinet organ.

I studied a few tutorial videos on how to play the pedals. You use the heels and the toes of both feet. I'm quite sure you can do trills with the pedals because there is a pedal trill in bars 27-30 of Bach's little fugue in G minor.

There is a tutorial on how to trick Musescore into showing an organ score, but playing virtual registers: https://musescore.com/user/1831606/scores/1365101

Someone also programmed a plug-in for Musescore that is checking for parallel octaves and fifths. While far from perfect, it is very helpful. https://musescore.org/en/project/check-parallel-fifths-and-octaves

Your piece sounds very nice and playful. The fugue subject is a bit on the bland side, but this is par of the course for an organ prelude and fugue. However, you could work out the structure of the fugue more properly so that the episodes are cleary delineated and a reentry of the soggetto becomes a more pointed experience. 

If you like, you could spice up your fugue with some dissonances, like suspensions (which in Baroque counterpoint might be realised as two separate notes without tie), appoggiaturas (which may sometimes be written like regular notes), cadential 6/4-chords etc. Baroque composers regularly spiced their works with a careful dose of dissonances for variety.

Finally, it is difficult to immerse oneself so in music of other times and places to write convincing pieces in their style. Reading texts e.g. by Mattheson, Niedt or Rameau (or modern compilations of their texts) can definitely help in understanding Baroque composition.

11 hours ago, Willibald said:

There is a tutorial on how to trick Musescore into showing an organ score, but playing virtual registers: https://musescore.com/user/1831606/scores/1365101

Do you know how he got the 8 and 2 2/3 sounds together on one stave?

Ah, I see that the creator of the tutorial has already answered your question. For the sake of completeness:

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Not on one staff. Type "I" to see the instrument menu; there are hidden staves.

Also, I would recommend two books for further improving your already considerable skills in composing counterpoint:

Peter Schubert and Christoph Neidhöfer have published the expensive, but very complete book "Baroque Counterpoint", see https://www.pearson.com/us/higher-education/program/Schubert-Baroque-Counterpoint/PGM43936.html .

It offers a thorough presentation of harmony and counterpoint in the baroque style, covering various imitation techniques and explaining the very fruitful technique of "harmony boxes" where a short four-part musical expression forms the basis of a whole piece.

On the more practical side is, as the name suggests, "A Practical Approach to 18th Century Counterpoint", https://www.amazon.com/Practical-Approach-Century-Counterpoint-Revised/dp/1478604700 . This book by Robert Gauldin costs only half as much as Schubert/Neidhöfer, is very accessible and offers a lot of material for practice and self-study. There is a preview on Google Books: https://books.google.at/books?id=OfgVAAAAQBAJ

The music is very joyful.

The prelude really sounds like a prelude: there is comming something after this piece.
It creates expectations, which you fulfill in the Fugue, which are for me joyfulness and hints to Bach.

The theme of the fugue is pretty nice, because it stands on its own and it is recognizable.
I think you would please the organist when you add at least some articulations, dynamics and other elements to help the performer with the interpretation of the piece.

The coda is nice, because it is a short recapitulation of the Prelude and hence the music sounds finished.

Well done!

My first fugue I composed didn't have very organised voices.

This is it. (I used the information above to add a cornet V to the sound.

https://musescore.com/user/10553021/scores/4754476?showoptions=true

Ed's_organ_fugue_in_E_minor.pdf

You have a good sense of harmony and modulation. It is really a pleasure to listen the harmonic development. Also, you are introducing and dropping voices rather elegantly. 

Your style fits well with Johann Caspar Fischer or perhaps Buxtehude which combined fugal writing with homophonic, toccata-like passages in their "Prelude and Fugues" rather freely. Bach did so as well in his sectional "Prelude and Fugues", but a typical stand-alone Bach fugue would normally feature more counterpoint-like episodes; the passagework often having been derived from the subject or a counter-subject.

I have also listened to your Fugue in G major, which is very busy, but also shows your strengths in voice organisation and harmony. Your weak spot, if I may say so (I would love to be able to write such organ pieces like you!), seems to be writing episodes between subject entries in counterpoint. Also, the figure in m. 50 and following of the Fugue in G major is used in the other pieces as well, and very prominently. Perhaps you find some variations on this figures to increase variety?

Keep up the good work!

I found it bland and harmonically uninteresting. Funny that, because the pieces I like on this site are usually commented on heavily about technical errors, whereas this seems to be universally acclaimed.

But for me, it seems to be endless arpeggiation over harmonies that dont change very much, with heavy repeats. So my suggestion would be to change the harmony at least 2 times every bar, to go outside the I IV V  I box, and to make sure that the themes are more melodic, instantly recognizable, perhaps with a definite rhythm. Bach also tends to make the voices more even - that is, each voice gets a decent crack at holding the main thematic interest - often throwing the theme or a motif from one voice to another and back.

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So my suggestion would be to change the harmony at least 2 times every bar, to go outside the I IV V  I box, and to make sure that the themes are more melodic, instantly recognizable, perhaps with a definite rhythm.

Do you mean this with the prelude, postlude and echo passages or with most or all of the piece? (I'm talking about the one in A major.)

Some months back I tried composing a Fugal style song I call a runner. It's a bit like a fugue but the voices are not independent and they tend to do more things like chords and harmonic intervals.

Was this a good or bad idea?

I managed to use Hauptwerk to make more realistic version of Ed's fugue in G major.

On 11/30/2017 at 4:56 PM, Fugalicious said:

I found it bland and harmonically uninteresting. Funny that, because the pieces I like on this site are usually commented on heavily about technical errors, whereas this seems to be universally acclaimed.

But for me, it seems to be endless arpeggiation over harmonies that dont change very much, with heavy repeats. So my suggestion would be to change the harmony at least 2 times every bar, to go outside the I IV V  I box, and to make sure that the themes are more melodic, instantly recognizable, perhaps with a definite rhythm. Bach also tends to make the voices more even - that is, each voice gets a decent crack at holding the main thematic interest - often throwing the theme or a motif from one voice to another and back.

 

 

You know, This is still nothing compared to the contradiction I get from this forum  for my compositions, http://www.organforum.com/forums/showthread.php?48884-A-Prelude-and-fuge-I-composed&p=466676#post466676

I've been trying to learn contrapuntal music now and this prelude and beginning of a fugue is the result so far.

This might be a major breakthrough with my Fugues. I took this old one and did some major work to it.

Ed's Prelude and Fugue in A minor (StAnnesMoseley).mp3

Ed's_prelude_and_fugue_in_A_minor.pdf