Suite for Organ

Four fugues and 3 preludes (or whatever these can be called.) The counterpoint and style is mostly quite free, I took a lot of liberties with harmonies and voice leading if I thought it was interesting, so there's inevitably going to be parallel motion, but I think I'd rather take that than make it bland. It's been quite a long time since I've written this kind of music so it was really refreshing to go back to "my roots" and have fun with it.

As for technical matters, the subjects for the fugues, save for the first one, are strange on purpose. Specially C minor and the second double fugue subject in the D minor fugue. I mean, they're workable, but I'm constantly harmonizing "against" the subjects, so this leads to some pretty fun moments like a subject that's supposed to be in G minor tonic being harmonized in Ebmajor, stuff like that. It was pretty challenging to get all of this done and stay somewhat inside the style of instrumental counterpoint that I like. The double fugue in D was hard to write and it went on for longer than I had anticipated, even after cutting all the fat.

If there's something I realized when writing these things is that I have very little tolerance for sequencing that is there for the purpose of padding out the runtime of the piece. So I try to never sequence anything more than 3 times, and I will vary the amount between 3 and 2 depending on context. It's one of the trappings on the style and I understand better now a lot of composers that worked in this style post-baroque times, specially within the context of a sonata's development episode vs the way sequencing is used in a fugue. Combining both things is very difficult from both a conceptual and technical point of view.

In fact, I grouped these fugues together (I wrote them in sequence within the span of 2 weeks or so) and in the end I feel this is also sort of, kind of, like a sonata. Even if there's no "sonata form" in these, but then, I get the feeling that the DNA of the thing is more leaning in that direction than something like Bach. I purposely avoided reusing countersubjects when I could help it, too, as to give myself more freedom to write whatever was more appropriate within the context of that moment, but that also has the unintended side effect that the whole thing feels a lot more complex than it really is (certainly felt that way when I was writing it.) I get the feeling that a lot of the typical baroque counterpoint conventions and traditions end up being shortcuts to pad out time, so I kind of didn't want to use them. If anything was too "automatic" I would cut it and rewrite, and I did this the entire time when writing. I have no idea if that's something audible, but well there you go.

As for the score, it's not completed yet. All the music is there, but I need registration markings and a bunch of other things that I'm not going to write until meet up with the person who will be performing these, so we can work out the details together at an actual organ. It's easier that way.

Edit: Guhhh, fixed IV's key signature to something sane. oops.

No. 1: Nice short theme, I can almost smell the ridiculously oversized wig on the performer's head. The stretta in MM. 64 ff. is also nicely prepared. I really like how you insert free-flowing toccata sections.

No. 2: What a strange introduction, reminds me of Mozart's "Dissonanzenquartett". The slower tempo has an air of Bach's pastorale for organ.

No. 3: Starts rather conventional as well, but quickly takes a turn to something different. Great cadence into the Ebmaj7 in M. 18 and the picardy third on the tonic minor in M. 20 gets the sweet plagal minor cadence sound from the fa-mi and lo-so. MM. 25 ff. on the other hand have an infectious rhythm. The Cm sixte-ajoutèe and the fdim7 leading into a surprising Amaj7 are a nice touch(Haydn did something similiar once in a quartet).

No. 4: Right of the bat, this sounds like the funky lovechild of Buxtehude and Stevie Wonder(in a good way). Those sweet jazzy chords and progressions: dimmaj7(M. 30), Maj7(M. 4)...MM. 9-12 are just pure voice leading, held together by the C# over a 9b2(as the third), 7#4(as the augmented fourth), m7b5(as the fourth) and a lush lydian augmented chord. M. 29 really tricked me into thinking you would give us a minor plagal cadence. By comparison, the fugue is rather tame. Nice how you let the introductory sections reappear in MM. 106 ff. and MM. 153 ff. respectively.

Seldom can I brace myself for such a large-scale work, but I actually listened to your entire opus and read along. This is such a smooth marriage of fugue and toccata, truly a marvellous work, combined with anachronistically different pre-/interludes. Have you met with the organist yet?

Thanks for the comments! I really appreciate it!

3 minutes ago, KStoertebeker said:

No. 1: Nice short theme, I can almost smell the ridiculously oversized wig on the performer's head. The stretta in MM. 64 ff. is also nicely prepared. I really like how you insert free-flowing toccata sections.

The toccata segments were the justification as to why there's no prelude in front of the fugue, it's kind if mixed in, like older nordic tradition pieces.

7 hours ago, KStoertebeker said:

By comparison, the fugue is rather tame.

Yeah, it's a lot more standard. I didn't want to really go all out on the harmonies the entire time, or it wouldn't fit with the previous fugues. The prelude is out-there enough, imo.

7 hours ago, KStoertebeker said:

Seldom can I brace myself for such a large-scale work, but I actually listened to your entire opus and read along. This is such a smooth marriage of fugue and toccata, truly a marvellous work, combined with anachronistically different pre-/interludes. Have you met with the organist yet?

Wow, thanks. Yeah, I met the organist and we ran through the piece a few times and got an idea of what the registers will be, but the issue is that for the concert the organ is different so we need more rehearsals there, so I'm still not 100% on the registration. Not enough to write it in the score at least.