Fugue in d minor

A four-part fugue for composed upon a given subject (it was originally written in SATB open score). The slurs are only meant to indicate phrases. Had fun with designing the episodes but I'm still not quite satisfied with them.

Sounds pretty good to me. But I think it suffers from what happens in a lot of pieces we write and see around here: it's all full throttle.... The 4-voice texture, once it's established, hardly rests.

Very dramatic piece with nice twists. Bar 43 and following could have been cliché, but worked out well.

Just two comments: What @Luis Hernández said; I just think it because of a different reason: In a typical fugue, you have blocs with the soggetto and episodes in between, often a bit formulaic, but they provide on one hand relief after the rigorous entries of the soggetto, and on the other hand creates tension: When will the next entry arrive? Your episodes are rather eventful and densely packed. Sometimes, it is ok to take some predictable phrases and be a bit formulaic to provide contrast.

And the final cadence is an interesting experiment, I just think for many listeners it wont sound like it really closes the piece. In bar 70, you start with a g minor chord over a tonic pedal (plus a resolution of a 4 to a 3), changing to a D Major chord (f# + a over the pedal), which will invariably sound like the dominant chord for g, especially as you use a g - f# - g, a typical cantizans. Briefly, something like a diminished c# chord emerges, but you could probably make it all clearer by using f instead of f# in measure 70, and just touch f# in the last bar.

19 hours ago, Willibald said:

And the final cadence is an interesting experiment, I just think for many listeners it wont sound like it really closes the piece. In bar 70, you start with a g minor chord over a tonic pedal (plus a resolution of a 4 to a 3), changing to a D Major chord (f# + a over the pedal), which will invariably sound like the dominant chord for g, especially as you use a g - f# - g, a typical cantizans. Briefly, something like a diminished c# chord emerges, but you could probably make it all clearer by using f instead of f# in measure 70, and just touch f# in the last bar.

Thanks for the comments! That final cadence has a strong plagal flavour (my original version had a much more straightforward g min - D maj progression there), I'm personally unable to hear it as not giving satisfactory closure.

19 hours ago, Willibald said:

In a typical fugue, you have blocs with the soggetto and episodes in between, often a bit formulaic, but they provide on one hand relief after the rigorous entries of the soggetto, and on the other hand creates tension: When will the next entry arrive? Your episodes are rather eventful and densely packed. Sometimes, it is ok to take some predictable phrases and be a bit formulaic to provide contrast.

Back at university my fugal training was based predominantly on the French system (see for example Gedalge's treatise) according to which episodes are considered as developmental parts unlike the Baroque practice where they're just transitional parts, hence my different approach. I understand your point, though, I'll try to keep an eye on this next time when making another fugue from scratch. Thanks!

Hi @Fermata!

I like this fugue!  I do notice that you give certain voices a break before bringing them back in on a middle entry of the subject, but I do have to agree with @Luis Hernández that the texture is pretty thick most of the time.  Nice job with the 2nd exposition, where you skillfully bring in a stretto entry of the subject!  And that's topped off even better by the series of stretto entries near the end where you have up to 4 strettos in succession one after the other in close proximity!  You also multiply the number of voices present to 5 in the very last tonic pedal.  And you skillfully include both tonic and dominant pedals near the end of your fugue.  You have all the characteristics and features present that would be expected in a fugue - great job!  Thanks for sharing.