How do you (not) write a fugue?

In my first semester of tonal counterpoint class, our final assignment was to write a 4-voice fugue... so I said yOLO and wrote this meme fugue as the final assignment - with the lyrics being my revision notes from class haha. Huge shoutout to Prof. Nicole Biamonte for accepting this fugue as a valid assignment and not instantly dunking on my grades, especially with the "intentional parallel fifths" section. I later gathered 4 singers (with me playing the piano part) and played through this, huge thank you to Alice Boissinot (Soprano), Elissa Dresdner (Alto), Adam Schmidt (Tenor), and Tristan Pritham (Bass) for singing this, and Mehdi Rahimdokht, Victoria Barroso, and Matthew Souaid for the recording. It was incredible - the singers learnt and sung this fugue at this level with only 2 hours of rehearsal!

I also have to shoutout my two inspirations for this fugue: the first being my favorite fugue to this day, Glenn Gould's parodistic "So You Want to Write a Fugue?"    • Glenn Gould - So You Want to Write a Fugue...   and second is Freddy Wickham's self-explanatory "Ontological Fugue"    • Ontological fugue - the fugue that explain...  . I decided to go in the direction of these two pieces, but take a step further by adding theatrics, intentional "counterpoint error" sections, and slipping in familiar quotations (Art of Fugue, Double Violin Concerto, Christmas Tunes).

The piece can be summarized in three sections - The exposition (which introduces basic fugal techniques), the middle/"development" (where errors/fugal parodies are gradually introduced in a tongue-in-cheek manner), and the "recapitulation" (where the singers break the 4th wall, address the listener, and question the philosophy of compositional aesthetics and rules... yep it gets pretty off-the-rails haha).

Overall, I wanted a piece that could be appreciated by all levels - those that do not have much familiarity with fugal writing will gain something from it, and those that are experts in fugues will enjoy the humorous parodistic subversion of counterpoint expectations. (And of course the main reason, I needed to write a fugue for a tonal counterpoint class assignment).

Please listen to this with headphones/stereo, as I've panned the voices to make it easier to distinguish the lines (Soprano/Bass to the left, Alto/Tenor to the right).

A more detailed analysis (For word count's sake, Subject/Answer/Countersubject = Sub/Ans/CS, Soprano = S, Alto = A, Tenor = T, Bass = B)
0:00 - Ridiculous 10 bar Sub. in B (this is gonna be a long exposition)
0:15 - Ans. in T, CS in B (for the sake of keeping it simple, only real answer at the 5th will be explained in the lyrics)
0:32 - Codetta/Mini-Episode/Retransition Section
0:45 - Sub. in A, CS in T
1:00 - Ans. in S, CS in A
1:17 - End of Exposition, fragments presented
1:21 - Episode: Sequence with sub. fragment that forms a canon at the 7th below (With S and B)
1:31 - Deck the Halls quote, modulation to D Maj
1:35 - Triple entry of modified sub. in A, T (augmentation), and B (technically not a true stretto)
1:42 - For a 10 bar subject, metrically starting on a weaker beat makes the harmonic rhythm a bit wack (shorter subjects can be displaced easier)
1:50 - Ans. in T, CS in A (Voice crossing frowned upon)
2:06 - Episode: Sequence with diminution of sub. fragment
2:21 - Inversion of Sub. (Parodying a Double Fugue Entry)
2:30 - Intentional Parallel Fifths
2:33 - Inv. Sub. in A, New CS in B, almost like a new double fugue exposition
2:41 - I thought it would be funny to leap while the singer complains about said leaps (though in this case, those "random leaps" in A are part of the inverted sub.)
2:50 - Inv. Sub. in S, New CS in A, but this exposition is thrown out of the window with what comes next!
3:01 - I asked myself: how far can I take the idea of stretto? This was the result! Diminution of Sub. in T and B, Diminution of inverted Sub. in S and A.
3:14 - S does augmentation/upward suspensions against the diminution stretto
3:27 - Inv. of sub. fragment (bar 3 idea) in ascending stretto
3:36 - Phrygian Cadence (Modal counterpoint reference!)
3:42 - Bach Art of Fugue in Piano (hinted by S and B lyrics previously)
3:49 - Bach Double Violin Concerto quotation
3:53 - Art of Fugue against the original subject! (Start of "recapitulation" - parodies a double fugue where one combines the two previously heard themes, but in this case it's art of fugue, literally heard a few bars ago by a random piano solo haha)
4:07 - Sub. in B, CS in A
4:23 - CS intentionally enters in the "wrong" voice (S), Sub. in T (had to be modified as some notes are out of a standard tenor's range). Final entry of the recap is skipped.
4:38 - Dominant Pedal with sub. + inverted sub. diminution in S
4:46 - Crunchy suspensions!
4:54 - Even crunchier suspensions!
5:07 - Final entry of subject head (augmented version in A), + 4-3 suspension resolving to picardy in T

Social Media:
  / nicholasmamusic  

#fugue #counterpoint #satb #choir