Shanty-Fugue in 3.5 parts

[Lars Johan Martin Nilsson]

Well, if you count the tambourine, it is four parts, otherwise three... :)

I haven't been very active since I signed up for this site. But I thought this little ditty would be a nice footnote to the current discussion here about fugues and their supposed academic aura.

Comments are very welcome, especially on issues of musical form; not on the midi rendition though, which I know is bad as usual...

[H. S. Teoh]

I liked it. Very shanty-like indeed.  The only thing is, I wished you had more subject entries in between episodic material. That would have made it more fun, and more interesting to listen to.

[Lars Johan Martin Nilsson]

H. S. Teoh said:

I liked it. Very shanty-like indeed.  The only thing is, I wished you had more subject entries in between episodic material. That would have made it more fun, and more interesting to listen to.

Thank you. Yeah, I wanted to extend after the first total inverted entry in E minor (bars 37-40), maybe going to A minor, but I couldn't work it out harmonically. For more false and true entries without prolonging the piece, as you suggested in the chat, I think I would have to add a fourth voice... which is too late I guess without reworking it completely...

I did one small change already though since uploading, in bars 19-20, so as to avoid the parallell octave between G and E inbetween the bars. But I will wait with uploading another version yet.

[H. S. Teoh]

Yeah, for people like us who are not Bach, fugues can turn into endless improvement projects.  At least, that's what I find in my own fugues.  At some point you just gotta draw the line between "I really wanna fix Yet Another Part here" and "that's good enough, the rest of my mistakes will be lessons for the future". :-P

[Dave Moorman]

You're right - 3.5 - because the tambourine is never picked up by the other instruments :-) Nice.