Ear rating warning: this piece is highly dissonant, and may cause your ears to bleed and your sensibilities to be wounded. Listen at your own peril! (Though fortunately, the ordeal only lasts for about 1 minute 32 seconds, so a visit to the hospital will probably be unnecessary. But still. Caveat emptor. ;-) )
I wrote this nonsense in answer to a member on the previous forum who wondered whether it was possible to compose a fugue that isn't Bachian. I took up the challenge, deciding that my modus operandi in this fugue was to actively and deliberately ignore all vertical relationships between pitches. This relaxation of the fugue's usual stringent tonal relationships made it surprisingly simple to write -- I finished it in just 2 days -- though the results were so atrocious even to my own ears that I was literally laughing at my own audacity in writing something this outrageous.
Well OK, this piece wasn't entirely devoid of thoughtful consideration. I did use at least one idea I've had for a long time of having a subject that contained chords as an integral part. Upon much consideration (this was long before I decided to write this fugue) I came to the conclusion that the minor 2nd is the best candidate for a chord in a fugue subject because of its very obvious, easily-recognized sonority, a quality that would allow it not to get lost in the complex contrapuntal texture as the fugue develops. I took up this idea here, and perhaps let it loose a little too freely... but I'll let you be the judge! Take a gander (if you dare to subject your ears to the ordeal), and tell me what you think of this trash. ;-)
Score: [wildfugue.pdf]
Midi playback: [wildfugue.mp3]
Replies
Looking at the score, I pondered, what if we turned the entire concept on its head, and viewed it as two subjects of a double fugue, introduced in parallel minor seconds? Initially, the subjects are identical transpositions of the same melodic sequence. But what if, with successive subject entries, or successive expositions, one of the subjects is transformed, that is, scaled melodically or temporally, or by melodic inversion or retrogradation, or any combination of the aforementioned? This would also introduce the sort of syncope, or staggering of voices, that is generally regarded as desirable in polyphonic writing, as the two subjects (initially identical and sung in lockstep) gradually move out of phase.
As for treating the subject as two parallel subjects a minor 2nd apart, that's an interesting idea. Not something I'm partial to, but could be worth exploring in a future work, if I were ever to be afflicted of discordianism again. 😜 Or perhaps one could argue that I should've done this in the development section of the fugue, as a new kind of fugue device, instead of just repeating the minor 2nd pepper bombs verbatim - the effect does kinda soften once it has struck the ears sufficiently often. Doing something interesting with those pepper bombs might have redeemed this piece from its strident atonality. Or worsened it, whichever the case may be.
In any case, notes for future learning. Thanks for taking the time to sacrifice your ear drums^W^WI mean, bandages. 😉
What would have sealed the modernity of your vertical levity would have been a freer attitude to rhythm too. Emancipation of rhythm (that is free of an obvious discernible pulse and not beholden to the barline), is a perfect match for atonality and in many ways becomes the proxy for what function brings to tonality.
As for sincerity, it's a complicated question. I wrote my fugue in D, for example, totally sticking my tongue out at tradition (even wrote jokes in the score), having the answer come in at every wrong interval except the expected 5th, and when the answer finally came in at the 5th at the very end, the music interrupts itself and walks off in a huff. Does that make the piece insincere? I dunno, I took it seriously and am quite proud of it, in fact.
So it is with this Wild Fugue. I'll openly confess I wrote it almost literally with my tongue in my cheek the whole way through, and at particular junctures actually cackled with mad glee at the atrocity I was sculpting. (I jokingly explained to my 7yo son that it's the result of a cat jumping on the piano in an attempt to play Bach.) Does that make it insincere? I dunno, it *was* intended to poke fun, but it also happens to be a seriously constructed fugue. Which is paradoxically also constructed with irony/parody in mind. What does that make it? I couldn't answer myself, tbh. 🤣 Maybe you could help. 😜
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