A fugue is a form of composition which strongly emphasizes counterpoint. J. S. Bach was a master of the fugue and is probably the composer most famously associated with the form. I had this kind of general idea of the fugue but I’ve always wanted to study it closer and understand it enough to incoroporate fugal writing in my own compositions. So, this week was more of a homework assignment than a start of a piece. I found a great introduction to composing a fugue by Dr. Justin Rubin online and also this excellent interactive analysis of a Bach fugue (Fugue No. 2 in c minor from the Well Tempered Clavier, Book 1) linked from the wikipedia entry on fugues.
After studying these references I started following along Dr. Rubin’s intro and did my best to follow the rules and write my own fugue. Incidentally, these interactive online resources are so great because you can hear each excerpt as you encounter it in the text, rather than either taking a text book to a piano and banging it out, or glossing over it in the hopes of coming back to it later.
Here’s the score to what I’ve got so far. I’ve gotten as far as the exposition and the first episode (the last bar). Yes, it’s only 7 bars long. It’s an extremely dense kind of music and it’s easy to take a wrong turn and paint yourself into a corner, where the voices collide, etc. Despite the rules (or because of them) it’s quite fun to work on, and really gives me a greater appreciation for the masters.
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They say it takes 21 days to form a habit. So, it appears that I’ve made a habit of working on music everyday. Considering how much I’ve struggled with this in the past, this is quite a milestone.
This week I chose to work on sound design for most of the week and then throw them the results together at the end into some kind of piece of music. All of the sounds in this track, including the drums, were created from scratch with various synth plug-ins in Logic Pro (no samples were used). The plug-ins I used were: Ultrabeat, ES2, FM1, and Sculpture along with very minimal effects.
The title is a silly pun on the band whose sound this track reminded me of, Boards of Canada.
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The great composer, György Ligeti, died Monday, June 12. He was hugely influential to many composers in the 20th century and no doubt will continue to influence composers for generations to come. His music ranges from menacingly dark to playful and humorous.
The mainstream headlines (thanks to the AP) are reading “‘Space Odyssey’ composer dies.” Yes, his music was used to great effect by Kubrick (I remember my hair standing on end when watching the rerelease on the big screen in the late nineties), but it was used without Ligeti’s permission, and it only featured in a couple of scenes (the AP article says he won acclaim for “his work on the soundtrack” which is patently false). It seems to be a strange choice to sum up his life’s work in that bit part. Did the headlines read “‘Fantasia’ composer dies” when Stravinsky passed away? To be fair, the rest of the article is well done, and I’m happy to see him mentioned at all in the press. The Guardian in the UK has a great piece.
Anyway, he was one of my favorite composers and he has left a great legacy in his art. For an excellent introduction to his music and a taste of its breadth, listen to Chamber Music Vol. 7.
His son, percussionist and composer Lukas Ligeti, posted this on his site:
What I’ve learned from my father, more than anything else, is that we only live once, and that it’s a good idea to live this life to the fullest and make the most you can of yourself and your talents, by learning and working relentlessly, always listening to your inner self-critic, and never ceasing to take risks and explore. He did. I hope to do the same.
As do I. (except for listening to my inner self-critic… I’m doing my best to ignore him)
The conclusion (hopefully) of the Dell support saga: happy ending. Yes I finally got through, and spoke with a competent tech who patiently went through his script with me to make sure there wasn’t a power cable problem, etc. and after a short time realized the monitor was defective and sent a new one out. It arrived a few days later, and sent the defective one back, and it’s working great. They even made two followup calls — a day after my call with the tech guy and then a couple of days after it arrived to make sure I was happy with it. I’m still hesitant to recommend Dell, but I’m no longer a rabid detractor, as I was starting to become.
A couple of notes:
- I made a comment in the first post about the tech’s “thick accent.” I was trying to avoid the latent (well sometimes outright) racism you see in a lot of complaints about the incompetent Indian phone techs, as if being Indian had anything to do with it (I think that’s going to be the real legacy of outsourcing, as it currently works… a subject for another post). Instead I sounded generally xenophobic. It is frustrating to have to spell my email address 5 times and still not be sure if the person on the other end got it, but that’s something we’re all going to have to get used to as business continually gets globalized. This may be one of those times where the more I try to explain what I meant the worse I sound. Suffice to say I was merely frustrated with the overall experience and I took the low road and picked on the accent. Mea culpa. We are the world.
- It seems that one of the technical issues with Dell’s outsourced phone support is the phone system itself. It is bad enough that the person will preemptively give you the phone number they’re about to connect you with, saying “in case we get disconnected.” This part really makes you feel like you’re dealing with a rinky-dink operation that doesn’t care much about service.
- Speaking of the phone system: I kept a log of this “journey.” One of my notes says in all caps “MENU HELL.” Don’t people study this problem? Isn’t there a whole science to arranging a menu system which requires the fewest steps to get to the right place? I guess they charge too much for Dell. There should be a way to do this online, for any product you purchase from the company, not just whole systems.
For this week’s podcast I’ve sketched out the beginnings of an orchestra piece. I kept with the method of verbally describing how I imagined the piece before actually working on the music. Here’s a rough score if you’re inclined to follow along.
Continue reading ‘Podcast #2: Orchestra Staccato’
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