Being an improviser, I tried it on my own later that day, seeing if I could make something in Buxtehude’s form. It was thoroughly bad.
Not a surprise; my first effort at anything new is always thoroughly bad.
But the idea percolated overnight, and bumped into my Sunday improvisation. I had been struggling with it all week, for the only one of the tunes in the service that I was willing to work with was Engelberg, the fine tune by Stanford often sung with the text “When in our music God is glorified.” In this case it is another text, “We know that Christ was raised and dies no more,” commenting on the selection from I Corinthians 15 appointed in the lectionary. I had been “learning the tune” as is my custom, playing around with it on the clavichord every morning, but not having any ideas as to how to approach it beyond a vague notion of playing variations.
Well! What if I were to begin with a fugue, with the subject related thematically to the tune, and give out the tune near the end as a coda? I spent about twenty minutes fiddling around with this on Saturday, still making no significant progress.
On Sunday mornings, I rarely have time to begin at the piano, for my organ practice must be completed by 7:15 and Matins. But today, I could spare a few minutes, so I made a beginning at the Steinway up in the church – and there it was; a fugue subject that was related to the tune, and with which I thought I could work. That was too good to leave to chance, so I scurried downstairs for staff paper and scribbled out the subject and its tonal answer, settling on the key of A Dorian by writing these things down. I improvised with it some more in the break between Matins and the 9:00 service, perhaps fifteen minutes, and it was time to play.
Here it is, my first public effort at an improvised fugue:
00’14” - I run off the tracks immediately; I play the tonal answer incorrectly, even though it was written down right in front of me. I turn it into a false entry, and give the real thing at 00’19”
00’27” - parallel octaves between bass and soprano. Red ink is mounting up, and I don’t even have all the voices in yet.
00’45” - a final entry in the bass
00’58” - time to finish the Exposition (the first part of a fugue) and go into Other Stuff (technical term: Episode). Again I fall off the tracks, and throw in a few more fugal entries in the existing voices. It could charitably be called a Second Exposition.
01’11” - finally, an Episode. About time.
01’24” - back to the fugue subject. At 01’30” I try to get fancy with the subject in inversion. I think it works pretty well. Heartened by this, at 01’39” is the subject in augmentation in the bass.
And so it goes: some good, some not so good. The opening fugal section winds down by 02’30”. Here, I am making a transition into the hymn tune. At 03’03” is a final (for now) harmonized statement of the fugue subject. It ends with an important transition: the C major chord at 03’20”. This sets the stage for the head motive of Engelberg, which (in C major, as I am going to play it) outlines a C major triad. I introduce the tune in the soprano, still overshadowed by echoes of the fugue subject in A dorian. This is a good idea, so I go with it to the 04’42” mark. Here I leave the tune and start a new fugal section, with a vague notion of suggesting rondo form: Fugue – Tune – Fugue etc.
05’08” - rather surprisingly (to me), the Tune returns in the soprano and takes over completely for a bit.
05’46” - Engelberg continues, now in minor, becoming major. This quiet little passage turned out well. And it keeps me on track with my notion of rondo form: so far we now have Fugue – Tune – Fugue – Tune.
06’42” - enough quiet; it is time for some motion and energy, leading back to the fugue. The subject enters in the bass at 06’55”.
07’22” - Coda (a bit early in terms of the clock: I still have almost two minutes to cover). I seek to make quiet combinations of the fugue subject and motives from the tune. By 08’05”, it leads to a final fugal exposition.
08’31” - Schoenberg wrote about “dissolving” as a way to bring a passage to conclusion, giving examples from Beethoven and others: take a short bit of your material, work with it, become simpler and simpler. This is what I am doing here, using a five-note descending scale.
09’01” - a final playthrough of the hymn tune in the bass, and we are finished.
Overall, I am pleased, especially as a first effort. I have listened to the piece several times this afternoon and I think it holds together, despite the red ink for contrapuntal errors. The problems I hear are these:
- It is too long for its material, and demonstrates why fugues tend to be a little shorter than this.
- Related to that, I got tired of hearing the fugue subject by the end. Were I to play another piece of this scale (and I must; this is the size of piece that is needed as a prelude to the 9:00 service), I should consider a double or triple fugue – perhaps something along the lines of a Buxtehude Praeludium. Of which I made complete hash on Friday afternoon; I am not anywhere near ready to try such a thing in public.
- There are too many passages where the texture is simply the longish fugue subject all by itself, or perhaps with one other voice or chordal accompaniment. This is Not Counterpoint. I would give these passages some more red ink.
But I really did like the transition to Engelberg (03’03” and following) and the quiet passage at 05’46”, and the ending, and my comfort level with the Dorian mode.
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This is my five hundred and first post in The Music Box. I started in February 2010, nine year ago this week. Thank you, my readers. Most of the time, it is around thirty or forty of you. Certain categories of essays draw more readers, especially when I mention a conflict that tore the United States asunder in the mid-nineteenth century; I am trying to not write about it now that its sesquicentennial is in the past. Improvisation-related essays such as this and the previous are also popular.
The second-most-read essay is from 2012: In defense of choral evensong. Many of its 445 readers probably came from Bosco Peters’ excellent liturgy website, which is a Real Blog, the sort that reaches thousands of people and makes a genuine difference, which he does. But I still think I was right in defending choral evensong.
The most-read essay, with an astonishing 1457 readers, is one of the two sermons I have preached (there are several Imaginary Sermons in these pages as well, but this one was real, given at Choral Evensong for the Second Sunday of Easter, 2010): No more a stranger nor a guest.
I have been absent from the Music Box for two months. There are reasons, the first being Advent and Christmas. More recently, I have sought a Change of Habit, best expressed in the Zen proverb:
When walking, walk.I used to do most of my writing as I ate at my desk at work. I love eating and writing, separately and together. But I decided to give Mindful Eating a chance, and I do not think that I will go back. Food is too precious and notable as a gift from God to do other than partake of it with mindfulness, thanksgiving, and full enjoyment. I should know this principle, for I have always been this way with music; I cannot comprehend how people can have music playing in the background as they work. When I listen to music, I listen. So I am simply doing the same with food.
When eating, eat.
The obvious drawback: I don’t get so many things done. It is not just the writing of essays; I am not reading much, something else I used to do with food and tea at my side.
But my sense is that the work I do get done is a little better, benefiting from better focus. My intention is to continue writing in the Music Box, but it may be infrequently.
Blessings be with you all, and God's grace.
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