Composition (2023 Q4): Stumbling Fugue

Wrapping up the year with composition after about a month's worth of running from performance to performance is kinda draining, I think. In the same way that many amateur musicians (including myself) don't listen to a lot of music in their downtime, having to think about music after being inundated with it pushes the interaction with the medium into more of a job than a hobby. Nevertheless, if I were better at staying on top of things, I wouldn't have this problem, so there's no reason to skip out on this thing I've decided to do once every few months only.

Earlier in the year, I had to run a rehearsal for a string quartet, which included a viola part, noted down in alto-clef, and I wasn't really able to demonstrate what I wanted, because I couldn't read their part. At the same time, a video I watched put the idea into my head to play with some different time signatures, 5/4 specifically. That would have to do as a hook, since I was - because of aforementioned reasons - not going to come up with a nice melody. By construction, fugues are suited to the situation, because the form doesn't necessarily require a very stable melody, if you don't mind things getting cluttered, which I didn't this time.

Where I'm missing a melody, I inserted a figure instead. The general idea of the figure is that it consists of four pieces, each having a set "direction", at least at the beginning. Within a measure, it goes "up-up-down-down", usually while "resetting" before each segment. This line gives a forward stumbling impression, hence the title.

This is going to be more or less what the violin part is going to do for the first half of the piece. In the latter half, I'll retain the 3 - 3 - 2 - 2 segmentation, mostly because that's a fun way to count 5/4 measures in my mind (see the Skimbleshanks number from Cats), but vary the figure. I needed to get used to reading the alto clef, so the viola part starts out consisting of fourths doing a sort of incomplete circle, until they break into the same kinda pattern that the violins play. However, if you shift this figure by two fourths, that inverts the segmentation into a 2 - 2 - 3 - 3 pattern.

I wanted the cello part to count the measure a little differently, at least at the beginning, where there wasn't so much going on. That introduces a different 3 - 3 - 2 - 2 segmentation that's instead driven by triplets.

Eventually though, the score became too busy for my taste and I pulled it back into the more classical way to count (and also conduct) a 5/4 measure.

The rest was just me trying to keep track of harmonies and reading the alto clef. It's of course not difficult in theory, but it takes some getting used to. At the end, it loops back to the start, because conceptually, I think this can run forever. The .mp3 file cuts off after doing the whole thing twice, but any presentation of the piece can end in any arbitrary measure, just kinda stopping on a sustained chord. I'd use a-minor in most cases, because that's the easiest.

Full Score
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