Improvising fugue…
So the combination of writing an opera (soon about that), teaching, running a non-profit, working on advancing my career (trying anyway), and fulfilling family obligations is clearly not enough to keep me occupied, and I took on this new project, which is working through the book “Improvising Fugue” by John Mortensen. I’ve had this fascination with fugue since childhood and there was no way that after learning that such book exists I wouldn’t acquire it and work through it. I got my copy in the mail sometime last March and I’ve been at it, on and off, ever since. I am right now on Chapter 10 out of 16. The book is fantastic and I’ve learned a ton. Can I improvise a fugue now? Sort of, not well, but better than I could before starting the book. My fugue writing though has improved a lot—I thought I could write a reasonably competent fugue before, but now I can do it better and faster. And there’s still six more chapters to get through.
The book is based on the method music was taught in XVIII century in the conservatories in Naples; this method then spread over all of Europe. It is based on partimento; any musician not familiar with the term should do themselves a favor and google it—the Wikipedia article is a reasonable introduction and there’s plenty online material. I now believe that the whole music theory curriculum in conservatories needs to be rethought and remade to be based on partimento.
For me, the benefits of studying this book go far beyond of potentially being able to improvise a fugue, which is a skill that few will appreciate and no career advancement will result from mastering it (not directly anyway). I feel that study of counterpoint and fugue does for musicians what lifting weights and cardio do for team sport players such as football or basketball. In any case, I feel that my musicianly (just made up this word) fitness has increased a great deal after working through these 10 chapters. I will finish working through this book and if I do really well, perhaps I’ll do a live broadcast with me improvising a fugue on a given subject. Very ambitious. In the meantime, here’s the latest fugue I wrote (not improvised), which was a response to a challenge in a Facebook group; the challenge was to write a fugue with the subject based on the C major scale. While this fugue is not improvised, working through the Mortensen book made a big difference in writing of this one, both in quality and efficiency.