Fugues Of The Past 100 Years

[Fagotterdämmerung]

  I've been reveling in the Shostakovich cycle of fugues for piano - and they've got me thinking, who else has been using the form in the past hundred-odd years?

  There certainly seem to be a lot of possibilities left ( the Baroque was full of them, but they started to get a lot rarer in Classical and Romantic eras ), with variations less strict than the "school fugues" everyone is taught leading... almost anywhere, potentially.


 

 

[Jo498]

with some liberties, Bartok in the first movement of Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta.

[Mirror Image]

There's a tasty fugue in Elgar's Introduction & Allegro. Check it out.

[Cato]

BUSONI: Fantasia Contrappuntistica has a quadruple fugue which should satisfy your needs for a long time!   0:)

Also check out his First Sonatina.

[Brian]

There's William Walton's Spitfire Fugue.

Aaron Jay Kernis wrote an awesome monster of a fugue in the String Quartet No. 2. Actually I think Kernis contends the movement has both a double and triple fugue. One takes the fugal subject of Beethoven's quartet Op. 59/3, inverts it, and treats the new melody to a new fugue.

Gershwin includes a stupendous, extremely exciting fugue in "Catfish Row".

But my favorites are Shostakovich... especially Op. 87 Nos. 7 and 23-24. And my favorite fugue of all time was premiered only 122 years ago 

[DaveF]

There's a tasty fugue in Elgar's Introduction & Allegro. Check it out.

"A devil of a fugue" the composer called it.  Other orchestral examples that come to mind are:
Nielsen - 2nd movement of 5th symphony, 1st movement of 6th (two in that one)
Walton, Tippett - finales of 1st symphonies
Stravinsky - Symphony of Psalms
Britten - Prelude and fugue for 18-part strings

and the first movement development of Sibelius 4 might almost be considered a rather special case, where each successive voice drops out when the next one comes in.

[Mirror Image]

"A devil of a fugue" the composer called it.  Other orchestral examples that come to mind are:
Nielsen - 2nd movement of 5th symphony, 1st movement of 6th (two in that one)
Walton, Tippett - finales of 1st symphonies
Stravinsky - Symphony of Psalms
Britten - Prelude and fugue for 18-part strings

and the first movement development of Sibelius 4 might almost be considered a rather special case, where each successive voice drops out when the next one comes in.

Great choices, DaveF. I don't see you around here much, but hope you post more in the future.

[some guy]

"With some liberties" could apply to any of Bach's fugues, for that matter.

How "strict" ever got to be applied to music is beyond me.

How it stuck is beyond even that.

Anyway, Rachmaninoff, second movement of second symphony. (Yeah, I know. But "one hundred years" seems, at least in this instance, to be totally arbitrary.)

Lutoslawski, Preludes and Fugue

Anyway, I'm interested in why the interest in a thing for which very few contemporary composers have an interest.

[Brian]

Anyway, I'm interested in why the interest in a thing for which very few contemporary composers have an interest.

Interesting! I'm interested in why so few contemporary composers have an interest.

[Mandryka]

  I've been reveling in the Shostakovich cycle of fugues for piano - and they've got me thinking, who else has been using the form in the past hundred-odd years?

  There certainly seem to be a lot of possibilities left ( the Baroque was full of them, but they started to get a lot rarer in Classical and Romantic eras ), with variations less strict than the "school fugues" everyone is taught leading... almost anywhere, potentially.


 

This article looks very authoritative, but most of the music which sounds interesting -- Novac, Hinton -- I've not been able to hear. Can someone upload some of it? The Toch is on youtube.

[prémont]

  I've been reveling in the Shostakovich cycle of fugues for piano - and they've got me thinking, who else has been using the form in the past hundred-odd years?

Ludus Tonalis!

[Fagotterdämmerung]

Thanks for the suggestions, all.

Interesting! I'm interested in why so few contemporary composers have an interest.

I gather it's the extremely tonal tonic-dominant entries of traditional fugues. But to my mind, there is no reason it needs to have that limited a definition these days... it's not like Symphonies and Sonatas have followed such restrictions. Microtonal fugues? Why not...

[Jo498]

"Cool" from West Side Story is supposed to be a fugue (in any case it's one of my favorites from WSS)

[EigenUser]

with some liberties, Bartok in the first movement of Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta.

This. Also, the "Kyrie" from Ligeti's Requiem, which is closely related to the 1st movement MSPC (but way denser).

[Cato]

Thanks for the suggestions, all.
. Microtonal fugues? Why not...

Wyschnegradsky has several quarter-tone keyboard works with fugues: but this one is for 3 pianos tuned for a sixth-tone scale!

https://www.youtube.com/v/GS97fO28P8E

[71 dB]

There's a tasty fugue in Elgar's Introduction & Allegro. Check it out.

Elgar's Severn Suite contains a tasty fugue too.

[not edward]

Hartmann's 6th symphony comes to mind immediately; the finale is a series of three fugues on related subjects... and it's a barnstormer.

[Mirror Image]

Elgar's Severn Suite contains a tasty fugue too.

Yes, I've forgotten about the Severn Suite. Think I'll listen to this work tonight as it's been awhile.

[Dax]

Szymanowski - 2nd and 3rd piano sonatas. Crazy subjects!

[torut]

Aaron Andrew Hunt composed 24 Preludes & Fugues (2014).
https://aaronandrewhunt.bandcamp.com/album/24-preludes-fugues