a brief analysis of German Dzhaparidze's Prelude and Fugue in C major (video-score posted by Esteban Colucci on YT)

Esteban Colucci has posted a video of Prelude and Fugue in C major by German Dzhaparidze, this time with a read-along score.  Naturally, Wenatchee The Hatchet, who has had a long-standing habit of discussing preludes and fugues for classical guitar, had to make a few notes.  The internet being what it is, my idea of a brief analysis is 1,607 words.  I am assuming that you not only watched the video link but read through the entire score.  If you haven't done that by the time you read what comes after the link then, well, this blog post wasn't written for you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7upUfeTXM8

Prelude             00:00 to 01:31

This is moto perpetuo prelude evokes both J. S. Bach's Prelude Number 1 from Book 1 of the Well-Tempered Clavier and, in my oblique way of hearing, Heitor Villa-Lobos' iconic Etude No. 1 from his 12 Studies.

 

Because I am more of a fan of guitar fugues I'm not going to say too much about the prelude.  I like it.  It sounds charming and has a fun vibe.

 

On to the fugue.

Fugue                           01:38 to 04:10

Exposition                     01:38 to 01:58 (measures 39-47)

The subject is stately, and gives off the vibe of an 18th century royal precession. The subject starts at middle C and spans the G below to the E above.  There’s kind of a Mussorgsky Promenade mood to this with a notably narrower melodic range and much squarer rhythms.

 

The subject is answered at the dominant by a higher voice and the third entry has the subject enter on the C below middle C.  This is a good case study for showing how fugues often do not present the voices in strictly ascending or descending order. 

 

As for what kind of fugue this is, it’s what many theory books would call a simple fugue.  There are no countersubjects and there is no convertible counterpoint.  Dzhaparidze freely introduces new material as he fleshes out his three-voiced texture without attempting to create melodic lines that interlock and can be presented in double or triple counterpoint. For an example of a fugue in C major for the guitar that has convertible counterpoint you can go here.

 

So, here’s the breakdown of the exposition.

Subject (C)                   01:38 to 01:43

Answer  (G)                  01:44 to 01:50

Bridge                           01:51 to 01:52

Subject (C)                   01:53 to 01:58

Let’s get to the first episode.

Episode 1                      01:58 to 02:08 (measures 48-53)

Dzhaparidze took a snippet from the second half of the first measure of his subject and creates an undulating episode of the G-A-G rippling riff alternating between the middle and lower voices under a high open E string.  Before long he’s taken us into A minor, which is where he gives us the first middle entry.

 

What’s a middle entry, you ask?  It is when the composer presents the entire subject of the fugue in a new key that didn’t appear in the fugue’s exposition.  The subject may appear in any voice but so long as it runs its full course you can count it as a middle entry.  Because Dzhaparidze has paired presentations of his subject in different registers I will talk about middle entries in an admittedly fuzzy way because entries of a subject don’t always indicate middle entries.  The cascade of subject entries in Bach’s C major fugue from Book 1 of the Well-Tempered Clavier come some fast and furious that fugue is often called a stretto fugue.  This fugue has what I would call middle entries but Dzhaparidze layers entries of the subject as he goes through keys.  Now let’s get to the A minor passage.

 

Middle Entries 1 & 2      02:09 to 02:21 (measures 54-59)

A minor (prime, middle) and E minor (prime, upper)

A minor             02:09 to 02:15

E minor             02:15 to 02:21

 

Here we get two middle entries, as it were, with the subject presented in A minor and then, just as it seems to have run its course a new form of the subject appears in an upper voice in the key of E minor. 

 

Dzhaparidze has either cut short the resolution of his first middle entry by abruptly changing keys or, another way to think of it, has introduced a second middle entry in a related key that is elided into the end of his preceding middle entry. This fugue subject is very square, maybe a bit too square.  It’s good that he introduced this gambit in his first pair subject presentations in this middle entry.  He thereby destabilizes both the key and the harmonic rhythm of the fugue by bringing in the second middle entry half a measure too early for where the downbeat of the prevailing meter is, and introducing a new key just as the first middle entry has resolved itself in A minor.

 

Episode 2          02:22 to 02:39 (measures 60-67)

 

To be honest, I don’t think the episodes are particularly mysterious and don’t feel much need to explain the composer’s compositional technique in them.  They’re fun episodes. 

 

What is interesting is where the composer goes next.  He sets up a middle entry in G major but is what he does next really a middle entry?

 

The first voice that appears to have the subject has a form of the subject, but it’s upside down.  Middle entries can be made of inversions of a subject and countersubject  But then we see that Dzhaparidze introduces the subject in a higher voice before the subject in the lower registered (in its inverted form) has finished.  That is a big tell that what we are looking at hear is not a normal middle entry.  When the subject appears across all the voices of a fugal texture and each appearance of the subject appears before the previous statement of the subject has been finished that is what is traditionally called a …

 

Stretto 02:40 to 02:54 (measures 68-73)

Entries 3, 4 & 5

G major (lower, inversion) and G major (upper, prime)

 

This isn't a grand stretto in the "strict" sense because the first entry of the subject, though in the lowermost voice, is presented in a free tonal inversion. The second entrance is in the middle voice and features the subject in G major in its prime form but the subject is revised so that when the third entry, in the uppermost voice, enters, the material is changed.  Actually, Dzhaparidze could have done a canon on this subject.  but just opted not to.

 

This stretto is obscured by the two upper voices being active but it is definitely a stretto.  This is, however, an unusual placement for a stretto.  Traditionally composers tend to put a stretto at the syntactic or structural climax of a fugue.  They do not normally put something as grand  as a stretto right in the middle of a fugue and then move along to some other episode or middle entry.

 

Episode 3          02:54 to 03:08 (measures 75-80)

The tonic of G is destabilized by the introduction of an F natural.  Without further ado, the episode leads not to C, because the composer doesn’t want to “go home” yet.  No, instead we get a somewhat unusual modulation to the key of F major.

 

Middle Entries 5 & 6      03:09 to 03:19 (measures 81-86)

F major (prime, lower) and F major (prime, upper)

 

Like the first middle entry this has a double presentation of the subject in a lower and then an upper voice.  In contrast to the first middle entry that began with the subject in A minor and was followed by the subject in E minor, this is a monotonal middle entry.  What’s happening here is Dzhaparidze is making sure his paired presentation of the subject stabilize rather than destabilize whatever key he is in. 

 

Notice how in this middle entry the music seems stripped down to two voices and when the third appears it’s moving in nice, easy thirds?  That’s because every guitarist knows that F major is a devious key to play in for long stretches of time.

 

On to the next episode. 

 

Episode 4          03:20 to 03:35 (measures 87-92)

This episode moves from F major to what promises to be a half-cadence on A7 that resolves to D minor.  Are we going to get that?  No.  There’s a deceptive resolution to B-flat and before long the episode is wrapped up and we get to the syntactic climax of the fugue, the reappearance of the subject in the tonic key after a whole fugue’s worth of other keys.

 

Something I note in passing, if you’ve read along the score with me you’ll have noticed whole systems in which there are only two voices. That’s an easily overlooked lesson in composing fugues.  As George Oldroyd put it so memorably in The Technique and Spirit of Fugue (though I am freely paraphrasing), it’s rookies who think you have to have very voice in a fugal texture active at all times. 

 

Climax/Coda     03:36 to 04:10 (measures 93 t0 end)

The subject appears in C major in the lowest voice for the first time since the end of the exposition.  A nice touch with the end of the subject is how Dzhaparidze shifts into parallel minor at the very end of the phrase.  I like this fugue but a misgiving I have about the subject is how long that half note is at the end of the subject. It feels too firm, too final, and it's the end of the subject, which means I can understand why Dzhaparidze leaned so much into stretto and eliding subject statements across his middle entries.  At any given middle entry the finality of that half note on the second half of the fourth measure in relentless four-measure phrases would bring closure anywhere you land. 

 

This is a fun fugue and I had meant to do some analytical writing about it for years but the work has never been formally published in score form to my knowledge.  So much thanks to Esteban Colucci for revisiting this recording and sharing the score. 

 

I hope that German Dzhaparidze's 24 Preludes and Fugues for solo guitar gets published.  I have meant to do more analytical work on Nikita Koshkin's 24 Preludes and Fugues when the second half of that cycle should get recorded and released. 

POSTSCRIPT

For regular readers (I guess I might still have those), I realize my blogging has become sporadic in the last six years and I don't write as much here as I used to.  This kind of post, and the Matiegka series are technical.  When I roll out an entire public domain score and then include alternate ways of handling musical material in a sonata form or a menuet that's not just analytical work on published music, there's also new composition afoot, showing how there were unexplored possibilities in musical works I really do like.

If I had my druthers the entire Dzhaparidze cycle would have been published by now and I could ell you where to find the score.  We're living in an exciting time for the classical guitar.  There are several cycles of preludes and fugues out there in our time.  Maybe that kind of music isn't your jam but I am excited by the possibilities being explored in contemporary guitar music.  It's one of the reasons I kind of roll my eyes a bit when people talk about the state of classical music as if the plight of the orchestra were the "real" state of the art.

I still have to get to Matiegka's Op. 23, III and I mean to do that but this weekend had a surprise, a good surprise as far as I'm concerned.  So I felt I had to strike while the iron was hot, while inspiration was with me, and because a video with a read-along score is up, I had been wanting to write a blog post like this one for literally years and to finally be able to do so was a treat.  Thanks to Colucci for his YT post and I hope that the analysis may be of some interest to people who read it this weekend (or whenever they happen to read it). 

Lucas Brar has made a Bach-style fugue on the main riff from Michael Jackson's "Smooth Criminal"

Its fun, go check it out.  Brar diagrams what goes on in the fugue as it moves along

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKwXT33dVzY

I like that he inverts the theme in one of the middle entries. Of course there's a stretto because the riff from "Smooth Criminal" so very obviously lends itself to stretto (in three voices).

I've been saying for years the boundaries between "pop" and "classical" are far more permeable and negotiable than snobs on various sides of largely constructed divides make things out to be.  Sure, the fugue can be heard as a novelty piece but I think it would be unwise to hear it as "just" a novelty piece.  

Johannes Brahms - Choral Prelude and Fugue "O Traurigkeit, O Herzeleid" (for organ)

I hardly ever have linked to music by Johannes Brahms but he's one of the 19th century composers whose music I do like (and Scott Joplin, of course).  

This is a choral prelude and fugue on one of the more famous Lutheran hymns for Holy Saturday.

This video features a score to read along with as you hear the performance and the choral tune shows up in the prelude with text above the melody so you can identify the chorale when it appears in the big chunky bass pedals solo throughout the fugue.  Once the chorale tune has been traversed the fugue is over, whose subjects and countersubjects are loosely inspired by and fit with the hymn tune without being quotations of it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txLoPf8pBW0

Ethan Hein on J. S. Bach's Contrapunctus I. from Art of Fugue, Bach's legendary work as a springboard for new musical explorations

As a Bach fan I am also partial to Art of Fugue so, of course, Ethan Hein's comments on Contrapunctus I are fun to read.  
http://www.ethanhein.com/wp/2021/the-art-of-fugue-contrapunctus-i/

Not much of a Gould fan, actually, but Angela Hewitt's Bach interpretations I really dig.  I got to hear her play Book I of the Well-Tempered Clavier in concert years and years ago and it was a great recital.  I also like the Emerson String Quartet performance of Art of Fugue, too.  Kerman's book is a worthy read on Bachian counterpoint, in case you didn't already know that, and Hein quotes Kerman extensively to elucidate the appeal and longevity of Bach's late work.

Something else Hein adds is how Bach's work sounds when adapted to a contemporary drum groove.  I ... know of another contemporary appropriation of the Art of Fugue subject that has been reworked so as to be the introduction and conclusion for a sonata in natural harmonics in B minor for solo guitar.  You can play through a three-voiced fugue exposition on Bach's legendary subject using natural harmonics alone as long as you're comfortable playing the harmonics spanning just below fret 3 through frets 4, 5 and about 5.8 (the septimal minor seventh harmonic isn't actually at fret 6).  

The performance could be tighter, of course, but let's just say that I have it reliably confirmed that at the time this was filmed the composition was just a few months old.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nI2NL6g0phI

Annette Kruisbrink: Etude et fugue (style baroque) for solo guitar, with video score

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JV15-9gFgi0

Here's a lovely etude and fugue by Annette Kruisbrink for solo guitar.  I love how the etude theme transforms from duple to triple meter and shifts across registers throughout the etude.  The fugue is beautifully made and the etude idea returns in a couple of chorale forms to wonderful effect in the coda of the fugue.  So I wanted to share the music this weekend and hope you enjoy it as much as I have.

Dusan Bogdanovic: Danse et Fugue for solo guitar

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZZhl3ZBCOY

Still meaning to write about the Bogdanovic Guitar Sonatas 1 through 4 but that will take time to even start setting up.  Meanwhile, here's a fun short dance and fugue for guitar. 

Ethan Hein discusses "Fugue as sample flip"--explanations of sampling techniques remind me that "looping" might fit Schenkerian "knupftechnik", and other ways in which the compositional techniques across hip hop and fugal writing may potentially overlap, with a pitch for the idea that a fugal language can be built from Stevie Wonder songs

http://www.ethanhein.com/wp/2020/fugue-as-sample-flip/

...

In the video that Deb links to, DJ Dahi says that three are three main techniques you can use to flip a sample: looping it, chopping it, and reversing it.

• Looping is the simplest of the three techniques, but its musical significance is deeper than you might think. In his must-read book Making Beats, Joe Schloss points out that looping a sample juxtaposes the sampled material with itself by connecting the end of a phrase with its beginning. In so doing, “looping automatically recasts any musical material it touches, insofar as the end of a phrase is repeatedly juxtaposed with its beginning in a way that was not intended by the original musician. After only a few repetitions, this juxtaposition… begins to take on an air of inevitability. It begins to gather a compositional weight that far exceeds its original significance” (p. 137). Looping can take an idea that was meant to be linear and turn it into something circular, and that act can have political valence.
• Chopping means splitting a sample into segments (e.g. individual drum hits or notes) and then recombining the segments out of order, and/or removing some of them. Audio Two’s “Top Billin'” beat is a chop of the “Impeach the President” drums. Pete Rock created the beat in “They Reminisce Over You (T.R.O.Y.)” by chopping the drum intro to James Brown’s “Say It Loud (I’m Black and I’m Proud).”
• Reversing is the least common technique of the three, but when it appears, it’s conspicuous. The best example I can think of is the chorus to “Work It” by Missy Elliott. She follows the line “Put my thang down, flip it and reverse it” with that same line backwards, repeated twice.

...

Now what's intriguing about this is that coming at things from the perspective of being a classical guitarist who studied what could be called Eurological compositional techniques each of these techniques arguably has correspondences with gestural transformation in what's colloquially known as classical music.

Leo Brouwer Fuga No. 1 for guitar, a somewhat detailed discussion of fugal technique in a fugue that has no middle entries but a series of beautiful episodes and a glorious grand stretto on the first half of its subject

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuPVZyDyREA
[3-11-2023 since the link above is thoroughly dead ... use this as a reference if you don't already know this piece by heart, but here in 2023 you really do need to have the score in front of you and a recording handy if this will benefit you]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxeZewEc_ZY]

One of the simpler observations that has been made about fugal subjects over the centuries is that you're going to have an easier time of things if your subject, generally, does not exceed the range of an octave. 

In traditional tonal music a subject based on a rising fourth will often be thought of as having the second interval being the tonic.  But ... with a modal subject that's not necessarily how things work, and there are linear ways to offset a rising perfect fourth as being defined only as an implicit or explicit V-I linear/harmonic move.

I mention that because that's exactly what Brouwer avoids doing with this fugue subject. He is using a natural minor scale but uses sequence in measure 2 to have his fourth-leap go from F natural to B flat before dropping down to A natural.  One of the things that makes his use of sequence so effective is that he gets to the F natural by way of C natural. Chains of ascending fourths might seem bad for vocal contrapuntal writing but for the guitar, come on, for the guitar chains of ascending fourths are just a few open-string level gestures. 

Now measure 3 and 4 are simple oscillations between the fourth and fifth degree. If you're watching along in the video because you don't have your own copy o fthe score we're not looking at accidentals. Those are left hand indications about which fingers on the left hand are advised for playing the notes.  We'll be getting to accidentals in system two, as you'll see, but we're not there yet in the first few measures of the subject, the first 14 seconds of this performance.

The subject appears at the dominant like we'd expect it to at 0:14 in a lower voice.  There isn't exactly a countersubject in this fugue but the treble material introduces a dorian element that offsets or plays against the natural minor mode of the subject.

Almost straight out the gate on this answer we'll have to address a point that pedantic approaches to counterpoint will highlight.  Doesn't Brouwer almost immediately have parallel fifths in beat two of the FIRST MEASURE in which his subject gets an answer.  Well, yet.  This is on the first half of beat two but in metrical terms beat two is a weak or often unaccented beat and, further, the parallel fifth is a function lf retaining the melodic contour of the subject which, as we can hear and see, drops very quickly down to B flat.  In other words, the parallel fifth does happen but it's excusable by way of happening on a weak beat and by being skipped past quickly in favor of a sixth.  Parallel fifths are bad in counterpoint if you keep landing on them on strong, accented beats but if you're landing on them as you're passing through unaccented beats you have wiggle room.  Brouwer obviously knew this and with a bit of help from a video-score we can talk about that. 

There's clearly been plenty of good contrapuntal music for solo guitar and not nearly enough discusion of how it works, whether it's 19th or 20th or 21st century counterpoint for guitar.  We can try to fix that.

The third voice, in the treble strins and the soprano to the alto and tenor that respectively initiated this exposition, arrives at 0:28.  The dorian modality that took over in the answer is retained in this new entry of the subject.  While the dorian mode doesn't have a lot of "forward motion" as traditionally understood to inhere in major keys on account of the activetones of the leading tone and the fourth, it has an advantage for a guitar fugue, namely that the dorian mode is a symmetrical scale.  The intervallic relationships are the same going up or down and if you try to invert the scale the interval relationships don't chnage.

D E F G A B C D (all natural)
That's the archetypal dorian mode on the piano or the guitar. 

Given how demanding counterpoint in three voices for solo guitar is always going to be having a dorian mode cast to the subject in its third presentation shows that Brouwer is willing to adjust the subject modally as playability requires.  It also just sounds more fun than being stringent about what mode the subject is supposed to be. 

By 0:40 the exposition is over and we're at the section of the score marked "piu mosso"  In this case the tempo picks up and the music becomes very agitated.  Brouwer hammers away in the two upper voices with a harmonic major second (G and A natural) above the lowermost E natural (open string 6).  This, sure enough, sets up a presentation of the subject in E dorian as the beginning of the episodes/middle entries realm of the fugue. 

Something George Oldroyd and others have pointed out is that just because you have three voices in a fugue doesn't mean those three voices have to constantly be identifiably variant.  In other words, you can have two voices in a dependent relationship in musical textural terms while one of the three voices takes all of the spotlight.  For a guitar this point is all the more crucial because it's better to subordinate two voices as support or ornament for your actual hook (i.e. often your subject) than trying to going for the most complex texture you think you can play at the expense of the polyphonic aspect of polyphony.  Your polyphony is about having good tunes first, and secondarily about having those voices generally being independent.  You won't hear total independence of the three voices in Bach's Fugue in C minor from WTC Book 1, will you?

So Brouwer races along with the subject starting on E and it rises as expected to A but as the subject rushes along  it is turned into a running bass line that loses its association with the subject while the seconds pulsating in the trebles become pulsating thirds. We're briefly in, if you will, E minor but this turns out to have been an episode and not a middle entry (i.e. a complete presentation of the subject.  By 0:49 we have the subject appearing in the bass strings but, once again, it's just the first half and it dissolves into a flurry of rising scale runs that lead to a measure of 12/16 where, finally, we start getting some transformation of the second half of the subject as episodic material. 

We're going to see that Brouwer consistently blurs the lines between what could be called a middle entry or an episode.  At 1:03 we get a presentation of the first part of the first half of the subject but it leads abruptly into a curtailed form of the second half of the subject.  The subject rises with its signature fourth leap but it's only here that it has the "expected" fifth-to-tonic implication we would expect it to have in a tonal fugue. Here the dorian element of the subject is really audible.  Like I was writing earlier, making the subject a minor key tune that could be shifted at will from natural minor to dorian was a very good move on Brouwer's part, it's one of the things that makes him a great composer for the guitar. 

This new first half of the first half and first half of the second half of the subject is sequenced at about 1:07 where the counterpoint is "flipped" and the subject appears in the upper voice whereas previously the pulsating pedal tone was in the upper voice above the subject.  At 1:10 we get another motoric iteration of the second half of the subject but here we get a nice rippling, cascading call-and-response texture.  Obviously when you're playing scale-work this fast on the guitar you thin the textures out to two rather than three voices.  Even Bach didn't keep all the voices introduced in an exposition in constant motion throughout a fugue.  If there's a grave misunderstanding guitarists can have about counterpoint in general and counterpoint for their own instrument in particular it would be this, mistakenly thinking that once you have your third voice in a piece you have to keep all the voices active and never let one or two voices drop out. 

So, where was I?  Right, the call-and-response runs based on the second half of the subject at 1:10.  At this point fully homophonic/harmonic writing is in play.  Brouwer starts to slow down and vamps on minor third gestures in widely spaced triads.  He's clearly winding down and laying back on the counterpoint because he's building up to something ambitious.  If you have heard this piece or read along with the score you can already see what he has in mind.  He's going to go for a grand stretto.

At 1:19 the grand stretto arrives. It is, of course, only on the first half of the subject but it's a pretty grand stretto! Remember what I wrote earlier about how chains of ascending fourths is a gloriously idiomatic thing to compose for the guitar?  THAT is what Brouwer employs for this grand stretto.  He knew that his subject could be taken on open strings in a grand stretto passage so that there's technically no voice crossing.  The stretto also allows him to strategiclaly stagger the entries in the stretto so that as each new voice enters the other voices are taking up material that can be assigned to open strings in a modal texture so that the voices that are no longer actively carrying the subject can get lines that can be subordinated to the newest entry of the subject.  This can be done in terms of walking-bass lines and open strings as you can see in the score via video. 

At 1:28 Brouwer has another stretto on the first half of the subject.  This time the alto and tenor enter at G and C respectively and at beats 1 and 2.  It's a blink-and-you-missed it moment but as contrapuntal writing for solo guitar goes it's one of the more glorious passages in the literature I've seen so far. 

Then Brouwer chokes up, on purpose.  He begins to stagger and interrupt the flow of the fugue.  After a full measure pause the subject appears in the trebles with the material in the answer from the exposition (1:40), which is presented as the could-have-been countersubject that it functionally wasn't in the fugue up to this point.  The subject isn't presented in its entirety but is instead sequenced against the countersubject line. At this point the first half of the subject has been run through enough stretto sections that Brouwer is winding down for the fugue but prepares to wind up for a rambunctious finish.  By the time you reach the coda of a fugue you have an option to cast off polyphonic constraints and go for a bravura toccata style texture.

Any guesses what Brouwer does?  I admittedly gave it away.

1:50ish we get some ornate toccata textures in sixteenth notes, full of agitation, soaring over a series of low E pedal points.  You should be able to hear and see how even thse riffs are all derived from embellishing the second half of the subject.  Brouwer has set aside the first half of the subject because he developed it extensively and is using free-form derivations of the second half of his subject as the foundation for the coda that will complete this fugue. He even uses that second half of the subject material as the basis for a short quasi-grand stretto section for that material at 2:09.  By now the pounding away on the E pedal point suggests that our closing cadence is going to be A rather than D and so we do have a final cadence on A ratehr than D.

A more pedantic approach to a fugue would insist that we have to end on the key in which we started.  That's what I prefer to do at a personal level.  Leo Brouwer is Leo Brouwer and he shows that there are other ways to get a fugue for solo guitar to work.  The closing A cadence is effective. 
Now some of you may have noticed that I have not described any episodes that would be understood as episodes in traditional pedagogy.  I have also not described there being any middle entries in the fugue either.  There aren't any.  Brouwer only completes his presentations of the subject in the exposition.    So some of you may understandably ask, "Well, if Leo Brouwer doesn't have any middle entries for his subject and doesn't have anything but a series of episodes using parts of his subject then how is this a fugue?"

That's a good question.  Depending on how you answer we could say that Fuga No. 1 is either not a "real" fugue and must be a fughetta or some fugue-like textural study.  Or we can propose that it IS a fugue but then go back to observations made by Manfred Bukofzer and others about how in the 19th century there really was no such thing as a fugal form and that everything about any given fugue depended on the exigencies of the fugal material on the one hand and what was idiomatically reasonable to execute for the musical forces specified for the material on the other.  In that broader and more "old school" and less doctrinaire approach to defining what a fugue is, Brouwer's Fuga No. 1 is a fantastic fugue, fantastic for the level of development he gives to his subject and also fantastic for the way in which he does so working with the idiomatic strengths and weaknesses of the six-string guitar.

If there were a book about counterpoint for solo guitar I would say this is a work that has to be in such a book.
Even though the fugue is just barely more than two minutes I've managed to write at least 2,300 words about it.  That's how fugues tend to be as literary subjects.  You can write thousands of words simply describing what happens even if you're not trying to mine the depths of the emotional content that this or that writer might here in the work.  Since I love fugues, love writing them, and enjoy writing about them Brouwer's Fuga No. 1 was on my list of thing I wanted to blog about for a while but I didn't get to it until today.  I am going to try to get back to Koshkin's cycle, of course, but you'll understand how hugely demanding that project is.  I hope you listened to the fugue and read along with the score (either because you watched the video or, even better, own a copy of the score yourself!) and enjoyed the work.