Presentation Plans

With my presentation date coming up in the near future, I need to start preparing for it to make it both educational and entertaining for my classmates. So far I plan on first giving a brief walk-through over how I transposed and arranged my music, and then explain what a fugue is with the Britney Spears string quartet video. During this time it will give me and my friends time to set up with our instruments, after which we will play the prelude and then the fugue with small introductions from me. I will work out the timing on this later after I have rehearsed it with friends, and if needed I will add in some other activity if I have time left over.

Completed Prelude!

As of this Sunday I have completed both the fugue and the prelude, and they are ready to be performed. I have selected a few french hornists already to play these pieces, and I'm hoping to rehearse with them starting this weekend. The prelude's arranging and software input took much less time than the fugue- I seem to have gotten the hang of muse score, however bad it is. I unfortunately had to cross some voices so they are no longer in their proper ranges while I was writing it, but I wanted to be kind to my friends and not force them to play incredibly low or high.

A Little More on Fugues

Since most people don't really know what a fugue is exactly, I decided to write one of these posts on it to better educate my classmates when I do finally present my finished project.

The definition of a fugue: a contrapuntal composition in which a short melody or phrase (the subject) is introduced by one part and successively taken up by others and developed by interweaving the parts.

So essentially, a fugue is a piece of music that has one distinct melody line that is played by every voice in the music (Soprano, Alto, Tenor, Bass) at different times so one voice will always have this melody or phrase while the rest accompany it. When playing a fugue, it is always very important to let this central phrase be the loudest voice in the ensemble (or hands, if playing piano) in order for the fugue to make any sense. 

Here is a beginner friendly example of a fugue, featuring Britney Spears' "Oops I did it Again" that I may use in my class presentation, as it's pretty entertaining while also educational. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aeZSlZBjGI