Rudolf Löw, Fuga g moll

by admin · January 30, 2022

Rudolf Löw’s opus 1 consists of 12 compositions for the pipe orgen. Of these, I have already published 11 (you can find the scores here: https://partitura.org/index.php/low-rudolf/). The 12th and final composition is a fugue in g minor, that to me looked rather daunting. Which is way I kept postponing to start practising this fugue. It kept nagging at me however, because it felt a bit unsatisfying not to publish all 12 compositions of Löw’s opus 1.

So last week I set myself the task of finally practising this g minor fugue. It is a four part fugue of which I have consistently rendered the bass voice as a pedal part. The manuscript writes the bass voice on the first page as a part for the left hand. From the second page onward it is notated as a pedal part. Now it is of course possible that this is exactly as the composer intended. It certainly would be more easy to play. The fugua starts the exposition with theme in the bass voice and there are some tricky runs up and down the key board for the bass voice during the exposition of the fugue. Nevertheless, it feels strange that the pedals should enter after the exposition. And the fifth occurence of the theme is certainly not part of the exposition as there is a short episode of 5 bars between the fourth and fifth occurence of the fugue theme and both occurence are in d minor. Had the fifth occurence of the theme belonged to the exposition, it would have been played in g minor. And the fugue would have been composed in five parts, instead of as it is, in four parts.

It turned out to be exactly as tricky to play as I thought it would be. Actually, it is a bit mnore difficult than I can comfortably play, so you’ll notice that my performance is not exactly smooth. Yet it is passable enough to finally be able to publish the 12th and final piece from Rudolf Löw’s opus 1.

The recording was done with the Hauptwerk software and the sample set, made by Voxus, of the Van Dam organ (1832) in Tholen (https://www.voxusorgans.com/en/product/tholen).

Score