# Listening to Elgar, Episode Six



## Vesteralen (Jul 14, 2011)

Since I have not been able to pick up the score for the Six Promenades for Wind Quintet at my library yet, I'm going to skip ahead and give my reactions to the *Fugue in D minor*.

Other than the fact that it was written in 1878, when Elgar was in his 21st or 22nd year, I could not discover much about this piece. I also don't pretend to understand fugues as a general category. I'm familiar with the sound of fugues, but why they don't always consist of strict imitation of voices, I don't know. My normal reaction to a fugue is that the appreciation is entirely mental, almost mathematical, and not emotional. This fugue is no exception.

What I did like about it when I heard it was that it was for a different combination of instruments than I would have expected, and different as well from anything I've heard of Elgar so far. The violin was expected, but the later entry of the oboe in the second part was a bit of a pleasant surprise.

At any rate, this is not a composition to knock one's socks off (the piece only takes about a minute and a half), just an example of Elgar's ability to compose in this genre.


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