Ionian Fugue in 2 parts (audio)

Modal fugue composed for my self-study of the 16th-century polyphonic style based primarily on the method in Johann Joseph Fux's The Study of Fugue, part of his influential 1725 counterpoint treatise Gradus ad Parnassum
Orchestrated for clarinet and bassoon with audio rendered using Muse Sounds, the stock sample library in my notation software MuseScore

[@celesymmetry8629]

Ionia still stands!

[@hisky.]

if it only has 2 parts doesn't that make it an invention

[@jin_cotl]

What

[@cantyoms]

what bro

[@erlkinglook4824]

A fugue can have 2 voices (Bach wrote a few himself). What makes it a fugue is how the subject is used. Inventions are contrapuntal works that don't have a subject like a fugue does, and can have more than 2 or 3 voices (3 voiced inventions are also called sinfonias, because of Bach).

[@samuelwnovak]

One could make several arguments about why that isn't strictly true, but most of them come down to the fact that nearly all the genre titles composers have used to label their pieces (like fugue, prelude, sonata, overture, symphony, etc.) aren't nearly so clear-cut and set-in-stone as the abstracted models theorists use to describe/explain/teach them. They mean different things and have different defining characteristics at different points in history. In the case of fugue, the earliest mention of that word in a theoretical work was in 1330 (Speculum musicae by Jacobus de Ispania), in which it was basically a synonym for canon. Furthermore, most contemporary musicians would probably be surprised to learn that, even though JS Bach is now considered the undisputed all-time master of fugue whose works are the quintessential models, theorists around 1900 were arguing that not one of the 48 in his Well-Tempered Clavier are legitimate, "correctly written" fugues "because he allows himself too many exceptions" (Fugue by Ebenezer Prout, 1891). I say all that to make clear that it's hard to be completely objective about these distinctions since the terms themselves are historically fluid.
To properly discuss whether a piece is more appropriately called an invention or fugue, we’d of course need to know what characteristics qualify each. I could probably write a 10-page essay about the differences between inventions and fugues (and why the contemporary conception of inventions as just a simple subspecies of fugue is actually tough to defend), but, briefly, the number of parts is not the deciding factor, but rather the specific compositional techniques used.
The popular conception of what constitutes an "invention" derives from the work of JS Bach, namely his 15 2-part Inventions. If one tried to learn about inventions (and especially how to compose them), any decent account of the necessary compositional techniques and general procedure would include the idea of “imitation at the octave.” In imitation at the octave, in case you or anybody else reading this didn’t know, a short melodic theme (which has historically been called a "subject" in discussions of imitative polyphony) is presented on the tonic first in one part, then again on the tonic in another part in a different octave. Fugues, on the other hand, do not use imitation at the octave but “fugal imitation” i.e. the alternation of entrances of the subject first on the tonic in one part, then on the dominant in a different part (or vice versa).
It’s also worth mentioning that despite the fact this this technique of imitation at the octave is central to discourse about what inventions are, only a minority of Bach’s Inventions (Nos. 1-4, 7, 8, and 10; so 7 out of all 15) are imitative, and one of them doesn’t use imitation at the octave (No. 10 uses fugal imitation, so you might even call it a fugue or fughetta). I’m sure most would agree that it’s odd that we should take Bach’s Inventions as the archetype but then ascribe a quality to that archetype that most of the archetypal examples don’t even display. Go figure.
Regarding this piece, it’s important to know that it’s really an entirely separate conception of "fugue" than the one we usually mean when we say "fugue." We usually refer to Baroque-style tonal fugues when we say "fugue," but this is a Renaissance-style modal fugue. There are similarities of course, but one of the most important aspects of tonal fugues, modulation through different keys, isn’t a factor in modal fugues since the concepts of tonal centers and modulation hadn't been developed yet. However, if one HAD to argue for whether this piece was closer to the popular conception of inventions or fugues, it would still certainly be fugue because it uses specifically fugal imitation.
That was a lot for a TH-cam comment, but a complete response would require a whole lot more LOL. For a history of fugal theory, see Part One of Alfred Mann's The Study of Fugue, which is the first 70ish pages of the book. For a history of Renaissance modal theory (and what an inconsistent trainwreck it was), see the video “Modes in the 16th and 17th centuries” on the Early Music Sources TH-cam channel.
Thank you for listening!

[@hisky.]

@@samuelwnovak this was a very thoughtful and informative response, thank you so much