II. Avanti! Fughetta: Hommage à Tiensuu (ca. 5.5 min.)
a. Figura; alla marcia
b. Corpus
c. Modus coloris
* This work may be performed either as a complete diptych or with each movement presented independently.
* Scoring:
Avanti! Fughetta–fl. (doubling picc., alto fl.) cl. (doubling bass cl.) hn. tpt. tbn. vn1. vn2. vla. vlc. cb.
A reading recording of Albany Fughetta is also available upon request.
Avanti! Chamber Orchestra Jukka Rantamäki, conductor
Palokunnan talo, Porvoo, Finland, June 2026
The fugue has drawn me toward music’s archaic and mysterious realms since the beginning of my musical journey. As a middle schooler listening to a portable CD player filled with game and animated film music on the bus—well before I could read a musical score—I often turned to Bach and imagined following the flight of a free soul, a melody unfolding along infinitely bifurcating, cosmic modulatory paths in the air. Shortly after, I wrote my first fughetta, composed with the help of digital software and guided more by intuition than by counterpoint. Even after formal training and extended engagement with European modernist techniques, I repeatedly found myself returning to fugal writing.
The present pieces mark another return, prompted by a series of small compositional tasks written for the Albany Symphony and Avanti! Chamber Orchestra , and in part by the inspiration of my teacher, Jukka Tiensuu, whose music playfully reinvents the past within his own innovative vision. (e.g., his Arsenic and Old Lace) I now approach the fugue with a more modest and reflective mindset. By returning to this archaic form, forever the seedbed of composers, I sought to shape another version of my own gem—one filled with color, lines, chains of interaction, conversations, and, above all, stories, in an intimate, deeply personal way.
Bani-Vanti Fughetti was written for the Albany Symphony Orchestra and the Avanti! Chamber Orchestra, with the first and second movements to be premiered by each ensemble, respectively. Conceived as a modular diptych, the two movements feature slightly different instrumentations; each may function as a stand-alone concert work or be performed together as the complete diptych. Avanti! Fughetta is dedicated with gratitude to my mentor, Jukka Tiensuu.
A Note on Avanti! Fughetta:
The opening of Avanti! Fughetta traces back to my first meeting with Jukka Tiensuu in 2018. Around that time, I composed Contratactus in Stile Francese for Baroque trio sonata—recorder, violin, viola da gamba, and quarter-tone-tuned harpsichord, with or without electronics, in response to a compositional task he gave me. The work was later performed alongside his recorder concerto Appo, whose playful, mischievous spirit and theatrical opening—in which the recorder player enters while marching and playing, recalling the figure of the Pied Piper—left a lasting impression on me. The march-like opening of Avanti! Fughetta is my own affectionate response to that memorable image. From there, the principal subject, distantly recalling Albany Fughetta, begins its own independent musical journey.
