Fugue

Fugue, in music, a compositional procedure characterized by the systematic imitation

of a principal theme (called the subject) in simultaneously sounding melodic lines
(counterpoint). The term fugue may also be used to describe a work or part of a work.
In its mathematical intricacy, formality, symmetry, and variety, the fugue holds the
interest of composers, performers, and listeners of Western art music in much the
same way as the sonnet engages English-language poets and their readers.

History of the fugue

The earliest and most rigorous imitative technique in Western polyphony is the canon,
in which each successive voice (the term for a musical line that is sung or played) has
the same melody. Canons appeared in the 13th century and have been an important
resource in Western counterpoint to the present day. (Folk music includes many
examples of repeating canon, called round: “Frère Jacques” and “Row, Row, Row Your
Boat” are familiar examples.) Fugue can be thought of as a later stage in the evolution
of canon. The name fuga was applied to canonic pieces as early as the 14th century,
but the logical ancestors of the fully developed fugue are the closely imitative
beginnings of late 16th-century ensemble canzonas, such as those by Giovanni
Gabrieli, as well as the related ricercare.

An early Baroque work for keyboard showing intense imitative development of a

single subject is the Fantasia chromatica by Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck, although much
of this piece is dominated by fast-moving melodic counterpoint in a free,
improvisatory style without the imitative subject. The Fiori musicali (1635; “Musical
Flowers”) of Girolamo Frescobaldi include imitative cantus firmus pieces (i.e., based
on a preexisting melody), as well as such substantial fugues as the Recercar dopo il
Credo (“Ricercare After the Credo”) and Canzon post il comune (“Canzona After the
Communion”).

In the 17th century, such composers as Frescobaldi and Johann Jakob Froberger made
use of fugal technique within the context of larger movements. The same technique
was used at times by Johann Sebastian Bach, as in some of his keyboard preludes in
Das wohltemperirte Clavier (1722, 1744; The Well-Tempered Clavier, two books, each
comprising 24 paired preludes and fugues in all the major and minor keys); the E-flat
Major Prelude in the first book, for example, freely intermixes strictly fugal and
entirely nonfugal passages. By the time of Bach, the fugue as a complete composition,
or as a named and self-contained section of a larger composition, had been well
established in keyboard works by Dietrich Buxtehude, Johann Pachelbel, Georg Muffat,
and many others in Germany, as well as in orchestral concerti by Antonio Vivaldi and
others in Italy. The composer Johann Caspar Ferdinand Fischer’s Ariadne musica
(1702), with preludes and fugues in pairs, in most of the possible keys, is a forerunner
of Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier.
The works of Bach stand at the very pinnacle of the history of the fugue. Bach’s fugues
remain unsurpassed in their extraordinary variety and in their individual perfection,
and no other composer produced so many resplendent examples of fugues large and
small for every medium available to him at the time. Hardly less impressive, though
not as numerous, are the large-scale choral fugues in the oratorios of Bach’s
contemporary, George Frideric Handel, as well as the fugues in concertante style in
his concerti grossi. Yet by the middle of the 18th century, the fugue had passed its
peak in popularity with composers; in the late 18th century, the fugue would survive
chiefly in sacred music as a model of hallowed tradition. The symphonic era had begun,
the period of Viennese Classicism, and the textures of the sonata and symphony
developed in the direction of accompanied melody and chordal textures, generally
leaving aside systematically maintained contrapuntal textures

Elements of the fugue

Fugal techniques can produce music of great interest and complexity, although the
ingredients of a fugue are relatively few and the procedures are straightforward. The
first section, always included, is the exposition, during which the principal theme, or
subject, is stated successively in each of the constituent voices or parts. The first
statement of the subject is in one voice alone. While this voice continues, the second
statement enters, transposed to the key of the dominant (the fifth degree of the scale),
and is called the answer; the third statement returns to the main key; the fourth
statement, if there is one, typically is in the dominant key again. If the melody of the
answer is an exact transposition of the subject, into the new key, it is a real answer;
often, however, the melody will be slightly manipulated to avoid a true change of key,
in which case it is a tonal answer.

The answer is typically accompanied by counterpoint in another voice; if the same

pairing continues throughout the fugue, that contrapuntal voice is labeled a
countersubject. The contrapuntal relationship between subject and countersubject in
different voices must work equally well regardless of which is above or below; that is,
the counterpoint must be invertible. In many fugues, however, there is no
countersubject; the counterpoint accompanying the subject is free and does not
systematically recur.

Following the exposition, the subject can be regularly restated as often as the
composer desires, but normally the subject appears at least once more in every part.
Statements of the subject are often varied by transposition, with a corresponding
temporary change of key. In some fugues, the subject is always present in one part or
another; in most, statements of the subject are often separated by connective melodic
passages called episodes.
The way the fugue unfolds and how long it lasts are determined by the composer’s
wish to include a variety of possible treatments of the subject. The subject may be
short or very long, with a range of possibilities in between, and the fugue itself may
be short, only a few measures, or of many minutes’ duration. The number of parts
(voices) in the fugue is likewise flexible. Most fugues are in three or four voices (“à 3”
or “à 4”), but not all of these are used at any given moment; it is common for an
episode to proceed in as few as two voices.

Varieties of the fugue

Fugues have been composed for every medium and genre, sacred or secular, vocal or
instrumental, solo or ensemble. Bach composed his fugues for the organ; for the
harpsichord or clavichord in the two books of The Well-Tempered Clavier and in the
toccatas, suites, and partitas; for unaccompanied chorus, in the motets; for chorus
with organ or orchestra, in the cantatas, passions, and masses; even for solo violin, in
the partitas and sonatas.

Fugues in two voices are rare, and in Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier there is only
one, No. 10 of Book 1; a few of his Fifteen Inventions are two-voice fugues (Nos. 5, 10,
12, and 15). Five-, six-, and even seven-part fugues are likewise possible but
uncommon. Two fugues in The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1, are five-part fugues,
Nos. 4 and 22. The opening “Kyrie” of Bach’s Mass in B Minor, BWV 232 (1747–49), is
a five-part fugue; the first “Credo” is a seven-part fugue over a free bass, an example
of particularly complex yet clear counterpoint. The six-part fugue in the Musical
Offering, BWV 1079 (1747; Musikalisches Opfer), Bach chose to call ricercare in honour
of the older form.

Composers have varied the subject by doubling the rhythmic value of each note, a
technique known as augmentation. Conversely, they may cut the values in half, or into
smaller fractions, resulting in the diminution of the subject. Another approach to
manipulating the subject is melodic inversion, in which the up and down intervals of
the subject are exactly reversed; for example, if the subject moves upward a whole
tone (as from g to a), the inversion moves downward a whole tone (as from g to f). In
The Art of the Fugue, BWV 1080 (published 1751; Die Kunst der Fuge), Bach composed
two three-voice mirror fugues; each of these is paired with a second fugue that is the
exact mirror inversion, in all parts, of the first.

The subject may be begun in one part as usual but then proceed immediately in
another as well, before the first statement has finished. This overlapping, called
stretto, is often found near the end of a fugue, as a means of building to a climax, but
may occur anywhere, usually after the exposition. Examples from The Well-Tempered
Clavier include Nos. 1 and 8 from Book 1 and Nos. 5, 7, and 22 from Book 2; stretto
occurs within the exposition of Book 2, No. 3.
In a double fugue two subjects may receive simultaneous exposition; the result is
similar to a simple fugue with a countersubject, as is the case in the opening chorus of
Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, BWV 244 (1727; Passio secundum Matthaeum). More
often, in a double fugue the composer gives the two subjects separate complete
expositions, first one and then the other, and eventually brings the two subjects
together, as in The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 2, No. 18, a three-voice fugue. In
Mozart’s Fugue in G Minor, K 401, for piano four hands (1782), the two subjects are
melodic inversions of each other.

Two excellent examples of triple fugue (i.e., having three subjects) are Bach’s The
Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1, No. 4, and his Fugue in E-flat Major for organ, BWV
552, called the St. Anne (1739); both of these are five-voice fugues, but a complete
texture of five different parts appears only part of the time, with passages of two,
three, or four parts making up most of the piece. In the St. Anne fugue, each of the
three subjects has a separate exposition in its own metre, and only the first subject is
combined with each of the other two.