Fugue

One subject chased through several voices, fugue turns imitation into architecture.

Related

BaroqueFugueCounterpointHarpsichord

A fugue builds a whole piece from one short subject. The subject appears alone, then enters in other voices, sometimes close, sometimes apart, taking shape between chase and release.

Origins

Sixteenth-century ricercars and canzonas turned imitation into an instrumental language. In the seventeenth century the fugue grew from a passage after a prelude into an independent genre. Bach wrote The Well-Tempered Clavier with a prelude and fugue in each key, and in The Art of Fugue he reshaped one subject repeatedly.

Listening features

Catch the subject's shape, its direction and rhythm. The second entry usually comes a fifth above, the answer; a countersubject often accompanies it. After the exposition come episodes, where material is broken up and modulated, and the subject returns augmented, diminished or inverted. The ending often piles entries over a pedal point.

Composers and works

Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor sets free improvisation beside strict counterpoint; the C minor fugue from Book I is short and tight. Beethoven wrote a fugue into the finale of the Hammerklavier Sonata. Shostakovich's Twenty-Four Preludes and Fugues carry it into the twentieth century.

Lineage

It grows from the ricercar, canzona and motet imitation, and feeds sonata development, variation and twelve-tone writing; it is both a genre and a method.

Misconceptions

A fugue is not a fixed template; the spacing and key of each entry can change. It need not be slow or solemn. Fugue differs from canon: a canon makes the whole melody chase itself, while a fugue only needs the subject to appear in turn.

Sources

• The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed., entry "Fugue" — definitions and dating checked, not quoted
• Richard Taruskin, The Oxford History of Western Music, vol. 2 — context checked, not quoted

Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.