Fugue - Oxford Music Online

8/12/2019 Fugue - Oxford Music Online

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Fugue(from Lat. fuga: flight, fleeing; Fr. fugue; Ger. Fuge; It. fuga).

A term in continuous use among musicians since the 14th century, when it was introduced, along

with its vernacular equivalents chaceand caccia, to designate a piece of music based on canonicimitation (i.e. one voice chasing another; the Latin fuga is related to both fugere: to flee and

fugare: to chase). Like canon, fugue has served since that time both as a genre designation for a

piece of music and as the name of a compositional technique to be introduced into a piece of music.

Imitative counterpoint in some fashion has been the single unifying factor in the history of fugue, but

as compositional approaches to imitation changed so did the meanings and usages of the word

fugue. Between 1400 and 1700 the word held a wide variety of meanings and was employed in a

great many contexts, with the idea of fugue as a compositional technique predominating. By the

early 18th century musicians had come to prefer its use as a genre designation, in which guise

fugue has continued until the present. It is generally distinguished on the one hand from canon,

which involves the strictest sort of imitative counterpoint, and on the other from mere imitation, which

involves the least strict.

Despite the prominence of fugue in the history of Western art music and its virtually continuous

cultivation in one form or another from the late Middle Ages until today, there exists no widespread

agreement among present-day scholars on what its defining characteristics should be. Several

factors contibute to this lack of consensus: (1) between the late Middle Ages and the late Baroque a

great variety of genre designationsricercare, canzona, capriccio, fantasia, fugue itself, even motet

came and went in which techniques of imitative counterpoint figured prominently. Thus the history

of fugue cannot adequately be accounted for if only pieces called fugue are studied. (2) If all pieces

called fugue were collected together and compared, no single common defining characteristic would

be discovered beyond that of imitation in the broadest sense. (3) Since the early 19th century genre

designations have been defined largely if not exclusively by their formal structures. Formal structure,

however, is not in the end a defining characteristic of fugue. As a result, there has been prolonged

argument about whether fugue is a form at all (and, by extension, whether it is a genre) as well as

whether any particular formal model should be considered necessary (most often recommended in

this context is a ternary model vaguely reminiscent of sonata form; see Dreyfus, 1993). (4) There

has developed, beginning in the mid-17th century, a theoretical, textbook model for fugue, most

often associated with Fuxs Gradus ad Parnassumand, thanks in large part to Cherubini, with the

teaching of the Paris Conservatoire. The appropriateness of this model as a standard, and of its

characteristics as necessary and sufficient for the genre, has been a topic of considerable debate.

The most commonly recommended alternative to this model has been the fugues of J.S. Bach,

especially those of Das wohltemperirte Clavier(the 48). (5) Although it is generally agreed that a

great deal of fine fugal composition appeared before Bach and Fux, reliance on post-1700 models

has caused disagreement and uncertainty about how to define and evaluate fugal works composed

before 1700.


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The historical survey beginning in 2 below is preceded by a detailed analysis of the C minor fugue

from book 1 of the 48 as it is commonly presented by English speakers. This particular fugue is

frequently cited as a paradigm, and it is through just such an analysis that over the years many

musicians have encountered fugue for the first time. The analysis introduces the most important

standard fugal terminology and demonstrates the kind of norm that many musicians consider

essential to define the genre. The emphasis throughout the survey that follows will be on the

changing nature and uses of fugal composition and the various meanings of the word as understood

by musicians of each era.

1. A classic fugue analysed.

The fugue in C minor from book 1 of Bachs 48 (ex.1) is now generally described by English

speakers as follows.

The fugue is for three voices, which may be labelled soprano, alto and bass, and the independence

and integrity of each are strictly maintained until the last two bars, when chords are introduced to

lend fullness and finality. A single voice, the alto, begins the fugue by stating the subject. The

subject is in the tonic key: it begins on the tonic note C, emphasizes the dominant note G (downbeat

of bar 2) and ends on the mediant note (downbeat of bar 3). Once the subject has been stated in its

entirety, the second voice (the soprano) enters with the same subject, but transposed to the key of

the dominant. This second statement is termed the answer. Such a transposition often requires, as

here, that the original intervals of the subject be altered in order to keep the answer close to the

tonic key. More specifically, whereas tonic note is answered by dominant note (i.e. transposed up a

5th or down a 4th), dominant note is answered by tonic rather than by supertonic. In this particular

answer, the second note is an exact intervallic reproduction, producing F and signalling the key of

the dominant, G minor, but the fourth note is changed from D (supertonic) to C (tonic). All other

intervals from the fifth note to the end of the answer are exact renderings of the subjects intervals.

An answer of this sort, in which intervals are altered to remain close to the tonic key, is called a

tonal answer. Any answer in which no intervals of the subject are altered is called a real answer.

While voice 2 states the answer, voice 1 continues with counterpoint against it. This counterpoint

may, as here, be material that returns frequently during the course of the piece, usually as

counterpoint to the subject, or it may present material that never returns. Especially in the former

case, this thematic material is called a countersubject. Both answer and countersubject conclude

on the downbeat of bar 5, at which point both continue in counterpoint for two bars without stating

either the subject or the countersubject in complete form. These two bars constitute what is often

called a codetta. Although neither thematic unit is present in its entirety, the material in voice 2 is a

melodic sequence based on the opening motif of the subject, and voice 1 contains scalar passages

reminiscent (although in contrary motion) of the countersubject. The final voice enters with the

subject (in its original, not its answer, form) at the beginning of bar 7, accompanied by voice 2 with

the countersubject. Voice 1 states yet another countersubject, though one that is treated rather
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freely during the course of the fugue. All three subject, countersubject 1 and countersubject 2

end with the downbeat of bar 9.

The opening eight bars make up the fugues exposition. Standard requirements of a fugal

exposition are that (1) the voices enter one by one with the subject, each waiting until the preceding

voice has completed its statement before entering; (2) each voice enter with the subject, in either

subject or answer form, only once (occasionally the first voice to enter may restate the subject at the

end of the exposition); and (3) the entries alternate between subject and answer statements.

Additional options are that (1) the first statement of the answer may be accompanied by a

countersubject, which is then stated in turn by all voices (except the last) as accompaniment to the

next statement of the subject; and (2) there may be a codetta between statements 1 and 2 and

statement(s) 3 (and 4).

An exposition is the most strictly regulated portion of a fugue. The remainder is understood to be an

alternation between sections in which the subject is stated in its complete form by one or more

voices and sections in which it is not present in its complete form. The latter, called episodes, may

or may not take any of their motivic material from the subject or countersubject. Complete

statements of the subject may take place in keys other than the tonic, in which case episodes serve

to modulate to and from those keys. Statements may also incorporate some learned contrapuntal

device that alters the subject in some way but leaves it complete and recognizable. These devices

include augmentation (the slowing down, generally by a factor of two, of the original note values),

diminution (halving or quartering the note values), inversion (stating the subject upside down) and

stretto (introducing a second statement before the first has finished). It is generally understood that

the fugue will end with some sort of statement of the subject in the tonic key. Any material following

that statement is termed a coda.

Beginning with bar 9, Bachs C minor fugue proceeds as follows: there are four episodes (bars 9

10, 1314, 1719 and 226). Each takes its thematic material from the opening five-note motif of the

subject and the scalar passages of quavers and semiquavers in the two countersubjects. These

motifs are generally treated in melodic sequence. In addition, the first two episodes modulate to and

from the key of the relative major, E . The complete statements of the subject that appear in

between involve in each case subject and two countersubjects distributed among the three voices.

In bars 1112 (in E ) the soprano carries the subject, in 1516 the alto, in 2021 the soprano

again, and in 268 the bass. After a brief connecting passage the final statement of the subject, in

its original form and at its original pitch, is stated by the soprano over a C pedal point in the bass

and accompanied by a few full chords in the alto. The entire fugue appears inex.1.Most elements

of a textbook fugue are present in Bachs C minor fugue. One of its most attractive features is its

thematic tightness, that is, the presence of material from the subject or one of the countersubjects in

virtually any voice at any point in the fugue. Also present is a modulation to a related key with the

subject stated in that key. What this particular fugue lacks is the use of any of the contrapuntal

devices enumerated above.
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Ex.1 Bach, Fugue in C Minor from Das wohltemperirte Clavier, book 1

To hear this example please click here

Ex.1 continued

To hear this example please click here

2. Medieval and Renaissance vocal music.

(i) 14th and 15th centuries.

The words fuga, chace and caccia all denote the chase or hunt, and in the 14th century all

acquired the same musical meaning, namely a piece of music consisting either entirely or principally

of two or more voices in canon. Canonic technique was, along with Stimmtausch, the earliest type of

imitative counterpoint in Western music, and it may therefore fairly be said that the word fugue has

been associated with imitative techniques since their first formulation. By the 15th century, chace

and caccia had largely fallen from use and fugue became the term of choice for any piece in whichall voices participated in the canonic performance of a single melodic line (see, for example, the

fugues by Oswald von Wolkenstein).

As early as the mid-15th century, however, fugue had begun to take on new meanings. As canonic

technique came increasingly to be incorporated into pieces that also included non-canonic voices,

musicians often continued to apply the word, though not to the piece as a whole; they reserved it

instead for the canonic voices. Also at this time, musicians began to use fugue to designate the

compositional technique itself. Johannes Tinctoris, in his dictionary of musical terms written about

1472, defined it as the sameness [ idemtitas] of the voice parts in a composition. The notes andrests of the voice parts are identical in [rhythmic] value, name [i.e. hexachord syllable], shape and
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sometimes even location on the staff. Here fugue is not a piece of music or group of voices

governed by canonic technique; it is the technique itself, the quality of having made the voice parts

identical. Perhaps the best-known use of the word in this sense is Josquin des Prezs Missa ad

fugam, or mass by means of fugue.

(ii) 16th century.

During the 15th century, as composers gradually abandoned the compositional process of writing

one voice at a time above a cantus firmus in favour of the simultaneous composition of all voices a

few bars at a time, the point of imitation began to replace canonic writing as the pre-eminent

technique of imitative counterpoint. To write a motet or mass movement using this technique, the

composer first created for each phrase of text a musical phrase that fitted its Latin declamation well.

The piece then proceeded as a series of imitative sections, each devoted to its own textual/musical

phrase which was treated in a manner similar to (if much freer than) the fugal exposition described

in 1 above. These imitative sections, usually referred to today as points of imitation but called

fugues by musicians of the time, might also alternate with occasional homophonic sections for

contrast. A classic early example of a piece composed in this manner is Josquins four-voice Ave

Maria virgo serena. Musicians never adopted the word fugue as a genre designation for such

pieces, however. The first composers to import point-of-imitation technique into instrumental music

beginning with the Musica nova (1540) of Julio Segni, Willaert and others chose instead the

designation ricercar, a word meaning to seek out or to search. Throughout the 16th century, only

the strictly canonic piece might bear the genre designation fugue.

North of the Alps, composers of the post-Josquin generation, most notably Clemens non Papa and

Nicolas Gombert, made point-of-imitation technique the cornerstone of their style. As described by

the German theorist Gallus Dressler, an enthusiast for the music of Clemens, in his manuscript

treatise Praecepta musicae poeticaedated 1563, a fugue (i.e. pointof imitation) that appeared at

the beginning of a piece needed to be constructed in such a way that the mode of the composition

was made clear at the outset. This meant that the melodic motion of the voices should emphasize

the important modal notes of final, dominant, mediant and psalm tone tenor(s), and that the imitation

should show a certain clarity of structure. As a result the opening fugue of a 16th-century motet

resembles in many respects the exposition of an 18th-century fugue: its voices are most likely to

enter on final (tonic) and dominant, its theme is also likely to feature those notes prominently, and

each voice is likely to wait until the previous one has completed its thematic statement before

entering.

Dressler borrowed the tripartite division of beginning (exordium), middle (medium) and end (finis)

from classical rhetoric to describe a compositions overall structure, and indicated that fugues

appearing in the body of the piece (i.e. the medium) could be handled much more freely than the

opening one (which Dressler defined as the exordium). This freedom extended to the allowing of

thematic entrances on notes other than final and dominant, the greater altering of the theme from

statement to statement, the incorporation into the theme o f notes outside the mode, and


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considerable use of stretto. For the finis, however, the composition should close with a strong

reaffirmation of the mode.

Here again certain parallels can be drawn, this time between the structure of a motet and that of an

18th-century fugue: both begin and end in the key (or mode) and with greater regularity but may

wander (i.e. touch on other notes or keys) and behave more freely in the body of the composition.

Most of the motets of Clemens and Gombert fit Dresslers model well.

South of the Alps, meanwhile, Clemenss and Gomberts Netherlandish contemporary Adrian

Willaert and his Italian pupil Gioseffo Zarlino took a different attitude towards imitative counterpoint

and attempted instead to preserve Tinctoriss 15th-century definition of fugue as exact imitation. In

his Istitutioni harmoniche (1558) Zarlino subdivided imitative counterpoint into four categories, for

which he coined the expressions fuga legata, fuga sciolta, imitatione legataand imitatione sciolta.

Whereas musicians in the north had already begun to label all imitative counterpoint fugue, Zarlino

insisted that the word be reserved exclusively for instances in which the following voice (which he

called consequente) reproduced exactly all the intervals and rhythmic values of the preceding voice

(guida). Imitatione should refer to instances when the consequente did not reproduce the guida

exactly. The adjectives legata and sciolta then distinguished further between, respectively,

passages in which the consequente continued to imitate the guida from beginning to end of the

piece, and those in which the imitation was broken off at some point. Zarlino also allowed for both

fugaand imitationein contrary motion, for which he offered the modifier per arsin et thesin(which

was a Greek expression literally designating upbeats and downbeats).

Zarlino pointed out that fugawas possible only when the consequentewas a perfect interval from

the guida. This requirement was a direct descendant of Tinctoriss insistence that the solmization

syllables of the two voices be identical, which restricted the imitation to the three hexachords.

However, a perfect interval does not guarantee exactness of imitation. For instance, any imitative

counterpoint written at the 4th or 5th can be melodically exact only so long as the voices remain

within the bounds of their respective hexachords. Thus, if Zarlinos distinction between exact and

inexact replication is to be strictly maintained, it must be conceded that his technique of imitation

can take place at any interval, perfect or imperfect.

Scholars are not in full agreement about whether Zarlino meant to allow for the technique of

imitatione at a perfect interval, but in any case the theorist himself seems to have recognized a

conflict between categories of imitative counterpoint based on the degree of exactness of replication

and those based on imitation at perfect as opposed to imperfect intervals. To address this problem,

Zarlino created a final category, which he called part fugue and part imitation but admitted was

often called fugue. The example he offered involves two voices that imitate each other canonically at

the 5th. At only three places does the second voice answer inexactly, and in each case the

inexactness consists of an F answered by a B natural rather than the B that would be required for

precise replication.


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Willaerts music reflects Zarlinos thinking closely in its penchant for introducing imitative

counterpoint horizontally into a composition voice by voice. The point of imitation almost never

serves as the building-block for Willaerts mature works as it does for the works of Clemens and

Gombert, whereas canon is frequently encountered (see, for example, Verbum supernum and

Praeter rerum seriem from Musica nova, 1559). Nevertheless, despite Willaerts prestige and the

lasting influence of Zarlinos writings, the wave of the future was not canon but the point of imitation,

which allowed a much more flexible treatment of the words and thus fitted better with humanistic

ideals about text expression and clarity of declamation. In the end, therefore, Zarlinos ro le in the

history of fugue is a peculiar one. On the one hand, the traditional idea of fugue as precision of

imitation and its manifestation in canonic writing quickly faded. Yet, at the same time, the categories

of imitative counterpoint which he invented lived on, though with very different meanings from those

intended by their creator.

As the 16th century drew to its close, the rise of humanism, with its emphasis on clarity of text,

caused many musicians, especially in Italy, to question altogether the suitability of fugal techniques

in vocal music, since their use virtually ensured that different words were being sung simultaneously

by the various parts. By the 1580s, when Vincenzo Galilei began to call for the abandonment of

fugal writing, it was apparent that the most important and innovatory genre of music was the Italian

madrigal, in which fugue played no significant role. Even such conservative composers as

Palestrina and Lassus began, partly under the influence of Counter-Reformation concerns for

textual clarity, to show much greater caution in introducing points of imitation into their motets, in

contrast to its almost ubiquitous presence in the works of Clemens and Gombert. Introduce it they

did, however. In fact, Lassus continued to be cited by German theorists writing about fugue

throughout the first half of the 17th century, and in the 1660s Christoph Bernhard chose Palestrinas

offertories to illustrate his chapters on fugue. The first major composers of vocal music in the new

Baroque style, however, all but abandoned fugal techniques for their seconda pratica music. (A

piece such as Monteverdis Piagne e sospira, from the fourth book of madrigals, is a rare exception.)

Fugue found no place in the new genres of opera, monody or cantata, nor, surprisingly, did it play a

role in the early development of the oratorio. Even such a retrospective collection as Schtzs

Geistliche Chor-Music(1648) is of li ttle significance in the history of imitative counterpoint. It was not

until towards the end of the 17th century that fugue once again re-entered the sphere of vocal music

in a significant way. By that time, a great deal had changed.

3. 16th-century instrumental music.

Although histories of Western music tend to emphasize a sharp division in musical style about 1600,

the history of fugal techniques in instrumental music cuts across this divide. A direct and continuous

line of development can be traced from the ricercares of Segnis Musica novaof 1540 to the fugues

of Das wohltemperirte Clavier. Surprisingly, this development has been less well mapped out than

one might expect. Perhaps the most troublesome of the several difficulties inherent in the study is

the issue of genre and terminology. Very few of these pieces written before 1700 were designated


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as fugues, and other designations abound. The best way to approach this body of music and to tie

all the compositions together is to consider fugue in its guise as a compositional technique.

From its inception the imitative ricercare seems to have carried connotations of learnedness that

is, it served either as compositional study or, in Newcombs phrase, as intellectual chamber music.

Michael Praetorius, writing at the beginning of the next century, described its function as follows (his

use of fugue is discussed below, 4(i)): Fugue: Ricercar

Fugues are nothing more than repeated echoes of the same theme on different degrees [of the

scale], succeeding each other through the use of rests In Italy they are called ricercars.

RICERCARE is the same thing as to investigate, to look for, to seek out, to research diligently

and to examine thoroughly. For in constructing a good fugue one must with special diligence and

careful thought seek to bring together as many ways as possible in which the same [material] can

be combined with itself, interwoven, duplicated, [used] in direct and contrary motion; [in short,]

brought together in an orderly, artistic and graceful way and carried through to the end.

Because some collections were published in partbooks, some in open score, and a few in keyboard

score, earlier scholars (e.g. Apel) attempted to uncover a stylist distinction between those collections

intended for instrumental ensemble performance (i.e. in partbooks) and those intended for keyboard

(in score or keyboard notation). More recently, Newcomb has argued against such a distinction and

has noted instead consistency of style and purpose that cuts across the differences of format.

Interest in the later classic fugue has also led scholars frequently to overemphasize the presence of

monothematicism in these works. The 16th-century ricercare makes much better sense if

understood as the instrumental counterpart to the motet in both seriousness of purpose and severity

of contrapuntal style; indeed, it represents the first genre of purely instrumental music able to

challenge the sophistication of Flemish vocal polyphony.

Furthermore, because it had no text, the instrumental ricercare escaped the humanistic criticism

levelled at vocal fugue, and composers felt free to embrace the genre and to continue to explore

new possibilities. Most 16th-century ricercares proceed, like the imitative motet, as a series of points

of imitation, each based on its own theme. Also reminiscent of the motet in these cases is a frequent

emphasis on the opening point as the longest and most systematic. The two genres differ in several

respects, however. To compensate for the ricercares lack of tex t, composers sought out a more

purely musical solution to the problem of continuity and structural logic, for which they turned to

techniques of thematic manipulation. A point may be quite long in comparison to its vocal

counterpart, therefore, with many more thematic statements. A much less tidy compartmentalization

of themes each to its own point is found, and considerably greater and more systematic use of the

contrapuntal devices of augmentation, diminution, inversion and stretto is to be expected.

Adding to the impression of these ricercares as systematic pieces for study or the display of

compositional skill is their frequent publication in collections devoted to the genre, usually by a

single composer, and often organized with exactly one ricercare in each mode. Towards the end of

the 20th century several such collections of 16th-century ricercares once thought lost were


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rediscovered, and a re-evaluation of the genre was undertaken by Newcomb, who identified two

distinct schools of ricercare composition in the 16th and early 17th centuries, the first centred in

Venice, the second in Ferrara and, later, Naples. The most important composers in the first group

are Willaert, Girolamo Cavazzoni, Buus, Padovano, Merulo and Andrea Gabrieli; the second

includes Luzzaschi, Jacques Brunel, Macque, Mayone and Frescobaldi. Although these works differ

in significant respects from the classic fugue of the 18th century, they certainly represent the oldest

instrumental works to merit detailed study in a history of fugue.

4. 17th century.

During the first half of the 17th century, fugue as a compositional technique might have seemed to

many musicians to be well on its way to the historical scrap-heap as the most pre-eminent

composers focussed increasingly on opera, cantata and oratorio. And yet Monteverdi had staked his

defence of modern music on the premise that the old style and its technical basis remained valid

and worthy of attention. Certainly the ricercares role as compositional study, and its absence of text,

made it well suited for continued cultivation of the stile antico. In addition to its museum-piece

status, however, fugue continued to evolve, especially in the hands of organists and violinists. By

around mid-century most of the characteristics of the classic fugue as we recognize it today were in

place, and as the century progressed to its conclusion they gradually reintegrated themselves into

most genres of music and most parts of Europe.

(i) Fugue and genre in organ music, 160020.

The imitative ricercare had been throughout the 16th century an Italian phenomenon, cultivated

exclusively by composerseither Italian or northernworking in Italy. By the early years of the new

century, however, this monopoly had come to an end as keyboard composers working in Germany

and the Low Countries also began to produce fugal works characterized by rigorous handling of

counterpoint, extended length, carefully controlled dissonance and strictly maintained part-writing.

With the wider geographic cultivation of this genre came a variety of labels for such works. The most

important Italian composer of such pieces in the early 17th century, Frescobaldi, used at various

times the designations fantasia, ricercare, canzona and capriccio. Roughly speaking, these four can

be grouped according to the nature of their thematic material into the slower and more ponderous

(fantasia and ricercare) and the quicker and livelier (canzona and capriccio). The first important

German composer to cultivate the serious fugue was Hassler (a pupil of Andrea Gabrieli), who,

judging from surviving manuscripts, chose two designations, ricercare and fugue. In the Low

Countries Sweelinck and Peeter Cornet preferred fantasia.

It is not certain how the various composers came to choose such a variety of titles for pieces that

are more alike than different. Sweelinck presumably chose fantasia under the influence of the

English, who preferred that designation for most of their untexted pieces without vocal models.

(Frescobaldis use of the term followed shortly after a visit he made to the Low Countries.)

Praetoriuss definition of ricercare quoted above implies that fugue was appropriated because of its


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connotations of seriousness and sophistication. Fugue may have appealed also to the Germans

because of its international character, as opposed to the very Italian ricercare. Frescobaldis use of

canzona and capriccio introduces yet another layer into the terminological morass. In both of

these cases, the kind of lively thematic material traditionally associated with the canzona alla

franceseis treated with the contrapuntal sophistication and length of the ricercare.

Probably the most significant compositional trend to emerge in serious fugal works at the beginning

of the 17th century was an emphasis on monothematicism. Because monothematicism could easily

lead to tediousness in a long work, however, composers sought to maintain interest by varying their

treatment of the theme as the work progressed. Two approaches predominated. For the first a

series of sections, neatly dovetailed to create a continuous flow from beginning to end, proceeds

with either a new counter-theme or a new contrapuntal device applied to the principal theme in each

new section. A classic example is Sweelincks Fantasia chromatica. SeeTable 1.

In the second category, best exemplified by many of Frescobaldis works, the sections are fewer but

not dovetailed and the principal theme is rhythmically transformed from one to the next, usually

including at some point a change of metre from duple to triple. Such pieces are sometimes referred

to as variation canzonas or variation fugues.

Both these types show many elements of the later classic fugue: severity of contrapuntal style,

strictness of part-writing, greater regularity of exposition than in the old ricercare (about which more

below), thematic hierarchy with a single principal theme, and emphasis on learned devices. Overall

structure, however, differs considerably. Whereas the classic fugue proceeds as a series of well-

defined sections alternating between episodes and self-contained groups of thematic statements,

the early 17th-century learned fugue proceeds as a kind of continuous unfolding of contrapuntal

possibilities with only a few major cadences to mark off sections.

Certain German musicians of the early 17th century also began to designate contrapuntally free,

short pieces fugues. These works traced their ancestry to the lively Parisian chansons of the

previous century, instrumental intabulations and arrangements of which Italian composers had

designated canzone alla francese. Both the chanson and the canzona often consisted of a short

series of brief sections, each beginning with simple imitative entries but quickly lapsing into chords

or melody-and-accompaniment texture. The Zarlinian rules of counterpoint were more often flouted

than followed, and keyboard canzonas often showed in addition little regard for strictness of part-

writing and frequent lapses into stock keyboard figuration. Bernhard Schmid the younger, in his

Tabulatur Buchof 1607, included 12 pieces written by Andrea Gabrieli, Adriano Banchieri and other

Italians that he described as Fugues or, as the Italians name them, Canzone alla francese. A

similar tablature book was published in 1617 by Johann Woltz, who included in it 20 fugues from the

pen of Simon Lohet, a Netherlander who had served as organist to the Wrttemberg court in
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Stuttgart until his death in 1611. Although modest in nearly every respect, Lohets are the first group

of non-canonic pieces to be called fugues. It is characteristic of this experimental age that fugue

could serve as a genre designation for these simple, almost banal works while Hassler and

Praetorius were reserving it for pieces of the most sophisticated, serious sort.

(ii) Theory: terminology, structure.

Zarlinos attempt to restrict the words meaning to imitative counterpoint in which the imitation is

exact failed to take hold, despite later Italian theorists attempts to preserve his terminology. What

these later writers did instead (inadvertently, it appears) was to keep Zarlinos restriction of fugue to

the perfect intervals but to suppress the ideal of exactness of imitation. Because the two are not

always identical, the end result of their change of emphasis was that exact imitation came to be

replaced by the relationship between fugue and mode. In other words, for early 17th-century

theorists the technique of fugue took place at a perfect interval not in order that the intervals might

remain identical but in order to emphasize final and dominant notes of the mode.

To this restriction was then added, by Girolamo Diruta in 1609, the theory of tonal answers. Both

Zarlino and Dressler had insisted that modal clarity was important in the beginning of a work, Zarlino

by insisting that the voices begin on final and dominant of the mode, Dressler by advising the

composer to see to it that the thematic material emphasized those and other important modal notes.

Diruta, a disciple of Zarlino, took these admonitions one step further and insisted that they be

applied not only to the opening theme but to its answer as well. As a result, given that theme and

answer were to begin on final and dominant (in either order) and were to emphasize important

modal notes, and given that the octave was divided unevenly into a 5th and a 4th, then the answer

had to be altered such that 5th was answered by 4th and 4th by 5th. The rather general advice of

the mid-16th-century musicians had become by the early 17th century a specific, strict edict.

Progressive musicans of the time quickly adopted Dirutas theory. Marco Scacchi, for instance, used

it repeatedly in his Cribrum musicumof 1643 to fault Paul Sieferts handling of the stile anticoin a

collection of psalm settings published in 1640. Sieferts defence that he was simply doing what his

teacher, Sweelinck, had taught him was probably true, given the freedom with which most 16th-

century composers handled such imitation, but by the 1640s the majority of musicians considered

tonal answers a virtual necessity to ensure modal clarity. Schtzs early collection of double -choir

psalms (published only a few years after his study with Giovanni Gabrieli) and his Geistliche Chor-

Musicof 1648 (possibly published as a practical response to the ScacchiSiefert quarrel) contain

numerous instances of opening tonal answers and not a single real answer.

Musicians in the north had never accepted Zarlinos definitions of fugue and imitation, and continued

instead to experiment with their own subdivisions of imitative counterpoint. They generally referred

to all imitative counterpoint as fugue, which most writers divided into canonic (variously called fuga

ligata, totalisor imaginaria) and non-canonic (fuga soluta,partialisor realis). Sethus Calvisius furthersubdivided the latter into fuga ejusdem modulationis and fuga diversae modulationis, or fugue of


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either similar or diverse melodic motion, which he understood to mean, respectively, imitative

counterpoint in which the melodic contour of the theme was maintained (whether exactly or

approximately) by the answering voices and that in which imitation was perceived to be present

even though melodic contour was not maintained (his example was the opening of the Lassus motet

Inclina Domine). Joachim Burmeister, by contrast, categorized the techniques of non-canonic

imitation based on rhetorical terminology, although he seems to have fitted fugal techniques to his

chosen rhetorical figures rather than subdividing fugal techniques first and then naming them. Those

figures he chose to relate to fugue were metalepsis, for which he chose imitation with two themes;

hypallag, imitation in inversion; and apocop, imitation of a very brief head-motif. Calvisius even

went so far as to allow fugue to designate virtually any repetition of musical material in a

composition, including ostinato technique and the answering back and forth of polyphonic textures in

double-choir music. Others were more restrictive. Burmeister, for instance, insisted that only if all

voices of the texture participated in the imitation of a theme should the name fugue be used.

None of these schemes for subdividing non-canonic imitation took firm root, however, and the Italian

theory of fugue as imitative counterpoint handled according to proper treatment of the mode began

to find wide acceptance. With this understanding of fugue as a basis, the south German writer

Wolfgang Schonsleder distinguished in 1631 between long [fugues] that are worked out and short

ones or imitations, and he suggested as paradigms works by Palestrina and Frescobaldi for the

former category and duets by Monteverdi for the latter. With this division of imitative techniques into

canon, fugue and imitation, the essence of our understanding of these words is in place.

All the above definitions refer to fugue as a compositional technique involving imitative counterpoint.

The word continued to be applied also to pieces of music, but here again there was no universal

agreement. Musicians had of course inherited from the late Middle Ages the idea of fugue as canon,

to which in the Renaissance they added fugue as a point of imitation. The former category proved

surprisingly durable and was still being used by German school treatises as late as the early 18th

century. (It is interesting to speculate whether Bachs first encounter with the word was when he

sang canons while a schoolboy in Ohrdruf.) Fugue as a single point of imitation also survived the

Baroque. Praetorius, for instance, defined motet style as the alternation of harmonies and fugues

and the canzona as a textless piece with brief fugues and artful fantasies. Keyboard composers in

the early 17th century (e.g. Lohet in south Germany and Heinrich Scheidemann in the north)

sometimes wrote short pieces entitled fugue that consisted of nothing more than a single point of

imitation. Well into the 18th century French organists designated as fugues similarly brief imitative

works, and Henry Purcell understood the word thus in his discussion of fugue published by Playford

in 1694. Perhaps the last such use of the word can be traced to early 19th-century New England,

where William Billings and his colleagues took up the form of the FUGING TUNE, which had first

become popular in 18th-century English parish churches.

As already noted, German musicians at the beginning of the 17th century introduced fugue as a

genre designation for non-canonic pieces widely disparate in style and intent. One final meaning of

the word turns up in Italy about 1600, where a few musicians used it to refer to the thematic material
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of an imitative piece (e.g. Ricercar primo tono con tre fughe). Perhaps the most famous composer

to use the word in this way was Monteverdi, whose six-voice Missa da capella(1610) is composed

with ten fugues, derived from Gomberts motet In illo tempore, which are spelt out even before the

piece begins.

The origin of the textbook fugues structural principles, until recently obscure, can now be traced

with some certainty. In the early years of the 17th century the two most common models were the

motet, with its series of points of imitation each based on a different theme, and the extended

keyboard fugue, with its longer sections, few cadences, and almost continuous presence of the

theme. What was lacking was a series of much shorter points of imitation (or, in modern terms,

groups of thematic statements) all based on the same theme but set apart from each other in some

way.

The earliest theoretical source to describe such a scheme is a manuscript treatise, Sequunturregulae compositionis, surviving in several copies and now thought to be the work of Antonio Bertali,

a north Italian violinist and Kapellmeister of the imperial court in Vienna from 1649 to 1669. Bertalis

text treats the study of counterpoint as a progression of species counterpoint leading to the writing

of fugue, as does Fuxs classic Gradus ad Parnassum. Bertalis treatise outlines for fugal

composition the following structural plan: (1) once a theme has been selected, it should be assigned

to an appropriate mode. (Note the inversion of the modern approach, which is to select the key first,

then devise a theme for it.) (2) The opening point of imitation brings in the theme in systematic

fashion in all voices (beginning on final and dominant of the mode), after which free counterpoint

leads to the f irst cadence. (3) Successive points of imitation, all of course based on the same theme,

should be distinguished in some fashion, for which the author recommends exchanging starting

notes among the voices or switching the order of entry of the voices. (4) In the body of the

composition, the theme may be brought in on notes other than final or dominant. (5) Stretto is

particularly prized, but only in the middle or towards the end of the piece, since it generally requires

thematic alteration and does not allow for careful treatment of mode. (6) The whole piece will

generally consist of four or five such sections, with the theme presented prominently at the very end.

Here, then, we find most elements of the modern fugue: carefully worked-out opening point of

imitation (i.e. exposition), groups of thematic statements separated from each other (by free

counterpoint), variety among the thematic groups, possible movement to closely related keys for

later groups (described as beginning the theme on other notes), fondness for stretto and

prominence of the theme at the end of the piece. Lacking only are the countersubject and the well-

defined episode.

This model obtains, not in keyboard works of the period, but in pieces entitled canzona or sonata

and composed by Bertalis north Italian violinist colleagues. The fugues found in these works do not

generally form the entire piece, but rather one section (often the first) of a multi-section work. One of

the first composers of such pieces may be Tarquinio Merula, whose Primo libro delle canzoni of

1615 already includes several. Massimiliano Neri and Giovanni Legrenzi also wrote sonatas


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incorporating such fugues. The contibution of all these composers to the history of fugue merits

further study.

(iii) Second half of the century.

Much remains to be learnt about the history of fugal composition in the second half of the 17th

century, and this lack of knowledge has led some scholars to attribute to Bach and Handel

innovations in fugal writing with which they should not be credited. Only in the realm of keyboard

music is there a relatively complete and well-rounded picture of the music of the time. There is,

however, no questioning that, with respect to fugal composition, the years 16501700 witnessed the

gradual but complete passing of the mantle from Italy to Germany, where it largely remained into the

20th century. Several factors contributed to this transfer: Italys gradual abandonment of interest in

keyboard music and inexorable move towards paramountcy of opera; Germanys continued

fascination with counterpoint (even in the music of such early Baroque composers as Schtz); and

the eagerness with which German musicians learnt from such Italian teachers as Frescobaldi and

Bertali.

Perhaps the key figure in this transfer of fugal authority from south to north was the Stuttgart -born

Johann Jacob Froberger, who studied with Frescobaldi, worked for the Holy Roman Emperor in

Vienna (at the same time as Bertali), and during the 1650s travelled widely to other parts of

Germany, France and even England. The four autograph manuscripts of keyboard works that

Froberger presented to the Emperor Ferdinand III in the years around 1650 include easily the best

fugal compositions written at a time when most of Europes leading composers were absorbed with

opera, cantata and oratorio. Frobergers fugues follow closely the example of Frescobaldi and

comprise the same four genre designations of ricercare, fantasia, canzona and capriccio,

understood in the same way. Of even greater historical significance than the quality of these works

may be Frobergers role in awakening interest in fugal composition among composers north of the

Alps. Inspired by Frobergers example the Frenchman Franois Roberday published in 1660 a

volume of Fugues, et capricesexplicitly modelled after the composers variation fugues and even

including one of Frobergers own pieces. French composers did not follow Roberdays lead, but in

Germany Frobergers influence bore spectacular fruit. Through his personal contacts with Schtzs

pupil Matthias Weckmann and others, he reawakened the interest of the Germans in large-scale

fugal composition. In north Germany, where Weckmann spent most of his career, this led to

significant experimentation with fugue and invertible counterpoint. In central Germany, where

Frobergers music circulated widely in manuscript, the interest in fugal writing led directly to Bach

and Handel.

The unbroken tradition of serious fugal composition begun in the 1540s continued through this

period and, indeed, well into the 18th century. Composers retained the two types developed by

keyboard composers early in the 17th century namely, Sweelinck and Hasslers continuous piece

in a single metre with contrapuntal devices, and the variation fugue cultivated by Frescobaldi and

Froberger. Italians who composed such extended fugal works include Fasolo, Battiferri, Fabrizio


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Fontana and Pasquini. Among the many German contributions one might mention as particularly

significant the set of 12 ricercares compiled by Poglietti and keyboard fugues (variously designated)

by Weckmann, J. Krieger and N.A. Strungk (a complete list is given in Riedel, 1979).

Also during this half-century fugue took on a much greater significance within the genre of toccata

and its sometime equivalent, praeludium. Improvisation and freedom had traditionally been among

the genres principal characteristics, but since the 16th century many keyboard works entitled

toccata had included relatively freely imitative sections interspersed among the more improvisatory

passage-work. Froberger also began to bring a contrapuntally freer version of the variation fugue

into this genre, with the two or more fugal sections based on rhythmic variants of the same theme.

Undoubtedly the best such pieces are the organ praeludia of Buxtehude. Although it was not the

model he ultimately chose for most of his fugal writing, Bach himself wrote a few pieces

incorporating fugue in this manner (e.g. the E major Praeludium BWV566).

Probably the most important innovation in fugue during the period under discussion was developed

in the north German cities of Hamburg and Lbeck by a circle of musicians that included

Weckmann, Buxtehude, Reincken and Christoph Bernhard. In the 1660s and 70s these men

discovered a common interest in the compositional potential of combining fugal writing (to which

they had been awakened most probably by Froberger) with invertible counterpoint, about which they

had learnt through Zarlinos Istitutione harmonicheas taught by Sweelinck to their teachers Jacob

Praetorius (ii) and Heinrich Scheidemann. This combination led to two significant and related

innovations: the idea of countersubject and the so-called permutation fugue.

An incipient form of both phenomena can be seen in the fugue from the

fifth suite of Reinckens Hortus musicus(1688) for instrumental ensemble, whose structure is shown

inTable 2(where A represents the opening theme, B the second theme, xxx free counterpoint, and

duxand comesthe two forms, subject and tonal answer, of theme A). Though tediously formulaic,

Reinckens fugue employs Bertalis groups of thematic statements (five altogether), with variety from

one to the next provided by the exchanging of starting notes (S I begins the first group with the dux

form, but begins the second with the comes form). To this is added a second theme that

accompanies every statement of the first theme except the opening one. If episodes were to be

added between groups of thematic statements, and the scheme in general loosened up, the result

would bring Reinckensmodel very close to the classic 18th-century fugue.

Table 2

TABLE2

bar 1 4 7 10 13 16 19 22 25 28 31 34 37 40 43 468

S I A B x x x A B x x x A B B A B x x x A B x x x full-

S II A B x x x A B x x x A x x x x x x A B x x x A B textured

B A B x x x A B x x x A x x x x x x A B x x x A conclusion

duxcomesdux comesdux comesdux comesdux dux comesdux comesdux comes


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If instead the formulaic nature of Reinckens model were emphasized

by the addition of further themes and the elimination of the free counterpoint, the resulting scheme

would be close to that of the earliest Bach vocal fugues, called by modern scholars permutation

fugues. The opening fugue from BWV182, Himmelsknig, sei willkommen, for instance, is

constructed as shown inTable 3(A, B, C and D refer to the themes, T and D to entries of theme A

on tonic and dominant). The permutation fugue consists of fugue and canon in equal measure.

Characteristic of the former is the presence of a fugal exposition, complete with tonal answer,

properly spaced entries and strict alternation of tonic and dominant for entries. Characteristic of

canon is the near absence of non-thematic material, in that each voice continues with the same

material as every other once it has stated the opening theme complete, and returns to the opening

theme once it has fully stated all themes. Although the first known piece to fit this description

appears to have been composed by Johann Theile for instructional purposes and is found in histreatise Das Musikalisches Kunstbuch, Bach was among the first to employ the technique

successfully in a musical context.

Table 3

TABLE3

S ABC DA B CDxxxx

A AB CD A B CD

T A B C DA B C

B A B CDA B

T D T D T D T D T

5. The golden age: early 18th century.

C.P.E. Bach, writing to Forkel about his father in 1775, remarked: Through his own study and

reflection alone he became even in his youth a pure and strong fugue writer. His models, according

to Carl Philipp Emanuel, included Froberger, Kerll, Pachelbel, Frescobaldi, J.C.F. Fischer, Strungk,

Buxtehude, Reincken, Bruhns and Bhm. Among the results of this study were the following: (1)

although his earliest fugues bear a variety of designations, including Canzona (BWV588), Capriccio

(BWV993), Praeludium (BWV566) and even Imitatio (from the Fantasia BWV563), Bach seems early onto have settled on fugue as the designation of choice for all pieces based on non-canonic imitation.

This choice is not entirely expected; it may reflect the influence of Pachelbel, th e teacher of Bachs

older brother (and first teacher) Johann Christoph and the only composer listed above who preferred

that designation. (2) After some experimentation with other models for fugal writing, Bach settled for

his keyboard or organ fugues on the model ultimately derived from Bertali, but including by this time

frequent use of a countersubject and episodes and eventually incorporating tonal harmony and

modulation to related keys. (3) Bach paired most of his keyboard fugues with preludes. Praetorius

had described in 1619 the practice of improvising a toccata or prelude before a written-out fugal

piece, and only towards the end of the 17th century did a few composers begin to attach written-out

preludes to their fugues. Bachs preference for this practice ensured that wherever his keyboard


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fugues have been admired the prelude and fugue has served as one of the most important genres

to incorporate fugal writing. (4) For his earliest vocal fugues, Bach chose in place of this model the

permutation fugue, which he probably encountered through the treatises of Theile.

The mature Bach employed fugue in his music for organ, for keyboard (harpsichord) and for voices.

The harpsichord fugues are in general relatively brief and tight in construction; they would seem to

have been intended primarily for study and teaching. Those for the organ are usually grander and

more expansive; they would seem to have been intended for public performance. For his mature

vocal fugues (e.g. in the B minor Mass) Bach eventually abandoned the permutation fugue model in

favour of that of the keyboard fugues.

Like all masterly bodies of music, Bachs fugues resist easy summary, generalization and

classification. A few attempts have however been made to subdivide these works further. Kunze

proposed that the fugues of Das wohltemperirte Clavierbe categorized on the basis of musical style:fuga pathetica, with predominantly slow movement and expressive of a certain affect; ricercar-fugue,

the artful fugue reminiscent of the old ricercare; dance-fugue, based on certain dance idioms;

Spielfuge, characterized by idiomatic instrumental writing; and choral- or motet-fugue, which brings

together instrumental structure and vocal style. Stauffer has applied Kunzes plan to the organ

fugues, adopting two of the categories (dance-fugue and Spielfuge) but offering in place of the

others the allabrevefugue (i.e. derived from the stile antico) and the art fugue (emphasizing learned

devices). More recently Dreyfus has questioned the idea of categorization based on style and has

proposed instead subdivisions derived from Matthesons Der vollkommene Capellmeisterand based

on the use of contrapuntal procedures: simple fugue, based on only one theme and without

invertible counterpoint; double fugue, based on two or more themes treated invertibly; and

counterfugue, involving the application of contrary motion, augmentation or diminution to one of the

themes.

In contrast to the almost universal esteem accorded Bachs fugues since at least the early 19th

century, those of Handel have been somewhat neglected. Handels focus on opera and oratorio,

and the relative paucity of keyboard music from his pen, result in a very small number of pieces

designated fugue, the most prominent being the Six Fugues or Voluntarys for the Organ or

Harpsichord issued by Walsh in 1735. Handels most important contributions to the genre are

probably those in the choruses of his oratorios, which differ in only small ways from the keyboard

fugues (two of the six keyboard fugues of 1735, for instance, ended up arranged as choruses in

Israel in Egypt). In general, Handels treatment of fugue is freer and less rigorous than Bachs: the

part-writing (at least of the keyboard fugues) is often loosely handled, the counterpoint is sometimes

allowed to relax into thematic statement accompanied by chordal texture, thematic statements are

less recognizably grouped, episodes less clearly defined, thematic material less economically used.

These characteristics have not universally been considered signs of inferiority: writing in 1789,

Burney (History) called Handel perhaps the only great Fuguist exempt from pedantry. Marpurg in

his treatise on fugue (17534) subdivided the genre into strict (fuga obligata) and free (fuga liberaor


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soluta) which he associated, without expressing particular preference, with Bach and Handel

respectively.

The third great figure of this era for the history of fugue is J.J. Fux, whose Gradus ad Parnassum

(1725) remains a classic of fugal theory. The book is written, in Latin, as a dialogue between the

author (as pupil) and Palestrina (as teacher); its goal, however, is the writing not of a stile antico

motet but of late Baroque fugue, especially Fuxs preferred genre, the fugue with two themes. Fux is

probably most famous today for his use of the pedagogical progression from species counterpoint to

fugue, but he probably also deserves credit for popularizing the terms subject and countersubject,

which he used, in their Latin forms, for the two themes of a fugue. His model for fugal composition,

like his use of species counterpoint, derives ultimately from Bertali, although Fux recommends a

tripartite structure of only three groups of thematic statements. This model seems intended purely as

a way of getting the student started; Fuxs own use of fugue in his music is considerably more

imaginative than his somewhat formulaic plan would lead one to expect.

6. Late 18th century.

The golden age of fugue was brilliant but short-lived. By the 1750s, during which decade both Bach

and Handel died, Enlightenment ideals had brought fugue once again (as had humanistic ideals at

the beginning of the Baroque) into disrepute, this time as pedantic and unnatural. Never again would

the genre play the central role it had enjoyed in music of the early 18th century. At the same time,

however, musicians continued to find fugue and counterpoint important for a composers training,

just as they had a century and a half earlier, and fugue even made an occasional appearance in

music in the new style. In the latter case, its most common role was that of finale, a role it had long

played in the Mass, where et in secula seculorum and amen fugues were a well-established

tradition. In addition, composers began to experiment with the insertion of brief fugal imitation,

sometimes only a single point of imitation, into works in sonata form and other forms.

Fugue retained its prestige longest in Vienna, aided by the aura surrounding Fuxs bestselling

treatise as well as the conservative musical tastes of the citys Habsburg patrons. The technique

figures relatively prominently in the works of most composers, both German and Italian, associated

with the Viennese court and churches during the third quarter of the 18th century. G.J. Werner

(Haydns predecessor at the Esterhzy court), G.C. Wagenseil, M.G. Monn, F.L. Gassmann, Nicola

Porpora (Haydns teacher) and F.X. Richter all incorporated fugues into their instrumental music for

chamber ensemble and larger orchestra. Perhaps the most significant of all Viennese contributions

to fugue was that of J.G. Albrechtsberger, Beethoven's teacher, who not only assigned fugue a

prestigious role in his compositions but wrote one of the most admired counterpoint treatises of the

day. Elsewhere interest in fugue waned rapidly. A handful of composers in northern Italy, most

notably F.M. Veracini and CA. Campioni, continued to cultivate fugue under the influence of the

Bologna theorist G.B. Martini. In Germany J.S. Bachs fugal legacy was carried forward not primarily

by his sons but by his students and admirers, in particular F.W. Marpurg and J.P. Kirnberger.


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With the establishment of the so-called Viennese Classical style by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven,

however, fugues central role in music came to an end as sonata form and the symphony orchestra

quickly rose to a position of dominance. Nevertheless, none of the three composers entirely

abandoned fugue. Haydns study of the technique seems to have been accomplished on his own

using primarily Fuxs Gradus ad Parnassum. In addition to a number of fugues in his masses,

fugues serve as finales to several of his instrumental works, including three of the op.20 string

quartets, the quartet op.50 no.4 and the symphonies nos.3, 40 and 70. These fugues are finely

wrought works in the late Baroque style and suggest that Haydn would probably have been

comfortable writing many more if his patrons had desired them. Mozart learnt fugal composition not

through any treatise but through the study of other composers works: first Haydn and the earlier

Viennese instrumental composers, then in 1782 J.S. Bach (the 48) and Handel (probably the Six

Fugues or Voluntarys, among other works), to both of which he was introduced by Baron von

Swieten. As a result, we find in Mozart fugal finales to string quartets la Haydn ( K168, 173 and

387), as well as independent fugues or preludes and fugues in late Baroque manner, including the

Prelude and Fugue for keyboard K394/383aand the Fugue for two pianos four hands K426, later

arranged for string quartet as K546. Of course, fugal finales also appear in Mozarts sacred music,

including the C minor Mass K427/417a, and the Requiem. Mozarts most important contribution to

the history of fugue, and certainly his most innovatory, is probably the insertion of fugal imitation into

works in sonata form. This category includes perhaps his two best-known instrumental movements

incorporating fugal imitation: the finale of the Jupiter Symphony and the overture to Die

Zauberflte.

As in so many facets of composition, Beethoven pushed back the boundaries of fugue while

integrating it into the new style. He was introduced both to the 48 (through his teacher in Bonn,

Neefe) and to a systematic study of counterpoint and fugue (through his later teacher

Albrechtsberger). Perhaps the most traditional are the fugal finales Beethoven included in the Missa

solemnis; among his instrumental works, by contrast, scarcely a single fully worked-out, traditional

fugue is to be found. Instead we find such offerings as the Finale: alla fuga of his variation set

op.35, on the theme of the last movement of the Eroica Symphony. Here Beethovens fugal finale

begins conventionally enough, but, in a manner reminiscent of Buxtehudes praeludia, the

counterpoint eventually begins to break down and is finally abandoned about two-thirds of the way

through the movement. The composer acknowledged his freer approach to fugue in two of his most

famous efforts, the finale to the Hammerklavier Sonata op.106, and the Grosse Fuge op.133

(originally conceived as the finale to op.130). He headed the first Fuga con alcune licenze, the

second tantt libre, tantt recherche. Like Mozart, Beethoven also introduced fugal imitation into

sonata form movements, for instance in place of the first theme group (in the finale of the string

quartet op.59 no.3) or as a part of the development (in the opening movement of op.59 no.1).

Fugue emerged from its golden era accompanied by no particular consensus with regard to its rules,

definitions or how it ought best to be handled. Musicians who wrote about fugue and counterpoint in

the second half of the 18th century continued to focus on the styles and techniques of the late

Baroque, but they brought to the task a variety of approaches. One of the most famous of these


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writers was G.B. Martini of Bologna, renowned as a teacher of counterpoint and sought out by

Mozart and many others. In his Esemplare, o sia Saggio de contrappunto of 17746, Martini

subsumed all imitative counterpoint under the general heading fugue, which he subdivided into fuga

reale(i.e. with a real answer), fuga del tuono(with a tonal answer) and fuga dimitazione(freer sorts

of imitation). He further subdivided the former into canonic ( legata) and non-canonic (sciolta). Here

we see fugal terminology at the crossroads: words and pairings traceable all the way back to Zarlino

(fuga legataand sciolta) side by side with newly paired expressions central to our modern theory

(real versus tonal answers). The tripartite division (with additional subdivision) obscures to some

extent the more apt one of canon, fugue and imitation, and certainly shows Martinis respect for

traditional Italian terminology. In Austria Fuxs Gradus ad Parnassum continued to find favour

among musicians. Beethovens teacher Albrechtsberger (Grndliche Anweisung zur Composition,

1790) was only the best-known of a number of Austrian pedagogues who, either directly or indirectly

under Fuxs influence, likewise wrote texts on counterpoint and fugue.

Meanwhile the predominant influence on fugal theory in Germany remained J.S. Bach and his many

pupils. Whereas Bachs most progressive sons, Carl Philipp Emanuel and Johann Christian, showed

in their compositions little interest in fugue, two members of the Bach circle with more conservative

bent, F.W. Marpurg (Abhandlung von der Fuge, 17534) and J.P. Kirnberger (Die Kunst des reinen

Satzes, 17719), made important contributions to its theory. Marpurg, author of the first full-length

treatise to include fugue in its title, divided imitative counterpoint as we do today into canon, fugue

and imitation. He insisted that fugue was actual, proper or regular only if it was constructed

according to the rules; otherwise, it was figurative, improper or irregular. Five essential

characteristics defined fugue, and these required proper handling for a piece to earn the designation

proper: Fhrer (dux) and Gefhrte (comes), Wiederschlag (i.e. regularity of opening imitation

between duxand comesforms), Gegenharmonie(i.e. good counterpoint accompanying the theme)

and Zwischenharmonie (episodes). Even when these five elements were handled in proper

fashion, Marpurg allowed for still further subdivision of proper fugue into strict ( la Bach) and free (

la Handel). Also worth mentioning is Marpurgs borrowing from Mattheson of the word Durchfhrung

(still used by German speakers today) to designate the fugues sections marked off by its episodes.

One notices immediately in Marpurgs use of Harmonie the ever greater focus of the time on

vertical sonority rather than horizontal part-writing.

7. The romantic era.

In the early 19th century fugue became the subject of intense debate as musicians struggled to

reconcile its myriad definitions and manifestations and to determine its role in contemporary

composition. Nevertheless, it was the general consensus that fugue was the quintessential

contrapuntal genre and as such was only with difficulty susceptible to integration into the modern

style. One musician who did attempt to update the technique in light of post-Baroque compositional

innovations was the Czech-born Antoine Reicha: contemporary and colleague of Beethoven, pupil

of Haydn, Salieri and Albrechtsberger, and teacher of Berlioz, Liszt and Franck. In 1803 in Vienna

Reicha dedicated a set of 36 fugues for piano to his teacher Haydn; for a new edition two years later


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he added an introduction entitled ber das neue Fugensystemdefending their construction. In this

introduction Reicha dismissed Martinis three principal categories of fugue as irrelevant to

contemporary composition and identified the following characteristics as necessary for a fugue: the

leading of the theme through all voices, proper contrapuntal texture, derivation of all musical ideas

from the theme alone, and the maintenance of a contrapuntal character throughout the piece. As

might be expected from a composer interested in more adventurous Romantic harmony, Reicha

rejected the traditional relationship between fugue and tonality, including the handling of the fugal

answer and any restrictions on modulation during the course of the piece. In a later treatise, written

after he had been appointed to the Paris Conservatoire, he also tried to bring the ubiquitous

periodicity of Classical-style music into the fugue by describing its structure as a series of periods

well delimited by phrases: these periods included an opening one called exposition and, following

an intervening episode, another called counterexposition. Reichas innovations were not widely

accepted, however; Beethoven, who himself treated fugue relatively freely, expressed the probably

common opinion that in Reichas collection of 36 fugues the fugue is no longer a fugue. Reichas

colleagues at the Paris Conservatoire, Cherubini and Ftis, later expressed similar criticisms. When

their ideals prevailed, the last serious attempt to update fugal theory died, and the teaching and

writing of fugue became once and for all an act of homage to the past.

Writing about fugue meanwhile continued apace. Authors included Ftis (1824), Cherubini (1835),

Weinlig (1845), E.F. Richter (1859), Riemann (189094), Prout (1891) and many others. Fugal

theory came to focus increasingly on one of two strains: either fierce, partisan debate about what

constituted a proper fugue, principally for the purpose of evaluating music of the past, or the

establishment of a rigid model to be followed to the letter by any student wishing to master the ideal

fugue. The latter came eventually to be known as the school fugue or fugue dcole and to be

associated most closely, as it still is today, with the Paris Conservatoire. Andr Gdalges Trait de

la fugue(1901) offers the definitive outline of the school fugue. The model is laid out in great detail

and is widely understood to bear no relationship at all to real composition outside the academy.

Beethovens judgment concerning Reichas fugues and his ambivalence about the freedoms

allowable in his own fugal composition mirror the widespread uncertainty of the time towards the

question of fugues definition and essential characteristics. Marpurg had allowed for strict and free

fugues, and some musicians of the early 19th century (e.g. Koch) simply expanded the latter to

encompass such innovatory works as Mozarts overture to Die Zauberflte, in which fugal texture is

by and large maintained but within a movement structured according to sonata form. Others (e.g.

J.A. Andr) vigorously rejected such (as they saw it) terminological looseness. For Andr, the sine

qua non of fugue was the opening fugal answer at the 5th. Other musicians since Andr have

identified their own essential characteristics, including most commonly contrapuntal rigour or overall

compositional structure (i.e. form). Most pieces designated fugue by 19th-century composers have

probably at some time been declared unworthy of the name for one or another reason; even Bachs

fugues themselves have occasionally been measured and found wanting.


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Adding to the terminological confusion is the 19th-century introduction of the word fugato, an Italian

past participle meaning fugued, which was occasionally used during the 16th and 17th centuries in

the expression contrappunto fugato(literally fugued counterpoint, perhaps best rendered in English

as fugal counterpoint). In 1760, however, Giorgio Antoniotto, an Italian -born musician living in

England, published a treatise in English in which he introduced the word as a noun meaning

imitative counterpoint that is not proper fugue (what earlier musicians had called simply imitation).

Fugato subsequently came to be the term most commonly applied to brief passages of fugal

imitation within non-fugal movements, as well as to any fugal piece (even if designated fugue by its

composer) that fails the test for proper fugue. In both of these senses, the word remains current

today.

As fugal theory became more and more orientated towards the past (and, by extension, towards the

analysis of earlier music), composers turned increasingly to the fugues of past composers, rather

than to the theoretical pronouncements of their teachers, for inspiration. Chief among their models

were the keyboard fugues of Bach, which, despite the disappearance of most of the rest of his

works from public consciousness, had never really faded from the view of the musical cognoscenti.

It is no accident that Schumann, Liszt and Reger all wrote fugues on the notes BACH, or that

both Schubert and Beethoven showed their greatest interest in fugue late in life, as they searched

for new ideas and models, rather than early in their careers, when their teachers precepts were

fresh in their minds. In the end, only Chopin among all the major composers of the 19th century

seems to have shown no interest whatsoever in counterpoint and fugue.

Perhaps the single exception to this new role of fugue as historical revival or archaeological relic

was its traditional, well-established place as finale in sacred vocal music. Prominent examples from

the century include, in addition to those of Beethovens masses, the final chorus of Mendelssohns

Elijahand the end of the third movement (on the words Der Gerechten Seelen sind in Gottes Hand)

of Brahmss German Requiem. Berlioz, on the other hand, criticized this convention and chose to

use fugue in more innovatory ways in his Requiem. Verdi introduced a brilliant spoof of the tradition

by closing his final opera, Falstaff, with a fugue on the words Tutto nel mondo burla (the whole

world is a joke). Meanwhile, the fugal finale in instrumental music, a much more recent tradition,

faded in importance. Among its few post-Beethoven appearances one might name the Variations

and Fugue on a Theme of Handel op.24 of Brahms and the fourth movement of Bruckners

Symphony no.5.

With the decline of interest in sacred music generally and the instrumental fugal finale in particular,

the writing of independent fugues, or preludes and fugues, came increasingly to attract composers

attention, just as it had Mozarts. Beethovens most contrapuntally rigorous fugue is probably the

opening movement of the C minor Quartet op.131, Schuberts the Fugue in E minor for piano four

hands, written in the year before he died. Both Mendelssohn and Schumann showed keen interest

in wrriting fugues, the former as an outgrowth of his interest in the revival of Bachs music, the latter

as a kind of artistic stimulus to his creative juices. Clara Schumann went so far as to refer to her

husbands Fugenpassion, and he enthusiastically instructed her using Cherubinis counterpoint


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treatise. One can see in all of these compositions their creators attempts to rein in or adapt the

current stylistic preference for beautiful, singing melody and adventurous harmony within a genre

designed first and foremost for contrapuntal display and technical sophistication.

By the second half of the century fugue had found its most comfortable niche within the genre of

prelude and fugue, and increasingly within the realm of organ music. These fugues might take the

form of studies (e.g. the organ fugues of Brahms), showpieces (the preludes and fugues of Liszt),

continued fascination with the Baroque (the works of Reger), or simply occasional essays (the

Prlude, fugue et variationfor organ op.18 of Franck). Of course fugue also retained its reputation

for learnedness. In order to characterize Beckmessers pedantry Wagner introduced fugal

counterpoint into Die Meistersinger (see bars 13850 of the overture, reprised in association with

Beckmesser in Act 3) and in La damnation de FaustBerlioz included a fugue in parody of German

learnedness. Of all of these men probably the most consistently successful composer of fugue was

Brahms, who also proved most capable of integrating past and present.

8. 20th century.

The indissoluble bond between fugue and tonality, traceable back to Dressler and Clemens in the

16th century and strongly reaffirmed in the 19th, made the genre uncongenial to those 20th-century

composers who had abandoned tonal harmony. A rare early use of fugue in atonal music occurs in

Der Mondfleck from Pierrot lunaire (1912), a movement that Schoenberg described as fugue

between piccolo and clarinet on the one hand, canon between violin and cello on the other.

Schoenbergs understanding of the difference between the two techniques is clear: the canon

carries through from beginning to end, whereas the fugue involves a theme, two bars long, which is

stated several times in the two voices, with intervening free counterpoint, and to which the

contrapuntal devices of inversion and stretto are applied. Nevertheless, as Schoenberg and Webern

began to explore thematic transformation as yet another way to avoid the sensation of a

recognizable tonality, fugue found itself all but excluded from 12-note music. The composers of the

Second Viennese School favoured both counterpoint and classical forms, but canon, not fugue, was

the preferred imitative technique. In fact, possibly the best-known fugue associated with these

composers was not an original composition but Weberns arrangement of the six-voice ricercare

from Bachs Musical Offering.

Perhaps the most significant atonal fugue from the first half of the century is the triple fugue in Act 2

scene ii, bars 286365, of Bergs Wozzeck(191722). Opera and fugue had traditionally had little to

do with each other, but Berg exploited the technique brilliantly by assigning a fugue subject to each

of the scenes three characters and using various contrapuntal combinations to parallel the dramatic

action. The fugue is laid out in several well-defined sections: exposition of theme 1, exposition of

theme 2, combination of themes 1 and 2, transition based on theme 2, exposition of theme 3,

combination of all three themes, and coda on themes 1 and 2. Even allowing for the absence of

tonality (the first five thematic statements enter on F , F , E , D and G), the handling of the

imitation itself is free and untraditional, much more so than Schoenbergs in Der Mondfleck. Bergs


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three expositions do not present their themes in the customary orderly fashion, integrity of voices is

not maintained, and thematic alteration, although seldom drastic, is omnipresent.

The so-called neo-classicism of the 1920s and 30s brought fugue back into favour. Each of the

movements adherents sought to put his own individual stamp on the tonal harmony he inherited,

and that desire led to a variety of tonal plans for both the imitative entries and the fugue as a whole.

Whereas Stravinsky, in the second-movement fugue of his Symphony of Psalms(1930), presented

a regularly laid-out fugal exposition with entries alternating between tonic and dominant, Bartk

chose, for the opening fugue of his Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta (1936), to take

successive entries around the circle of 5ths, with odd-numbered entries proceeding around the

circle in one direction and even-numbered entries in the opposite direction. These early attempts at

reinterpreting fugue in 20th-century terms led to further experiments, including later 12-note fugues

by Schoenberg (the finale of his Variations on a Recitative op.40 (1941) for organ and the Genesis

Prelude op.44 (1945) for orchestra and chorus without text). Also falling within the category of neo -

classical are two major collections of fugues inspired by the example of Bachs 48: Hindemiths

Ludus tonalis(1942) and Shostakovichs 24 Preludes and Fugues (195051).

The principal compositional trends since World War II total serialism, aleat

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