36 Fugues (Reicha)

This system involved, among other things, extensive use of polyrhythms, derived from traditional music, and fugal answers on any and all scale degrees, rather than just the dominant, which was standard at the time.

[3] By 1802 Reicha moved to Vienna, but the same year two more works that would later be included in the collection were published in Paris.

The fugues were preceded by extensive textual notes, in which Reicha defended his methods, particularly polyrhythm, for which he cites numerous examples from traditional music of Switzerland, Alsace, Greece and western France around the Bay of Biscay.

In Über das neue Fugensystem Reicha outlines his idea of the fugue as a form.

18 consists of a single note repeated) and a maximum span of a ninth (the subject borrowed from Mozart, in Fugue No.

Cover of the 1805 edition of 36 Fugues .
Fugue No. 13, an example of Reicha's "new harmonic system", which can provide cadences on almost all of the scale degrees, as pointed out in the score by Reicha himself.
Fugue No. 15 has six subjects, and is printed twice in the 1805 edition: a version on six staves, pictured here, and a version on two staves.
Opening bars of Fugue No. 30, with Reicha's explanation of polyrhythm.