Fugue

[2] A popular compositional technique in the Baroque era, the fugue was fundamental in showing mastery of harmony and tonality as it presented counterpoint.

[10] With the decline of sophisticated styles at the end of the baroque period, the fugue's central role waned, eventually giving way as sonata form and the symphony orchestra rose to a more prominent position.

[8][15] Each episode has the primary function of transitioning into a new key for the next entry of the subject,[15] and may also provide release from the strictness of form required by the exposition.

[25] André Gedalge, a teacher of Maurice Ravel, stated that the episode of the fugue is generally based on a series of imitations of the subject that have been fragmented.

In the fugues of earlier composers (notably Buxtehude and Pachelbel), middle entries in keys other than the tonic and dominant tend to be the exception, and non-modulation the norm.

Following this an episode modulates from the tonic to the relative major by means of sequence, in the form of an accompanied canon at the fourth.

[42] The term fuga was used as far back as the Middle Ages, but was initially used to refer to any kind of imitative counterpoint, including canons, which are now thought of as distinct from fugues.

Bach and through the theorist Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg (1718–1795) whose Abhandlung von der Fuge ("Treatise on the fugue", 1753) was largely based on J.S.

The earliest fugues, in both the symphonies and in the Baryton trios, exhibit the influence of Joseph Fux's treatise on counterpoint, Gradus ad Parnassum (1725), which Haydn studied carefully.

Haydn then studied Handel's techniques and incorporated Handelian fugal writing into the choruses of his mature oratorios The Creation and The Seasons, as well as several of his later symphonies, including No.

[54] Later in life, the major impetus to fugal writing for Mozart was the influence of Baron Gottfried van Swieten in Vienna around 1782.

Mozart was evidently fascinated by these works and wrote a set of five transcriptions for string quartet, K. 405 (1782), of fugues from Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, introducing them with preludes of his own.

Ludwig van Beethoven was familiar with fugal writing from childhood, as an important part of his training was playing from The Well-Tempered Clavier.

The finale of Beethoven's Hammerklavier Sonata contains a fugue, which was practically unperformed until the late 19th century, due to its tremendous technical difficulty and length.

It consists of a set of twenty-five variations and a concluding fugue, all based on a theme from George Frideric Handel's Harpsichord Suite No.

Giuseppe Verdi included a whimsical example at the end of his opera Falstaff[62] and his setting of the Requiem Mass contained two (originally three) choral fugues.

Twentieth-century composers brought fugue back to its position of prominence, realizing its uses in full instrumental works, its importance in development and introductory sections, and the developmental capabilities of fugal composition.

[53] The second movement of Maurice Ravel's piano suite Le Tombeau de Couperin (1917) is a fugue that Roy Howat (200, p. 88) describes as having "a subtle glint of jazz".

[65] Béla Bartók's Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta (1936) opens with a slow fugue that Pierre Boulez (1986, pp.

Stravinsky recognized the compositional techniques of Bach, and in the second movement of his Symphony of Psalms (1930), he lays out a fugue that is much like that of the Baroque era.

In the first movement of his Fourth Symphony, starting at rehearsal mark 63, is a gigantic fugue in which the 20-bar subject (and tonal answer) consist entirely of semiquavers, played at the speed of quaver = 168.

Olivier Messiaen, writing about his Vingt regards sur l'enfant-Jésus (1944) wrote of the sixth piece of that collection, "Par Lui tout a été fait" ("By Him were all things made"): It expresses the Creation of All Things: space, time, stars, planets – and the Countenance (or rather, the Thought) of God behind the flames and the seething – impossible even to speak of it, I have not attempted to describe it ...

[69]György Ligeti wrote a five-part double fugue[clarification needed] for his Requiem's second movement, the Kyrie, in which each part (SMATB) is subdivided in four-voice "bundles" that make a canon.

In "Fugue for Tinhorns" from the Broadway musical Guys and Dolls, written by Frank Loesser, the characters Nicely-Nicely, Benny, and Rusty sing simultaneously about hot tips they each have in an upcoming horse race.

Interestingly, Leonard Bernstein quotes Beethoven's monumental "Große Fuge" for string quartet and employs Arnold Schoenberg's twelve tone technique, all in the context of a jazz infused Broadway show stopper.

A few examples also exist within progressive rock, such as the central movement of "The Endless Enigma" by Emerson, Lake & Palmer and "On Reflection" by Gentle Giant.

On their EP of the same name, Vulfpeck has a composition called "Fugue State", which incorporates a fugue-like section between Theo Katzman (guitar), Joe Dart (bass), and Woody Goss (Wurlitzer keyboard).

[76] The Austrian musicologist Erwin Ratz argues that the formal organization of a fugue involves not only the arrangement of its theme and episodes, but also its harmonic structure.

In Ratz's words, "fugal technique significantly burdens the shaping of musical ideas, and it was given only to the greatest geniuses, such as Bach and Beethoven, to breathe life into such an unwieldy form and make it the bearer of the highest thoughts.

"[78] In presenting Bach's fugues as among the greatest of contrapuntal works, Peter Kivy points out that "counterpoint itself, since time out of mind, has been associated in the thinking of musicians with the profound and the serious"[79] and argues that "there seems to be some rational justification for their doing so.