How to Listen to Classical Music: Fugues

a fugue is one of the most incredible exercises in musical logic thought and development though argumentative in its nature it is completely different from any of the Sonata style forms we've looked at in my other videos being a tool of supreme musical logic the fugue has resonated throughout the centuries from Handel's Messiah to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony from Benjamin Britten's mad fugue where he employs every single instrument group in the orchestra to Leonard Bernstein's jazz fugue in West Side Story however the undisputable master of the fugue without any doubt was Jay s bar this is because at his best he was able to blend an almost mathematical perfection of the art form with his own profound emotional realizations bark almost literally wrote the book on fugues he produced two books called the well-tempered clavier known by some as the old testament of piano music if Beethoven sonatas of a New Testament these two books each have 24 preludes and fugues one set for each key and we've looked at preludes in another video but these books are like an exploration of the full possibilities of the fugue he also wrote an unfinished masterwork the art of fugue the culmination of his life's work which is practically a textbook of the incredible musical potential of the simplest musical idea you can also find some of his richest and most powerful fuchs in his vocal works try his motets or his B minor Matz so what is a fugue well it's not so much a strict form but rather a process of development you can think of it as a medium to express musical ideas rather than a stricter form like sonata form music can be written in fugue so it's a technique of writing and a piece that's entirely in fugue is a fugue a fugue is essentially the discussion of a compact melodic idea by a definite number of voices in imitation so you'll have a fugue on this theme [Music] four four voices in imitation having four voices means that there'll be four musical lines which are independent of each other rhythmically and melodically they'll each do their own thing but when you hear them all together at the same time you realize that they're harmonically dependent on each other so on paper horizontally they're each independent interesting lines but vertically they make up chords and combinations this is what's called counterpoint writing in counterpoint is challenging to make it work well you need to use various rules but actually as with similar cases in poetry or painting being restricted by certain rules can allow some incredible artistry to flourish restricting yourself to say three or four voices and the rules of counterpoint forces the artists to be sometimes amazingly creative to solve musical problems and find their way brilliantly out of impossibly tight spots it's a bit like doing a hard Sudoku puzzle only with far more creative and emotional scope and because there are all these rules it makes it all the more impressive when the artist is then able to make the fugue emotionally powerful to sew a fugue we'll discuss a compact idea with a definite number of voices in imitative counterpoint the word foo carto refers to a section of music in fugue many symphonies will have brief passages and few like this one so recall that a few Garten but now I want to look at a few that is a piece written completely in fugue let's look at how it all works I'm going to use the C minor fugue for 4 voices from book 2 of the well-tempered clavier it's not necessarily barks best but it uses a lot of different techniques which I can draw on for examples a few will begin with something called an exposition where the material is exposed the melodic idea is called the subject so here is our subject and a fugue will begin with a single voice announcing the subject a second voice announces the answer this is a reproduction of the subject but it's transposed to be in or on the dominant and importantly for whatever reason the answer will always be on the dominant the answer could be a real answer which is an exact transposition of the subject and that would sound like this or it could be a tonal answer which is a very slightly altered transposition here for various harmonic reasons bark uses a tonal answer [Music] though typically in a few it doesn't really matter whether an answer is real or tonal so each voice is introduced in turn like this tonic subject dominant answer tonic subject dominant answer until every voice has entered once every voice has completed its subject or answer the exposition is over after the exposition there are no strict rules for how the overall structure will look the composer is free to develop the fugue however they see fit now let's look at the counter subject this is a common feature but not a necessity so we've had our first voice enter at the beginning now watch how the first voice accompanies the answer [Music] if this musical idea keeps occurring throughout the exposition to accompany future subjects and answers we can call it a counter subject if it only appears once it's not really of interest in this case it does appear again so I'm happy to call it a counter subject though bark doesn't really use it much for the rest of this piece some people use the word counter subject to mean a new subject introduced later on and the fugue let's say this new subject is stated by itself and in vivid contrast to the main subject it'll then produce a great effect when it finally comes into contact with the main subject in an exercise of counterpoint there's another aspect of fugue called an episode this is simply a name for those portions of the fugue when the complete subject is not being heard at all an episode can be one bar like here or many bars now let's look at some techniques a Canon is when different voices play the same music starting at different times so that they overlap and accompany each other and we use the word Canon to describe full appearances of the subject not just brief glimpses you might already know a famous Canon such as frère Jacques or London's burning in counterpoint that we can also have canons at different intervals in the scale so we could have a Canon of the unison you or a cannon of the second or even a cannon at the 7th or anywhere along the scale augmentation is the delivery of the subject or counter subject in consistently slow and notes like here [Music] diminution is the opposite the delivery of the subject in quicker note values this Fuca doesn't have any diminution in version most commonly means the vertical reflection of the subject this fugue has a few cases of not quite exact inversion but close enough to be worth mentioning and lastly stretto stretto is the overlapping of the subject with one or more answers it's when the entries of the subject are squeezed together so that they overlap this term should not be used for mere sketchy allusions to the subject such as those you might find in an episode rather we should use Strato to describe moments when the subject and answer survived more or less completely in each voice is an example of stretto from this field [Music] Fuchs can get more and more complex you can have a double view meaning a few which exposes two subjects this might begin with two voices announcing two subjects at the same time as happens here [Applause] or the food might have two separate expositions for the different subjects and eventually the two subjects will be combined together bark even wrote some triple Fuchs showing his mastery of counterpoint but what I've given you here are all the basics you need to know to follow most Fuchs and pieces of counterpoint as I say at their best fuge can be the most powerful exercises in musical logic thought and development and this is why they're well worth deeper study I hope you enjoyed this video I'll be making more like this so please do subscribe like it share it and let me know what you might like to see next thanks for watching

Channel: Inside the Score

Views: 908,393

Keywords: fugues, fugue, what is a fugue, toccata and fugue in d minor, bach, little fugue in g minor, definition of fugue, art of fugue, fugue definition, techniques, augmentation, diminution, canon, stretto, double fugue, music appreciation, guide, understanding, classical music, define fugue, music education

Id: ZG4SKgCpppE

Length: 9min 28sec (568 seconds)

Published: Sat May 05 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

I like to pronounce it fug-wa in my head.

[u/thenavezgane]

Why music schools are spending more than a week on this baffles me.