Fugue
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Main Period: Baroque

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Beethoven

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Bach

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Brahms

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Hindemith
Fugue
A musical work built on the principle of polyphonic imitation, that is independent voices imitating each other and merging into one musical compound. Like the canon, a fugue single voice ("comes") pursues its prior ("Dux"), and there is an imitation of the subject from one voice to another. Yet when a canon is based on a perfect imitation (one melody repeating in all voices), the fugue is based on subjects shifting from voice to voice, and at the same time we hear counter subjects and different modifications on these subjects (retrograde, inversion, diminution, augmentation etc.).
The fugue blossomed mainly during the Baroque, and as in all other baroque forms (except opera), German master of fugue Johann Sebastian Bach excelledLittle Fugue in Gm, BWV.578 - J.S. BachFugue No. 2 in Cm BWV 847 - J.S. Bach, as in Goldberg Variations, the "Well-Tempered Clavier" and especially at the height of his work "Art of the Fugue", in which he demonstrated every technique of the polyphonic treatment of themes. After Bach, the fugue was exhausted as a musical form, and except for Beethoven and few romantic composers who tried to revive the baroque forms (the neo-classicists like Brahms), it was not a common form of composition. In the 20th century only a few composers like Hindemith ("Ludus Tonalis") wrote in this form.



Examples Fugues
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Little Fugue in Gm, BWV.578
by J.S. Bach
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Fugue on piano
by J.S. Bach


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