Fugue is in a sense the culmination of all the contrapuntal art of centuries, and holds a most important place among musical forms, whether considered historically or from the standpoint only of a finished product of art.
For this reason, and because of the difficulty of under-standing it presents to the many, a larger space is allotted to the treatment of fugue and fugal devices than to any other one form of music. However, it is not our purpose to delve so deeply into its intricacies as to make this chapter a text for the young composer, nor to make of our readers judges or critics. What we do desire is to present the subject in such a way that they may gain a larger measure of appreciation. The masterworks of really great creative minds hold much for each of us, and it is only the intelligent listener who can appropriate and enjoy his share of such a composition as fugue.
Theoretically, fugue is not difficult of comprehension, but fugue as heard presents the greatest of difficulty except to those gifted, by nature or education, with the power of holding the essentials in mind throughout the course of the composition. Without previous study, the listener as a rule fails to grasp the plan of construction, and often feels the music to be rather fragmentary or disjointed and even lacking in melody. Fugue is a contrapuntal composition, so we know its chief characteristic is that of melody. It is the highest example of polyphonic music, and as an understanding of the two general classes of forms, polyphonic and monophonic, will make clear the later development of this work we will again explain them briefly.
The terms themselves convey their use in a general sense, polyphonic, many voiced; monophonic, single voiced. Polyphonic music is a combining of two or more parts of equal melodic individuality. The monophonic system, whose simplest form is the song, makes its repetitions within the limits of a single voiced melody having an accompaniment which is ancillary to it. This accompaniment is that commonly found in the song and consists of a succession of chords in figuration or otherwise. In the polyphonic form, through repetition, the parts support one another and hence no other accompaniment is necessary.
With an understanding of the nature of the polyphonic style we are prepared to look for an interweaving of melodies carried by several parts, and subject to rules of musical composition. The same melody in a contrapuntal composition is not necessarily repeated by the different parts, two or more melodies may be heard at once. When, however, the same melody is repeated by the various parts we have a canonic form of which the fugue is the highest development. In the canon the laws for the entry of the parts are rigidly laid down. If, for instance, the second part follows the first after a lapse of one measure the third part conforms and enters exactly one measure after the second. They must also preserve the first difference of intervals ; if the second part takes up the melody a fifth above the first it must follow out the melody in that interval. Another of the points of construction in which the fugue differs from a canon is in the matter of imitation. In canon the principal part is imitated by all the other parts throughout the composition ; in a fugue, while the subject is imitated, and often one or more of the accompanying counterpoints to the various imitations of the subject are themselves imitated, the continuous and exact repetition of one part by another throughout the whole work is rarely found.
As we proceed with the study of fugue we shall find certain features in common with the canon but worked out only to a brief extent.
In as few paragraphs as possible we will now try to give a conception of the meaning of fugue as applied to musical composition, with a general idea of its construction.
Fugue is a French word derived from the Latin, fugare, to put to flight, and that from the Greek, fugere, meaning to flee. The significance of the title becomes clear to us as we follow the construction of a fugal composition.
It is a flight of melodies, one part entering, a second taking up the theme, another and another following until all have entered. Through the skilful handling of the subject by the composer you hold in mind the central theme. You feel all through this chase of melody, with its many seeming divergencies, that the wholeness of the composition is be-coming stronger by the devices used, and you are finally pre-pared for the climax.
Any voice part may begin a fugue and the other parts follow or pursue one another at certain distances; they are subject to the rules of imitation and are dependent for their treatment upon the character of the subject or principal theme.
The subject is a definite theme, consisting generally of a short melody given in the principal key by the part beginning the composition. Throughout the fugue the subject is reproduced by each of the two, three, four or more parts. After the subject is announced the second voice repeats it, usually a fifth above or a fourth below, and this constitutes the answer.
While the second part is giving the answer the original part or subject proceeds with a counterpoint which becomes the counter-subject, as does every successive part upon the completion of the fugue theme. The third part follows with the subject again in the principal key but an octave higher or lower than the first part. The announcement of the subject, answer and counter-subject, or the entry of all the parts is called the exposition of the fugue and the first section or development is said to be completed. After the exposition, which may be very short, comes the development of all the musical possibilities in the way of melodic ideas, free imitation and double counterpoint according to the ingenuity of the composer, in order to give variety and still preserve the unity of the fugue.
One method of varying the work is in the use of episodes. An episode consists generally of a number of measures, in form like a part previously heard, and is usually developed from parts of the subject or counter-subject. It is often of modulatory style, thus preventing the weariness which the incessant repetition of the principal theme might otherwise cause. No rigid rules place any limit upon the construction of these episodes and in them the composer shows his art and individuality. One episode may follow another, and even the use of short episodes may be employed between the different parts of the fugue as well as between the developed sections, so there is every opportunity in a fugal work for original employment of the several musical devices and for the making of an otherwise pedantic composition into one of beauty, that it may take its place as a truly artistic creation.
Following the episode or episodes we have the entry of another exposition. The subject and answer are again brought forward but follow a different order from that of the first section ; the part which gave the subject now takes up the answer, the subject being given to the part which before gave the answer and the counter-subject of course is formed as before explained. All the parts are continued and in some the original counterpoint appears either simply or inverted, the subject and answer forming the predominating idea throughout the whole fugue. This exposition is again followed by an episode. The greater the number of parts the greater will be the number of expositions and episodes.
An analysis of a short two-voice fugue (No. 10 in the Well-tempered Clavichord), may make the fugal structure clearer. In measures 1-4 we have the exposition of subject and answer beginning in the tonic minor; in measures 5-10 an episode; in 11-14, a second statement of subject and answer, this time in the relative major; in 15-16, another episode; from 20 to the end, the third and more extended statement, this time in the minor again, broken by various episodes.
Finally comes the unifying of parts, the bringing together of the original themes for the grand climax. This is accomplished by a stretto, a hurrying together of the subject and answer by means of a shortened distance between them. Usually at least one stretto is found and there may be several strettos in the course of a fugue. This interruption or over-lapping of parts heightens the interest and the listener feels the work has gradually increased in power through the successive flights and he is now ready for the point of greatest interest, the culmination, or climax. The way is cleared for the close. Often a coda is added and to strengthen the tonality at the very finish we find the employment of a pedal or double pedal point. A cadence either perfect or plagal completes the fugue.
The name and fame of Johann Sebastian Bach are so closely associated with the form of composition we are now considering, that it is impossible to write of one without the other. That Bach was the greatest of all contrapuntal composers, we read in the preceding chapter, and we shall soon see that to him fugue owes its present perfection. However, no art reaches such a climax without showing traces of all that came before as well as foreshadowing all that is to be. We have followed the development of this great art from the earliest crude beginnings, from simplest rhythmic motion through the stages of growth of melody, tonality and harmony. We have seen how the ever-increasing knowledge of the basic principles, through the application of the various devices, has brought polyphonic composition to the point where a genius was needed to give to us, not a new but a perfected form, capable of appealing to the highest intellect. Bach was that genius; but we shall now trace a little more minutely than has been done the history of composition as it bears directly upon the development of fugue.
For a thorough understanding of each step in the development one must look to the growth of polyphonic forms in the interval between the year 1100 and the death of Bach in 1750, since which time nothing has been added to the laws of fugue. Of all instrumental musical forms at present in use fugue ranks as the oldest, though vocal fugues must yield the right of seniority to the chant, which at least in its Gregorian guise is much the older.
It was from the canon that the fugue as we now know it grew. During the Sixteenth Century we find the use of the term fuga for the form we today call canon, which in truth is merely a contrasted form of " fuga per canonem," a fugue according to rule.
To Guillaume Dufay, a Belgian of the Fourteenth Century, is usually given the credit for the invention of the canon.
The canon as it was then written was the strictest kind of musical composition, the counterpoint being very formal and severe, and as has been pointed out, for some time it seemed the aim of the old contrapuntists to produce works as incomprehensible as possible. There is a lack of beauty in the canons of the early composers that makes them fail of aim as works of art; but they do evince great labor and study of the technical side of composition, and we can under-stand what place they fulfilled in the development of instrumental music. It was in fact by the correct ordering of intervals and through the experiments in the matter of combinations of melodies that the relations of tones were made known, and upon which knowledge more modern composers built their works.
Under Joannes Okeghem, a pupil of Dufay's, imitative counterpoint reached its zenith. He may be considered the master of the new or second Netherlands School, and as a teacher occupies an unique place in the history of music. He must be regarded as the founder of all schools from his own to the present time, for it was through his pupils that the art was transplanted into all countries.
It was by Josquin Depres, or Després as he is sometimes known, that the new Netherlands art was carried to Italy. He had received instruction and inspiration from the great Okeghem, whose successor he became in the school he represented. Between the years 1471 and 1484, he was at the Papal court of Sixtus IV., and was then called the most brilliant musician, the greatest composer, the modern world had yet produced. Prince of Music was the title given him by his contemporaries and for a period of sixty years he could claim this title undisputed. Then came a period with new tastes and styles and his works were not understood. Depres' masses are still jealously preserved in the Sistine chapel.
Depres was the first of the contrapuntists according to Luther to become master of notes instead of being mastered by them, as had been his predecessors and as were many of his contemporaries. He realized that mere technique is not art and that "music," quoting his own words, "has a speech and a capacity for the expression of the pain and pleasure of the human heart."
Depres had earlier served as chapelmaster to Louis XII. of France, and when first admitted to this service had been promised a benefice. The promise, however, was forgotten and Depres, being inconvenienced by the shortness of the king's memory, took the liberty of reminding him of his promise in the following manner : When commanded to compose a motet for the royal chapel, he chose part of the 119th Psalm for his subject : "Oh! think upon thy servant as concerning thy word !" This he set in so exquisite and supplicating a manner that the king took the words to heart and soon bestowed the promised preferment. For this act of generosity Depres with equal felicity, composed, as a hymn of gratitude, another part of the same psalm : " O Lord thou hast dealt graciously with thy servant."
Again when royal procrastination made an appeal necessary, Depres applied to a friend at court to use his influence in his behalf. The friend was willing, but never seemed to find a favorable opportunity, though Depres urged him frequently. Being annoyed by Depres' persistency he finally replied " I shall take care of this business, let me alone."
At length Depres, tired of this vain, fruitless pledge, took the oft-repeated words of his friend, " laissez moi faire " (lais-se-fai-re-moi) which by a slight facetious alteration became the syllables to the scale, la, sol, fa, re, mi, and set them to music. The result was so admirable as to prove that he did not depend upon words for his musical inspiration. We do not know that he accomplished his purpose but we do know the composition ranks among his finest.
That Depres had learned all Okeghem could teach him before he went to Rome was apparent from his early compositions, and from a study of the works of Lassus and Palestrina we may conclude he was their immediate predecessor, so the place he fills in the growth of polyphonic music is indeed an important one.
Like Bach he lived in a period when the way had been made for a master. Dufay had already carried the learning of the Netherlands School to Rome where masses with counterpoint had been written. In truth, in 1380, Dufay had held the same position in the Papal church that Depres held one hundred years later. Though Dufay's work was simple it was of sufficient contrapuntal importance to be quoted as authoritative by theorists of much later date. Between Dufay and Okeghem there were practically no composers to be classed with Depres. Their genius was expended on the invention of counterpoint rather than its application as a means to a higher end. Dufay had opened the way, the many technical composers had shown the possibilities of counterpoint, Okeghem had put the stamp of his art upon it and inspired his pupils to seek for something higher than mere mechanical skill, and Depres used the knowledge stored by them and wove the devices into really artistic compositions. He deserves to be classed among the greatest musical geniuses of any period.
We read in the previous chapter how the Netherlands School brought contrapuntal technics to a high state of development. Willaert introduced antiphonal writing and some of his grand sacred works were for two choruses of four parts each, one chorus answering the other.
In the history of musical development in Venice we find during the middle of the Sixteenth Century the names of Giovanni and Andrea Gabrieli. They realized that the organ had a larger function than that of occasionally aiding the voices and through their experiments with independent performances mastered the secrets of medieval counterpoint, and of its special applications as devised by the school of Venice. To Willaert's chorus Gabrieli added a third choir and employed alternate choir singing with the massing of voices and combinations of all parts in a freer and grander manner. In truth Giovanni Gabrieli ranks among the foremost of the founders of modern instrumental art.
Frescobaldi, a contemporary and fellow countryman of Gabrieli's, and organist of St. Peter's, evolved the canzona, which was the direct forerunner of the fugue. The name was taken from a particular variety of lyric poetry in Italian style, and applied to instrumental compositions which were written in more or less strict imitation, and to vocal works in which the words of such a poem were set to music for one or more voices. It sprang from the folk-song and corresponded with the German Lied. Because it held possibilities for freer work than the stricter polyphonic music of its time, and because of its appeal to the emotions, the canzona was for a time a popular style of composition. In the vocal canzonas the stanzas usually consisted of short lines and in order that the music should answer to the rhyme positions the melodies were sharply defined and the developed periods short.
In the Venetian School then we find the beginnings of our present form of fugue, but to the Netherlands School it owes its further development. In the history of musical growth the name of Orlandus Lassus rather overshadows that of his lesser contemporary, Jan Pieters Sweelinck, born in Amsterdam in 1562; but in the record of the development of the form which now holds our attention Sweelinck's work will doubtless always keep for him a place in the mind of the student.
We can find no authoritative record concerning his early education though tradition has it that he was a pupil of Zarlino and of Gabrieli in Venice. This probably is only tradition, for dates do not verify such a statement; it was his close study of their works rather than their instruction which so influenced his own. He was organist at Amsterdam, but his fame as organist and as a founder of a school of organ music spread throughout the musical world of his time and his influence was felt especially through Germany.
A contemporary wrote of him. "When he played the organ there was a wonderful concourse every day; every one was proud to have known, seen, heard the man." Vondel, the Dutch poet, called him the Phoenix of Music and enthusiasts have even made the claim for Sweelinck that he was the founder of instrumental music, but though his organ compositions hardly bear out this claim they are of historical interest. He was the first one known to compose an organ piece in which a real part was intrusted to the pedal, and it is true to him is generally given the glory of having written the first completely developed organ fugue.
While most of his published works were entirely vocal it is on his manuscript collection of organ works of sacred music that his fame rests. We know he was hailed as a genius during his life, the musical world and especially the students of polyphonic composition recognized the fact that he had brought nearer the perfection of a style of music for which so many had striven. He stood peer among composers of fugue not only during his life but until we come to Bach.
His pupils carried his methods and his learning from one musical center to another and in the generation which succeeded him nearly all of the leading organists were either his pupils or were influenced by a study of his works.
Scheidemann was a pupil of Sweelinck's and handed down the learning of his master to the great Reinken or Reinicke, who was one of the chief representatives of the art of organ playing in northern Germany. Bach often went from Lüneburg to Hamburg to hear Reinicke's organ performances. After exhaustive analysis of the works of these composers it is believed that the fugue of Sweelinck was in no really lasting way further developed until it found its consummation in Bach.
Another of Sweelinck's pupils was Samuel Scheidt, a German, who was the first to treat the working out of the choral artistically and in true organ style; he has also left us some very excellent toccatas. The toccata derives its name from the Italian word toccare, meaning to touch, and so signifies a touch piece. It is really a composition intended to exhibit the touch and execution of the performer and in this is much like the prelude or fantasia. Praetorius, in 1620, in fact defines the toccata as a free prelude or introduction, and this was doubtless the original meaning. The oldest examples are found in the works of Gabrieli and Merulo, and in them the toccata begins with some full harmonies, but gradually running passage work is more and more introduced and interspersed with small passages of imitation. Occasion-ally but one part is found throughout; this is not a decided subject which is made such by repetition, and the feeling is more of a showy improvisation than of a carefully planned composition. One of its characteristics lies in the flowing movement of notes of equal length and like character.
There was a lack of individuality about the toccata that kept it from taking its place as a definite form, but Bach raised it beyond all previous writers and a number of his fugues are preceded by toccatas in which he has employed short movements of markedly different styles.
Coming now to the time of Bach we find the toccatas, chaconnes and chorales of Johann Pachelbel approaching very closely those of the great master, and in his son's (Wilhelm Hieronymus Pachelbel) fugue for clavier another stride toward the perfected form.
In each biography of Johann Sebastian Bach we read of his pilgrimage on foot from Arnstadt to Lübeck, a distance of fifty miles, to hear Buxtehude, and of how he forgot to return at the end of the leave of absence granted him. Dietrich Buxtehude was a native of Denmark, celebrated as an organist and today remembered for the inspiration and insight he gave to Bach. In 1673 Buxtehude established in Lübeck the Abendmusiken, a series of grand sacred concerts following the afternoon services of the five Sundays before Christmas. His 'excellent organ compositions for these concerts and his splendid performance of them won him fame abroad and attracted the attention and admiration of students of contrapuntal composition.
The strength of his work lay chiefly in his free organ compositions. These were not founded on chorals as had been most of those of his predecessors, but were remarkable as the earliest assertion of the principle of pure instrumental music which was later so fully developed by Bach. His famous Abendmusiken, for 1678-1687, is included in the two volumes of his organ works edited by Spitta.
At Weimar Bach met Kuhnau, who had acquired celebrity for his compositions of fugue and double fugue, and doubtless the success with which these works had met and a study of them influenced Bach, who was great enough an artist to glean from the experience of others all that was best and to avoid the mistakes they had made.
Johann Josef Fux, 1660-1741, made his fame by his Latin treatise, Gradus ad Parnassum. It is a work embodying all the rules for the treatment of the ancient modes and in general of the whole subject of counterpoint. Its value as a practical explanation and manual of composition lasted many years and today equals any in its own special line. It appeared in 1725 and was translated into German in 1742. In it polyphonic composition was placed on its present basis. though in a very simple form. Bach took it as set forth in this book, applied to it the new key system of tempered scale and unlimited possibilities of modulation, and gave us the highest development of this form of music.
We see how the way was made for the masters, Bach and Händel, for it must not be forgotten that Händel's vocal fugues are among the greatest in existence.
Händel's oratorios are in their style as unapproached today as they were during his own time. He seems to have brought the oratorio to a state of perfection, but he has failed to exert the influence over the modern composers as Bach has done. He founded no school as did his great con-temporary, but as a vocal and above all a choral writer he stands supreme. His early instruction in composition under Zachau, organist of the cathedral at Halle, was in the form of canon, counterpoint and fugue, and we find fugue used in some of his grandest conceptions, including his greatest and most universally known oratorio, the Messiah. Händel borrowed many of his fugal themes for his choruses from other masters but made them his own, as he further developed them. Bach, however, invented a great majority of his subjects. His fertility in this line seemed inexhaustible. He was a thinker and an idealist, traced ideas to their source and worshiped abstract truth for its own sake. Quite as complete are his works as Händel's, but far more complex, so he never won the popular applause that Händel enjoyed. Händel's fugues show breadth of understanding and are rich in their flow of melody and picturesqueness.
In the development of fugue and of instrumental music the organ is of particular importance. Organ music reached a high plane of development sooner than any other branch of instrumental music, doubtless because organists found so many opportunities for experiment in solo work in church services. For this reason we have considered the organists and composers of organ pieces in this chapter. It was through their imitation of choral works that the elastic form known as fugue came into existence.
We find in the choral movements, where one voice enters after another at different pitches, the real source of the method of construction of fugue. When the same process was adopted for instrumental music the principal theme be-came more definite than in the choral, and composers began to weave together the parts so that this theme became the text of the entire work. Further experiment showed them the advantage gained by varying the pitch of the principal theme and then by associating it with contrasting, subordinate phrases. Next came the processes of modulation, and the parts were presented as it were in new garb and more and more intricate it became. Every device was applied that could elaborate, extend and explain the central theme, and then the whole movement was rounded with completeness by bringing the course of the progressions back to the original key and recapitulating the first phrases prominently. The fully developed fugue exemplifies the law of greater unity in greater variety.
There is such large opportunity for artificial work, for curious variations of parts and for display of ingenuity that many composers have failed to get beyond the mechanism of fugue. They have found the opportunities for trying their skill so inviting that they seem to have forgotten that the technical side of a composition means nothing except as it is a means of expressing something higher. Fortunately, how-ever, the almost unlimited capabilities of fugal work attracted many of the greatest composers and, as we have noted, fugal passages were adapted for toccatas, movements of sonatas and choruses even before the fully developed fugue came into existence.
The form became sufficiently distinctive for theorists to analyze, and they attempted to devise a set of rules for its composition. As we stated in the beginning of the chapter, theoretically, fugue is easy to comprehend, but the truth is that scarcely one of the finest fugues is strictly in accordance with the directions of the writers on this subject. More than almost any other form of music does fugue appeal to the intellect of both composer and audience and these theorists found, as they thought, a form which could be regulated by numberless rules. They tried to evolve an artistic scheme by mere speculation until it seemed as though fugue was invented to enable pedants to exhibit their ingenuity. They failed to consider the existing facts of art in their effort to reduce at least one form to scientific treatment. Fortunately for the world of art the great masters saved the fugue with all its wonderful possibilities from a mere dead formality.
Music resembles poetry: in each
Are nameless graces, which no method teach
And which a master's hand alone can reach.
Rules and methods there were without number, but it remained for Bach to make them subservient to the soul of art. He saw the larger possibilities of a freer handling of the laws of composition in polyphonic style, and his mastery of technique added to his wonderful and apparently unbounded imagination for melody and harmony won for him the title of " Father of Modern Music," and gave to the world a very definite musical form in fugue.
Pedantic had been justly applied to the earlier works in this form, but Bach gave to it beauty and expressiveness. The Venetian masters had endeavored by contrast of chord passages with scale passages, contrast of dignity and majesty with brilliancy, to bring out the power and variety of the instrument. Bach succeeded in producing variety while developing logically a definite subject and working gradually up to a climax. He emphasized the character of the musical mood. His harmonies, modulations, entry and re-entries of the imitative passages are not only wonderful in point of technical skill but they support and explain the principal theme. To put all in a few words, Bach was the possessor of an intellect which was capable of understanding the great law of unity, and of the ability to read it into his art.
There is perhaps no one man who has left so deep a mark in the history of music as Johann Sebastian Bach. His influence upon the subsequent development of the art has been far-reaching and in this Bach's work differs widely from Händel's, whose influence in comparison was slight and confined mostly to England. For a number of years after Bach's death he was studied but little by great composers, his works being for the most part unpublished and hard to obtain, but since the time of Beethoven there are few notable musicians who have not made his compositions objects of serious study. In them is found the germ of almost every-thing great that has been done in music since his day.
It was in the freer polyphonic forms and especially the fugue that Bach's technical mastery displays itself most convincingly. Fugue represents as a musical form the most highly organized development of the general principles which underlie all of Bach's compositions, and it was in the fugue that they found their highest expression. For these reasons fugue is considered characteristic of his style, and a study of his fugues more than any other of his compositions gives us an insight into the nature of the man and as artist and musician.
His collection of preludes and fugues known in England as the Forty-eight Pianoforte Fugues, and in Germany as Das wohltemperirte Clavier, has enriched the musical world for all time. The two volumes of this work contain fugues which belong to various periods of Bach's life and illustrate such states of feeling and of mind as can be expressed in musical language. They are then not only of technical interest, but whether sad, pathetic, reposeful, merry, confident or serene, are in pure instrumental style and of the most perfect and finished art.
These preludes and fugues have for the greater part of a century been under the most exacting criticisms of numberless musicians, and stood the test so well that the better men know them the more they turn to them for knowledge and inspiration.
Bach was not in his time nor is he today classed as a popular composer. He reverenced his art, was true to the highest creative powers of man and expressed in the choicest and rarest manner his innermost emotions. He did not try to appeal to the masses but voiced his own feelings to the satisfaction of his own refined taste and keenly critical musical sensibilities.
His works make great demand upon the performer. To give an intelligent interpretation of his more difficult works and to create in the minds of the audience their underlying spiritual meaning requires unlimited technical resources and artistic ability. This is one explanation of why Bach seemed for some time an isolated figure while Handel's popularity and reputation went hand in hand.
Modern fugues are more constrained and formal than those of Bach and Handel. They lack the freedom of genius in their working out and are not as convincing and forceful. Bach seemed to think polyphonically, it was his natural language and so he created with the greatest of freedom. He rendered musical material so pliable that it could be molded by the composers who followed, and it is true they have given us some very masterful fugal compositions. His son was perhaps the sincerest composer of the generation after Bach, he used his father's artistic manner in working up the details but rather catered to the taste of the time and included empty and conventional formulas which made his work somewhat superficial. However, Bach's influence upon the great Austrian school of composers who came a generation or two after him was directly through this son, Philipp Emanuel. Only a few works were at that time obtainable, The Art of Fugue, the Forty-eight Preludes and Fugues and a few organ works were fairly well known and carefully studied, but until Mendelssohn's day his works were not in the possession of the musical world at large. Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven were, it is true, strongly influenced by Bach's work. Beethoven's work especially shows traces of this influence. He had a larger opportunity to study Bach's compositions than his contemporaries and was in truth the first great composer to delve deep enough into the meaning of the master's works to be able to draw from them something of greater import than their technical side. While in some of Bach's greatest works we find religious feeling so nobly expressed, in Beethoven's compositions there is pure human joy and sorrow which appeals to us with the language of passion.
Near the end of his life he wrote a few complete fugues, but often he had used fugal passages to introduce his earlier works and his contrapuntal effects are happy ones. Among those best known are his great quartet fugue for strings, the fugue in the finale of the Eroica Symphony, the finales to the third Rasoumowsky Quartet, the Cello Sonata, and the enormous movement in B flat, which originally formed the termination to the great string quartet. In Beethoven we honor the greatest instrumental composer since Bach.
In one of Mozart's fugues with a fantasia as a prelude we find the Bach style and in fact in all of his best piano fugues. He had laid the foundation for his polyphonic writing by the study of Fux's Gradus Parnassum and by his early practise in technique, then he was led to Bach whose works in Leipsic were a new-found treasure. It is, of course, Mozart's sonatas upon which his fame chiefly rests, but in his other forms he shows mastery of technique and creative genius and his fugues are of value and interest.
In Italy Cherubini had acquired the old Italian and the Netherlands contrapuntal style and gained that proficiency in polyphonic writing in which scarcely any composer since his time has equaled him. He thoroughly mastered the style of Palestrina and adapted it perfectly to his own ideas. His Credo for eight voices is a remarkable instance of his thorough mastery of counterpoint and his fugues though rather dry and formal are of great technical interest.
These three composers were all born within twenty years after the death of Bach, and closely following them came Mendelssohn, to whom we must give the glory of having revived the real Bach. He first edited some of Bach's organ works that had before been accessible only to the few; and he brought out Bach's Passion according to St. Matthew for the first time since Bach's death. This performance showed the thoroughness of Mendelssohn's musical training. It took place March 11, 1829, in the Singakademie, Leipsic, and gave the initial impulse to the successful Bach propaganda in which Mendelssohn was a leading figure.
This understanding of classical composers was evidence of Mendelssohn's own greatness and his works today enchant his hearers as they did half a century ago. Mendelssohn when presented to Goethe was asked to play a Bach fugue. He complied but memory failed him. Without the slightest hesitation, however, he extemporized the forgotten development and his audience was delighted with his performance. Like Bach he thought in counterpoint and his quick wit and thorough understanding of musical terms made him famous for his extemporizing.
His study of and devotion to Bach influenced his works and like most great musicians he found the fugue an attractive form and has left us some excellent preludes and fugues for piano; of interest are his fugues for strings, among them one well-known one in E flat, and a number of organ fugues.
Among recent great fugal writers Rheinberger perhaps stands first. His fugal work in his organ sonatas is especially worthy of mention.
There is scarcely an instrumental composer of merit who has not tried his skill in fugal compositions, but we shall carry the history of fugue no farther, for in fact it would be but a narrative of the successes and failures of the followers of the greater masters we have already considered. The modern world has evolved nothing farther in the way of the fugue than was given us over a century and a quarter ago, though in minor details and especially in the kind of themes used, the artists of today show their individual taste.
With a very general idea of fugal composition and of its historical and chronological development we come now to inquire more specifically into its construction.
We shall infer that the reader has made a study of the foregoing chapters and has a knowledge of the musical terminology which we must perforce use in the following explanations.
