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From: lipp@ccvaxa.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.music.classical
Subject: Re: Some (serious) discussion topics
Message-ID: <55600008@ccvaxa.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 15-Feb-85 17:30:00 EST
Article-I.D.: ccvaxa.55600008
Posted: Fri Feb 15 17:30:00 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 18-Feb-85 04:23:54 EST
References: <335@gargoyle.UUCP>
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Nf-From: ccvaxa!lipp    Feb 15 16:30:00 1985



[reply to carnes@gargoyle]

>(First, an addendum to my previous comments about stretto fugues:  I forgot
>to mention the C-sharp major fugue in Book II of the WTC.  The *exposition*
>of this fugue is a stretto, and the third voice is inverted!  

Sorry to be a pest, but it would be a paradox to have stretto in a fugal
exposition... Two ideas to unravelling this paradox.

First, the end of the subject is defined by a fresh entry of the subject
in a new voice.  (This entry is technically called the "answer".)
The procedure looks (sounds) like this:

voice1   SSSScscs
voice2       SSSS
time--->
 
The continuation of voice1 after voice2 enters is called the "counter
subject"(cs in the figure.)

Second, stretto is the entire subject placed in juxtaposition with
another occurance of the subject.  Another figure:

voice1   SSSS
voice2     SSSS
time--->

At the beginning of a fugue the material is presented; stretto is the
dynamic *use* of material.  The two can't happen together.

Now by this definition of a subject, the fugue under discussion has a
four note subject (pretty slim some might say).  The subject and the
countersubject can't be grouped together to give a "properly" long
subject because the subject-countersubject pair only appear a few times
and only in the first half of the piece.  Fugue subjects need to pop
up as entire things throughout the work.

The subject, small as it is, does appear throughout the piece, many times
in inversion, and also in stretto.  Bar four (if I remember correctly)
is the first case, and this is after the cadence that marks the end of
the exposition section.

Admittedly, this piece is far from an easy or "correct" fugal composition.
In fact, it's more of a fugal fantasy because of the florid passage work
in the second half and the enlargement of the texture to four and five
voices at the final cadence.  You've got it right that Bach's the most
interesting when he's farthest from a textbook example.

Charles Lipp, Gould, CSD--Urbana.....stop in for a beer