Reflections

This is a very gentle fugue. It is sweet but also ponderous; it becomes wistful and heady as the sugar becomes wine. The subject has two very clear sub-phrases, two motives that, together, calmly raise and answer a question. The first motive moves from the tonic to the subdominant chord, raising its open question by lingering long on the 4th tone of the scale. The second motive leaps to the 5th, an implied dominant harmony, then relaxes back to the tonic, answering the question and closing on the major 3rd. The division of this simple subject into call and response has a profound and fundamental influence on the entire fugue.

This is considered a stretto fugue, meaning that the majority of its subject entries overlap with another, starting as early as the 4th entry, still within the exposition. 70% of the subjects appear in stretto. This overlapping emphasizes the fundamental imitative quality of fugue with tight canonic imitation that multiplies and amplifies the subject. In particular, this draws further attention to the two-part nature of the subject. The question motive is raised over and over again in tight succession. And like soft but ample rain answering a thirsty call, the answer motive falls again and again as well. There are times when this fugue almost feels like a double fugue, so saturated is it with these two atomic motives that seem to have their very own independent life.

Nearly the entire fabric of the fugue overtime feels to be woven by the response or answer motive, as if to say again, and again, "yes". It begins with the counterpoint of the first voice during the second subject entry: it repeats the 4-note concluding motive against the long notes of the first part of the subject (the subject becomes its own counterpart in a sort of pre-stretto). This is followed by the natural appearance of the motive in the second voice, immediately forming a canonic imitation that carries on right into the codetta between the 2nd and 3rd entries, still within the exposition. It is stretto as well as subject-derived counterpoint that repeats this answer motive again and again. But even beyond subject and its counterpoint, something is happening. Throughout the fugue, the episodes are dominated by this 4-note motive. Canonic sequences across all voices abound almost as if the motive were its own subject in numerous secondary expositions. Finally, the fugue ends with this motive, the final 4 notes of the subject. The line ends not on a D, the tonic, but its major 3rd, F. This is a sweet, golden tone that is so delicate in its finality (it is the resting place of the subject, the omnipresent 4 note motive, the final "yes"), yet it floats as a mellow major harmony to the tonic, a dissolving afterglow.

This fugue appears to be constructed of such simple means: a short two-motive subject in endless fragmentary repetitions across 4 voices over time. The closer one looks, the more its seems to dissolve into this confounding simplicity. And yet, one never tires of it, to hear it sing one more time.