Reflections

A fugue is sometimes considered a form, but usually, it is regarded as a procedure. Different fugues take different forms, but share a set of rules and guidelines that make them all fugues. Some rules are strict: a fugue must begin with an exposition: each voice must get a turn to state the subject, one after the other. Some guidelines are entirely optional: many interesting fugues have a strong countersubject. One of the most revealing ways to think about fugue is as a game. This is the essence of a brilliant book, Bachinalia, in which the author, Eric Altschuler, likens the fugues in the Well-Tempered Clavier to a game, specifically baseball, but more generally, engaging systems of entertainment and challenge that are characteristically human such as movie going, baking, conversing, keeping and swapping statistics, and listening to the Well-Tempered Clavier. So a fugue is a sustained and repeatable pattern of behavior that arises from the following: a premise (let's have some enjoyable music in the form of a fugue), the rules of play (subject, exposition, coda, etc. including over 250 years of international scholarship), and a command for it to be done with artistry (sense of style, grace, intelligence, drama, wit, etc.) Let's have some music, Bach!

Altschuler (in his totally lifelong engaging book, Bachinalia) states a claim as frequently as Bach does a subject in his fugues which is the first, probably the only undebatable, and the most entertaining rule of all: every fugue is all about its subject. The subject "generates" the fugue. The fugue is obsessed with the subject. The subject is the mantra, the epigram, the germ, the crystal, the stem cell, the essence, the meditation of the fugue. That is all there really is. Follow this, and you will not only not get lost in the labyrinth, you will begin to enjoy the marvelous view along the way.

So (finally), consider, for a moment, "merely" the subject of this fugue. Look at its shape (Altschuler provides great games for you to get to know the WTC such as the "just looking method".). Feel the rhythm (two skips and a running line, a great 4-note motive, a triple-meter dance), notice the prosody (it falls into two pieces, the first of which falls into two pieces) and the mood of tonality and pitch pattern (major, warm, happy, maybe giddy). It is practically a song in itself. It alone bears some ponderous scrutiny (an entertainment, a game). Mindfulness. Revealing mindfulness.

Funny thing about rules and what finally happens. This fugue spends more time on music which is not the subject, that is, music which is episodic, an aside, something that happens in between subject entries, what happens while your waiting for something to happen. Guess its time to listen, yet again. You can see why I like to think of these as the forty-eight multi-faceted jewels.

And now, let's have some music Bach . . .