Reflections

The fugue is marked Allegro non troppo: fast, but not too fast. Swiftly, steadily, without rushing, without losing balance. The fugue has a 3/4 time signature. Each measure has three beats, but at an Allegro pace, each measure becomes a single beat, alternating measures creating a two beat march: left, right, left right. With a duple (two beat) march overriding, each step breaks down into the original triple meter, each march step a waltzing whirl of threes, twirling and pivoting around a myriad of syncopated combinations. It ends up feeling like 6/4. As the fugue progresses, the texture grows and the rhythm complicates as the steady march carries it all with a kind of relentless inevitability.

Shostakovich clearly displays his command of melody, rhythm and counterpoint in this fugue. The subject is a complete winner. The primary countersubject is equally so. Even the second countersubject in singable, capable of lodging in the mind all its own. But as these three combine in counterpoint, the effect is astonishing. The subject and primary countersubject interlock to swing off each other's momentum with a synergistic syncopation that is profoundly infectious. It is as if each melody needs the other to make its own character that much more crisp. The second countersubject (appearing only a few times) puts it all over the top. But non troppo. Just right. Perfect lockstep, left, right, left, right, one, two, three, one, two, three. In the master fugue, the exquisite craftsmanship is always fairly invisible.

Towards the end, a subtle vertigo of chromaticism swirls about episodically, a loose end that curls up in the last few measures of the coda. A final wisp and it is gone. What was it? So darkly announced. This uneasy march. Utterly mesmerizing. Insidiously unsettling.