Reflections

The prelude sings a lovely, liquid song in two phrases. With a three-part texture, the phrases are first treated to two-part imitation in the lowest and highest voices, and later, to euphoric parallelism of both voices together. The song and its reprise are separated by a section of departure, also featuring two-part imitation, which recurs in the coda as a sweetened echo.

The fugue subject, in 5/4, has its own excellent completeness, two sequences and a tidy ending for a perfectly natural symmetry (in 5/4!). But wait, there is still more: two lovely countersubjects, a sweet melody for the episodes (another sequence), a journey of modulations, a recurrence of the subject twice as long in augmented form, the haunting episode many times (with transformations), and a coda of unmatched charm. It is contrapuntal clockwork with several jewels sparkling for your mind. It is a precious golden music box singing sweetly to your heart.

At one time, there was a popular theory that fugues had a sonata like-form: exposition, development, recapitulation. This is true to the extent that every fugue has a beginning, a middle and an end. From a harmonic point of view (how the fugue modulates) a fugue and a sonata may have similarities. But though sonatas exhibit a ternary thematic shape, they are essentially binary forms which fugues are rarely. This view has since been rejected; it is not overly useful or even valid to regard a fugue as like a sonata. (Though a comparison is very useful for grasping the contrasts). By the very nature of its continuous momentum without strong cadential punctuation, with its essential quality of frequent subject recurrence and interposed episodes, with a continuous development that is primarily textural, the fugue seems to be something quite different (though many sonatas contain fugues). Fugue is usually considered more of a procedure that generates an infinity of patterns, a miraculously wide variety within a rather strict set of simple but productive rules. But this particular fugue has a design which is remarkably like a three-part form: exposition, development and recapitulation.

From its sweet beginnings in "exposition" and first episode, this fugue travels a great distance, modulating to contrasting and occasionally dark harmonies, ranging wide over the scope of the keyboard, distorting and fragmenting the subject until it seems almost broken. The climax of the "development" coincides with the augmented subject entries in stretto with the original subject in the other voices, an expansive rush of simultaneity and the threat of chaos. The augmentation highlights one of the subject's intervals which feel somewhat more disturbing than it first appeared (augmented 4th). The "recapitulation" has the fugue returning to its unperturbed origins, smooth, gentle, calmly drawing to a close on the tonic.

With its subject as recurring "refrain" and the contrasting departure of its "episodes", one wonders if there is not something to be gained by comparing a fugue to a rondo.