Reflections

There is a regular and consistent countersubject that picks up the swiftness introduced at the beginning of the subject and adds motion beneath the 3/4 groove much like rolling water waving beneath the rhythmic, swaying progress of a boat pressing ever onward. With 4 voices in the fugue, the counterpoint becomes thick, rich and frothy indeed. But like water, it is highly dynamic, ever shifting and changing. Though familiar rhythms, motive and even phrases recur, no static, persistent pattern emerges beyond the single countersubject.

The most prominent feature of this fugue's development and its fulfillment is its creative use of stretto yielding the potent experience of hearing multiple subject entries overlap in time. But the majority of stretto in this fugue does not use literal and complete subject entries, only the first part of the subject, its head motive. The head motive is so immediately recognizable, so pregnant with potential energy, that merely two measures of the subject are adequate to create the illusion of stretto. If you listen closely, you will find that only the first subject entry in any cluster of apparent stretto is complete. No matter. The effect is vivid and successful. There are at least ten such false entries throughout the fugue including a few entries that are very close variants of the complete subject. Shostakovich uses stretto as well as the isolated false entry to build the texture, the pace and the density of the music so that two, three and even four subjects seem to be running at once. This is a very common technique in fugue composition: to use only a meaningful fragment of the subject for much of its fabric. Most subjects have a recognizable head motive that instantly triggers our sense of a new subject entry. In some ways, it is as if the head motive becomes an icon of the subject which, though shorter, carries the subject's full, encapsulated impact. In this fugue, the head motive contributes to the possible metaphor of a boat on the ocean: it rolls and leaps like a wave before settling down to a steady rowing motion. With stretto, the waves become more frequent, more relentless, while still our awareness navigates the water, determined to stay afloat, marvelling at the power of the sea.

Altschuler, with his inexhaustible ability to make keen and thought provoking generalizations about Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, provides a revealing comment on the phenomenon of distinct head motives from subjects:

"If we played 'Name that Fugue' with Bach's fugues, the wonder would be that anyone could tell one fugue from another by only the first few notes of the subject. There are forty-eight fugues in the Well-Tempered and literally hundreds of other fugues by Bach. Yet it is possible to distinguish each of these fugues merely by hearing the beginning of their subjects. And that is possible because Bach designed and wrote the beginning of each of his fugue subjects, the head, to be unique and distinct. This is a testament to Bach's immense creativity."