Fugues...+Luz+Adriana+Monsalve+Castro!

=Fugues=

A fugue is a contrapuntal composition for two or more voices.

Counterpoint
Counterpoint is the relation between two or more voices. The voices are rhythmically and melodically independent but sound harmoniously together. It developed strongly during the Renaissance and Baroque period. “It is hard to write a beautiful song. It is harder to write several individually beautiful songs that, when sung simultaneously, sound as a more beautiful polyphonic whole... The way that is accomplished in detail is...'counterpoint” John Rahn. Johann Sebastian Bach wrote most of his music using counterpoint and explained the range of possibilities in works like //The Art of Fugue//. The form or compositional genre known as fugue is perhaps the most complex contrapuntal convention. Other examples include the round (familiar in folk traditions) and the canon. A fugue can be written for any medium, instrumental, and/or vocal.

Structure
It begins with a short tune done alone in one voice; this tune is called the **subject** and will recur through as the main theme. As the first voice finishes the subject, the second voice picks it up starting in a different pitch. This second entry of the subject is called the **answer**. While the second voice is going through the answer, the first voice continues with other melody material. If the later material tends to accompany the subject through, we call it the countersubject. If there is a third voice, it usually enters with the subject starting on the original note; meanwhile the second voice might continue with the countersubject, and the first voice does more or less swath it wants (as long as it makes a good counterpoint with the others). Bach and latter composers often insert a brief episode or bridge after the first subject and answer, to make the third entry more dramatic.

Entries can be adjusted at will in regard to range; often the first is in the middle-alto range, the second in the soprano, and the first in the bass. There can be any number of voices; 3 to 5 are most common. In a three-voiced fugue, the above pattern would constitute what theorists call an exposition: a series of entries on the subject. Usually an exposition is followed by a longer section of free counterpoint also called an episode. The rest of the fugue the proceeds in a series of subject entries (and/or complete expositions) and episodes (free counterpoint). This process moves through various keys ending up in the home key with some sort of climax. Often that climax is achieved by having entries of the subject overlap. This exiting effect in which the subject seems to step on its own toes in its eagerness to be heard is called **stretto.**
 * Voice 1 || Subject || Countersubject || Episode/ bridge (free) || Free countersubject ||
 * Voice 2 ||  || Answer (transposed) ||^   || Countersubject ||
 * Voice 3 ||  ||   ||^   || Subject (in original key) ||

..................... Subject (then free counterpoint) ........................ Subject (then free)
 * Stretto** ...... Subject (then free)

A stretto has to be planned from the outset because the subject must be composed so as to make good counterpoint when confined with it’s self. In some pieces the climatic effect of the stretto is further enhanced by a sustained drone note, called a pedal point. A fugue appeal to composers largely because of it’s joining of discipline and freedom. To make such coldly logical patterns work fluently and interestingly in both melody and harmony dimensions takes a virtuoso of counterpoint. Jet there can be considerable flexibility in the handling, and the episodes leave room for free invention. Fugue like procedures first appeared around the 15th century; German composers led in the making freestanding fugues. The summit of the German fugue tradition is, of course, J. S. Bach. Recalled one of his pupils, “Bach considered his parts as if they were persons who conversed together like a select company.” In his conversations though the company all speak at the same time jet move together in harmony. In Bach’s fugues one finds myriad variants of the generalized pattern I have descried. Some of his fugues have no stretto, some are nearly all stretto. He sometimes wrote double or triple fugues, with two or three subjects first presented in separated sections and finally combined in counterpoint: or there may be “double subjects” that always appeared together in two voices. These are bogglingly difficult stunts, musical higher mathematics, but Bach brings them off as if they were simple as a folk song. Bach’s fugues have long been admired and studied by composers, but they have been loved by listeners simply because they can be such powerful music- for example, the monumental 10-minute fugue that begins in his B minor Mass. Many climatic movements in Bach and Handel choral works are fugues. After Bach, and largely because of Bach, the fugue persisted. Besides writing freestanding fugues, Haydn and Mozart often used **fugato**, a short fugue like section, in their works. Beethoven became obsessed by fugues in his later years. Though fugues were written in the later 19th century mostly as a didactic exercise, truly creative ones were still being written into the 20th century, an example being the first movement of Bartok’s Music for Strings, percussion, and celesta.

Example
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Bach's little fugue in G minor is written for four parts. The entrance of the three first voices follows the order shown above. It also shows the multiple re expositions of the subject. it is a beautiful musical piece, which i personally find really powerful.