Episode

What it means

An episode is a section that stands between the main parts of a form and connects them with one another. In the fugue, an interlude between the subject entries is so called; in the rondo, a part that stands between the returns of the refrain. Common to both is that they do not present the main material but lead from one appearance to the next.

Musical use

In the fugue the episode is a section in which the subject does not sound completely. Instead it works out motifs from the subject or from the countersubject, often in sequences, and modulates into the key of the next entry. This produces an alternation of density and loosening: subject entries are points of concentration, episodes spaces of movement in between. Without them a fugue would become a mere stringing together of entries.

In the rondo, by contrast, the episode is an independent part with new material that stands between the returns of the refrain and usually in a different key. In the layout ABACA, B and C are such episodes; they create contrast against whose background the return of the refrain works. It is similar with the ritornello in the Baroque concerto, between whose appearances solo episodes stand.

The fugue episode is to be distinguished from the codetta, which is shorter and connects only two entries within the exposition, and from the development in the sonata movement, which works out material as a whole part of the form.

In the rondo the episode stands between the returns of the refrain; it brings new material and often leads to other keys, so that the refrain acts as a homecoming on its return. In the fugue, the subject-free sections are also called interludes. In the theory of rondo form, one also speaks of couplets instead of episodes.

Performance practice

Shape episodes as movement between goals: pressing forward, but without anticipating the following entry. Make the next subject entry audible by taking the episode before it lighter. And, with sequential episodes, watch the course of the sequence — it wants to be led as an intensification or a calming.