Fuga

What it means

Fuga is the Italian and Latin designation for the fugue, the most strictly developed form of contrapuntal writing. The word means flight — the voices follow one another as if they were fleeing from one another. A fugue rests on a theme, the subject, which is introduced one after another in all the voices and worked out in the further course.

Musical use

The construction follows a basic pattern that allows numerous variations. In the exposition the voices enter one after another with the subject; the second brings it as the answer, usually at the dominant level, and occasionally it is slightly altered so that the key is preserved. While one voice takes over the subject, the preceding one continues with a counter-voice, often a fixed countersubject. After the exposition, interludes, which work out motifs of the subject and modulate, alternate with further subject entries in different keys. Toward the end the subject returns to the home key, often in stretto, in which the entries overlap one another, and frequently over a pedal point.

Bear in mind that the fugue is less a fixed form than a procedure. The number of voices, the length of the interludes, the sequence of keys, and the use of contrapuntal arts such as inversion and augmentation differ from fugue to fugue.

Special forms are the double fugue with two subjects, the counter-fugue with inverted answer, and the mirror fugue, which can be mirrored as a whole. A fugue-like section within another movement is called a fugato.

The word goes back to the Latin fuga, flight: the voices seem to chase one another. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries fuga designated every form of strict imitation, thus also the canon. Only in the seventeenth century did the term narrow to the form known today as the fugue, with subject, answer, and interludes.

Performance practice

Mark every subject entry before you practise, and make it audible while playing, whatever the voice. Practise the voices individually and sing them. And shape the interludes as movement between the entries.