Fugato
Fugue-like section without strict form.
What it means
A fugato is a section that is built like the beginning of a fugue but is not carried out into a complete fugue. A subject enters in one voice and is taken up one after another by the others, so that a fugue-like exposition arises; afterwards the music passes on to something else. The fugato is thus not an independent piece but a procedure within a larger movement.
Musical use
The fugato appears especially often in the development of sonata movements and in variation cycles. There it serves as a means of condensation: a theme that was previously presented homophonically is now worked out contrapuntally, and the voices entering one after another produce growing tension. Since the procedure is connected with the idea of learnedness and strictness, it can also act as a stylistic quotation, for instance in works that link up with older music.
In orchestral music, the distribution of the entries among different instrument groups yields an additional tonal intensification, because with every entry the sound picture becomes denser.
The rules are less strict than with the fugue. The answer need not stand at the dominant level in the usual way, not all voices need to enter, and the section can break off at any time or pass into another type of writing.
The fugato is to be distinguished from the fugue as a complete form and from imitation in general, in which voices imitate one another without a fugue-like sequence of entries being present.
A fugato stands within a movement that is otherwise not fugal, for instance in the development of a symphony or as an intensification section of an overture. It usually begins with several subject entries like a fugue exposition and then passes into other writing.
Performance practice
Make every subject entry audible and take the other voices back while doing so. Build the intensification with the entries instead of playing loudly from the start. And watch the transition out of the fugato back into the rest of the movement — the manner of writing changes there, and this wants to be shaped.