Stretto

What it means

In a fugue, stretto refers to the close, overlapping succession of several subject entries, in which a new voice enters with the subject before the previous voice has fully completed its own statement of it. This creates a particularly dense, contrapuntally demanding texture, in which the subject is heard, briefly staggered, in several voices at once.

Musical use

Stretto is one of the most popular contrapuntal intensifying devices in the fugue and is usually used toward the end of a work, creating a sonic and structural climax through the close, dense interweaving of subject entries. Well-known examples appear in many fugues by Johann Sebastian Bach, such as in The Well-Tempered Clavier, where stretti often mark a movement's most elaborate contrapuntal density.

Stretto should be distinguished from the regular subject entries of a fugue's exposition, in which each voice presents its subject fully before the next enters. It also differs from a double canon, since stretto is applied to a single subject within one fugue, rather than combining two independent canonic voice pairs.

Performance practice

When listening to a fugue, follow the individual subject entries closely and note passages where the gaps between entries shrink noticeably: this usually marks the beginning of a stretto. When performing yourself, it helps to practise each voice involved in a stretto separately first, before trying to make all the overlapping subject entries clearly audible at once.