Fugues
major and minor key, Bach’s keyboard skills h ad reached a level allowing him to improvise full organ fugues. 6
For the purposes of this essay, it would have been impractical to analys e all of Bach’s fugues. My conclusions are based on detailed analysis of three of his pieces, one from each of the ‘W ell Tempered Clavier’ and his famous solo fugue: ‘Toccata & Fugue in D minor’ (BWV565) as representative of all his work , along with my listening to the remaining 46 from the ‘Well Tempered Clavier’, and a few others . I picked these particular pieces to cover a wide spread of his fugues, with ‘Fugue in C major’ (BWV846) being representative of all the similar pieces in the ‘Well Tempered Clavier’ Book 1, ‘Fugue in C minor’ (BWV871) representing the similar pieces in the ‘Well Tempered Clavier’ Book 2 , and ‘ Toccata & Fugue in D minor’ (BWV565) representing the remaining ones although there is some discussion over the attribution and orchestration of this piece. 7 Other than that, these three pieces all exhibit very clear examples of Bach’s methods of developm ent and structure, making them representative examples.
Handel
George Frideric Handel 8 (1685-1759), although today heralded along with Bach as one of the two greatest composers of the Baroque era would, at the time, have been regarded as the only reigning composer. 9 He wrote over 600 pieces (categorized by the ‘HWV’ system) including nine f ugues and other works with ‘ fugato ’ sections. He would later become a huge influence on many classical composers such as Beethoven and Mozart, with Beethoven proclaiming him ‘ the greatest composer that ever lived ’ . 9 I listened to all nine of Handel’s fug ues and analysed ‘Fugue no. 6 in C minor’ (HWV610) and ‘Fugue in E major’ (HWV612) in detail. ‘Fugue no. 6 in Cminor’ represents his suite of six fugues (HWV605 -610) and ‘Fugue in E major’ is one of his two isolated fugues. I chose not to analy se any fugato sections of other pieces.
Why Not Vivaldi?
Although Vivaldi 10 is another great composer of the Baroque era and definitely worth mentioning in the context of fugues, I could not find much evidence to support my arguments about his style of writing as for other composers so Vivaldi is not included in this essay.
6 George, 2017. How Did JS Bach Improvise? . [online] Music: Practice & Theory Stack Exchange. Available at: <https://music.stackexchange.com/questions/22729/how-did-js-bach-improvise> [Accessed 12 August 2020]. 7 Williams, P., 1981. BWV565: A Toccata in DMinor for Organ by J.S. Bach? . Early Music , Jul., 1981, Vol. 9, No. 3, Wind Issue (Jul., 1981), pp. 330-337 Published by: Oxford University Press. 8 Anonymous, 2020. George Frideric Handel . [online] En.wikipedia.org. Available at: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Frideric_Handel#Catalogues> [Accessed 12 August 2020]. 9 Lumen Learning, 2020. George Frideric Handel | Music Appreciation . [online] Courses.lumenlearning.com. Available at: <https://courses.lumenlearning.com/music/chapter/george-frideric-handel/> [Accessed 3 August 2020]. 10 Lumen Learning, 2020. Antonio Vivaldi | Music Appreciation . [online] Courses.lumenlearning.com. Available at: <https://courses.lumenlearning.com/music/chapter/antonio-vivaldi//> [Accessed 3 August 2020].
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