Fugues
piece with no Recapitulation section but does include a short coda. Anothe r example is Handel’s ‘Fugue no. 6 in C minor’ (HWV610), where he ends with a brief Recapitulation but no coda ; see Figure 4.
Figure 3: The coda at the end of Handel’s ‘Fugue in E major’ (HWV612)
Figure 4: The Recapitulation section at the end of Handel’s ‘Fugue no. 6 in C minor’ (HWV610)
This suggests that, beyond including Exposition and Development sections, the structures of fugues could be as fixed or free as the composers wished, with Bach choosing to remain consistently fixed and Handel being much freer with his.
Another structural feature worth comparing is the use of ‘episode’. An episode, which can last any length of time, is a section where a complete subject is not being played by any part. Bach seems to use episodes very deliberately as passages where he can develop his ideas – often by fragmenting his initial subjects and answers (fragmentation is when a composer takes a pervious motif, in this case the subject or answer, and breaks it up into smaller musical ideas, ‘motifs’). This allowed him to move away from the constraints of having to harmonize these fixed motifs with each other or with any other fixed motifs, for example counter-subjects. This creates very free sections of his compositions that, essentially, take a break from the form (Exposition-Development-Recapitulation), providing him space for complete freedom to compose within the (stricter) greater form. A good example this is throughout ‘Toccata & Fugue in Dminor’ (BWV565) , 13 where Bach includes nine episodes within the fugue section developing ideas through fragmentation and sequence, see Figure 5.
13 Odd Quartet, 2018. Toccata & Fugue In DMinor, BWV 565 - Music History Crash Course . [online] YouTube. Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_NuEzvt-6I> [Accessed 21 July 2020].
18
Made with FlippingBook Digital Publishing Software