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This chapter reviews Mendelssohn's organ works from 1836-7. By the time he turned 27 on February 3, 1837, Felix Mendelssohn had established an enviable international reputation for himself in the musical world and had published works for a broad variety of media. Yet his reputation in the organ world rested solely on his skills as a performer and improviser. Apparently Mendelssohn now felt it was time to publish something for organ, a thought that probably began to percolate in his mind sometime during the latter half of 1836. During those months he was actively composing and compiling his six Etuden und Fugen (later, Präludien und Fugen) für Pianoforte (Op. 35), for which he ultimately pressed one of his organ duet fugues into service as the second Fugue in D Major of the set. Plans for a collection of organ fugues would seem to have been an obvious or natural extension of his work on the preludes and fugues for piano.

This chapter reviews Mendelssohn's organ works from 1838-43. Mendelssohn believed that the fugue was the form preeminently suited for the organ. Quite possibly he associated the discipline of fugue with the discipline of organ-playing itself, or he may have feared the pitfalls of the Characterstück, or perhaps believed that fugues, as deliberate products of cerebration, demanded codification, whereas preludes, which could often be equated with improvisation, did not. Whatever the reason, Mendelssohn always harbored a proclivity toward fugue despite the fact that no other musical form caused him more anxiety and frustration. As the manuscripts of the three fugues written in July 1839 make abundantly clear, fugal writing had not become any easier for him over the years; indeed, each of these new fugues was created only with the greatest travail, and attempts to arrive at a definitive text for any of them is a frustrating and elusive undertaking.

This chapter focuses on the association of Bach's music with fugue. His earliest works show a preoccupation with fugal writing, and the skill they already exhibit supports his son's observation that ‘he became even in his youth a pure and strong fugue writer’. Many of Bach's early fugues are free-standing, lacking an introductory prelude. They are sometimes regarded as deviations from the norm of the prelude-and-fugue, and presumed to have been written for study purposes only. However, this is to view Bach's early music from the vantage point of his later development.

This chapter focuses on Bach's prelude-and-fugue form. At Weimar, the two-movement structure of prelude and fugue, already prominent in Bach's early music, became fully established along the lines of a blueprint: the Prelude and Fugue in G minor, BWV 535a, the most advanced of the early works of this kind. As reflected in the revision of that work, however, the prelude is expanded and consolidated so that it becomes a more equal partner to the following fugue. This development applies specifically to organ music; only sporadic works survive in this dual form for harpsichord, and there is no evidence that the prelude and fugue for manuals only was established in any consistent fashion before The Well-Tempered Clavier. Such is the centrality of the prelude-and-fugue form within Bach's oeuvre that other genres are now assimilated to it: the toccata (BWV 911and 538; later 540), fantasia (BWV 944), and passacaglia (BWV 582).

Conceived as a consortium of solo voices, a Haydn quartet is perpetually vulnerable to having the norm of first-violin leadership challenged, compromised, complicated, or temporarily overturned. The almost ubiquitously destabilized environment that prevails involves continuously changing relationships among the instruments, a concomitant variety of texture, sonority, and register, and numerous devices for blending and separating different strands of line and accompaniment. Separation is most intense in soloistic passages for the first violin, which occasionally climbs to its highest range. In addition to such vividly opposed states as strident unison and blended, hymn-like homophony, there are allusions to strict polyphony, including examples of canon and fugue, and many instances of loosely woven, conversational texture in which thematic threads pass from one part to another. Special effects include bagpipe-imitating drone basses, pizzicato, and the use of mutes (con sordino).

Most items within this small but important category involve alternatives to sonata form among the finales. Examples include the three fugues of Op. 20 (Nos. 2, 5, and 6) and that of Op. 50 (No. 4), as well as a number of rondo and rondo-related forms, beginning with three straightforward instances in Op. 33 (Nos. 2, 3, and 4) and including later hybrid forms that mix rondo elements with those of sonata, variation, or fugue. Other, less easily categorized designs include the “Capriccio” of Op. 20/2, which parodies mannerisms of serious opera; forms such as the slow movement of Op. 33/2, which alludes to various formal conventions without lapsing into any standard scheme; and several slow movements (those of Opp. 33/5, 50/2, and 55/1) whose form resembles that of an aria or solo concerto movement, with opening, central, and closing ritornellos, and (in the Op. 33 and 55 instances) notated cadenzas as well.

This chapter presents Reich's thoughts about non-Western music. He says that Western musical structures like canon, fugue, and others are learned considerably later in life and are really only learned well by professionals or well-trained amateurs. These ways of putting music together can thus be transported to another culture more easily because they are not as deeply ingrained in our minds. One can thus create music with one's own sound that is constructed in the light of one's knowledge of non-Western structures.

Initially published by La Chevardière in 1774, Op. 20 acquired the name “Sun” from a sunburst image on the title page of Hummel's 1779 edition. Despite resemblances to Opp. 9 and 17, the new quartets break fresh ground in matters of cyclic profile, opus design, and sonority, and they exceed their predecessors in musical wit, technical sophistication, expressive range, and formal variety. Memorable novelties include instances of metrical dissonance, tonal derailment, and dense chromaticism as well as passages that feature the cello as a tenor-range soloist. With two quartets cast in minor keys, there are new perspectives on minor-key discourse; and the incorporation of three technically exacting fugal finales points to a new concept of cyclic profile, with the finale now a focus of cyclic culmination.

Dedicated to Friedrich Wilhelm II and known as the “Prussian” quartets, these difficult works were clearly designed for connoisseurs. Their sale and early publication history involved complex, evidently devious negotiations with the publishers Artaria in Vienna and William Forster in London. A distinctive first-movement trait involves a new kind of relationship between meter and surface rhythm (a fast alla breve with much triplet figuration), which fosters fluid rhythmic momentum and broad melodic trajectories. Dance movements are notable for their metrical dissonances and thematic connections between minuet and trio. Learned polyphony is emphasized most notably in the fugal finale of Op. 50/4. Other finales display elaborate sonata forms, several of which have multiple, rondo-like recurrences of primary-theme material. Possibly a musical response to Mozart's recently completed “Dedication” quartets, Op. 50 rivals Mozart's contemporaneous works in promoting the quartet's ascendancy as an aristocrat among instrumental genres.

Noted for timbral brilliance and an accent on taxing first-violin delivery, this set, Op. 54/55, is traditionally linked to the violinist Johann Tost, who served as a middleman in its sale. Extroverted and intensely energetic, especially in the fast outer movements, these works display a wide tonal range, an enriched harmonic syntax, fast tempos, and streamlined surface activity. Whereas slow movements feature expressive soloistic embellishment (notably the ternary variation design of Op. 54/3, the gypsy lament of Op. 54/2, and the concerto-style Op. 55/1), the finales concentrate on compositional intrigue — especially Op. 55/1, with its synthesis of fugue (looking back to Op. 20) and rondo (as in Op. 33), and Op. 54/2, famous for the incomparably witty inspiration of a form that thwarts expectations at virtually every turn. Chromatic harmony figures prominently through inflections within phrases and remote tonal excursions within themes.

By the eighties, at all events at Charterhouse, the arts, even the art of music, were mildly encouraged. There were in my time two presiding authorities over Carthusian music: Mr G. H. Robinson, the organist; and Mr Becker, who taught the pianoforte and also played the horn. Robinson was a sensitive musician and a kind-hearted man, and gave leave to practise on the chapel organ. There was one competent organist among the boys: H. C. Erskine, who was able to give a very good performance of Johann Sebastian Bach's “St Anne's” Fugue. This chapter ought to mention a boy whose name later became vicariously famous: Gordon Woodhouse. One cannot write of Carthusian music without mentioning “Duck” Girdlestone, he was a keen amateur musician and conducted the weekly practices of the school orchestra.

The first two movements of the Piano Concerto were sketched in 1926, and the third movement in 1930. The work is dedicated to Miss Harriet Cohen. There are three movements: Toccata leading to Romanza leading to Fuga chromatica con Finale alla Tedesca. There is no break between the movements. After various episodes a stretto on a dominant pedal is reached, built up chiefly on an augmentation of part of the fugue subject with which the subject and counter-subject of the fugue are combined. A cadenza for the pianoforte separates the fugue and the Finale, the subjects of which are the same as those of the fugue, but treated harmonically rather than contrapuntally; and finally there is another cadenza for the pianoforte. The cadenza ends with a quotation two bars long from a contemporary composer, added “according to my promise.” Then a few bars of Allegro bring the Concerto to an end.

The fugue in A-flat Major, among the more concise pieces in The Well-Tempered Clavier, is much loved by players and admired in the literature. As the piece proceeds, one feels more and more that its basic material has to be the subject together with its answer, which may be called the “subject-pair.” The linkage is a consequence of the “open” ending of the subject, on the fifth degree, rather than on the more stable and much more common third degree or tonic, and of its rhythmic profile: entirely even, up to the point where it is firmly end-stopped. While the subject-pairs may be rudimentary and identical in rhythm, they are not identical or altogether simple in pitch content. Emotional range is another special feature of this short composition, all the more remarkable because of the overall tone of restraint.

The fugue in C Minor has become standard teaching material in advanced and elementary textbooks alike, for courses in canon and fugue as well as lowly music appreciation. It was the first fugue to be jazzed and the first to be switched on. The fugue in C Minor demonstrates contrapuntal inversion very well, with five of the six possible permutations of the subject, countersubject 1 (cs 1), and countersubject 2 (cs 2) clearly on display. This fugue also teaches about the conventional closure of minor-mode music in the major, by altering the interval of a minor third in its final tonic chord into the more conclusive major third. The fugue in C Minor serves as a model for a number of others with lively, dance-like subjects and prominent recurring episodes, but they all close in quite a different spirit, with an epigram derived wittily from some previous material.

The Art of Fugue was prepared for publication in open score, after having composed it on two staves, in the usual keyboard music format. The work is a staggering compendium of nearly twenty fugues and canons all based on a single theme, and open-score format, with each voice on its own stave, showed off the contrapuntal devices applied to this ur-theme as clearly as possible. In Contrapunctus 1 an invertible counterpoint itself is in very short supply. This elemental fugue never modulates beyond the obligatory dominant and subdominant keys. Contrapunctus 1 accords with his evident intention in The Art of Fugue to control counterpoint as a universal principle, rather than simply the genre of fugue. Made up of canons and fugues of various kinds all based on a single theme, the work encompasses more than one contrapuntal process.

Chapter 4 is an analysis of Bach's Fugue in E major from book II of the Well-Tempered Clavier. The analysis employs the sd/pc GIS introduced in Chapter 1 to explore the ways in which the fugue subject takes on the hues of its shifting tonal surroundings. The chapter considers the possible the relevance of such modes of hearing to eighteenth-century listeners and employs certain ideas from Fuxian fugal pedagogy.

From the beginning, the pattern in the development of Job shows strong similarities with the writing of Bontsye Shvayg as both used parody. Eventually, forces of history affected the parodist identified as the “Ozymandias effect.” The chapter also recalls editors and authors and their contribution to the further understanding of Job as discussed in the previous chapters. These editors include Madison, Greenberg, Elihu, Samuel, Wiesel, Abel, and Perl. Finally, the focus was shifted to James who allows critical judgments to be controlled by a sense of historical context that fits the Bontsye-model quite well. The book suggests that the best way to understand how James listens to Job is to shift the metaphor and think of the book as a counterpoint—the fugue or the way melodies and harmonies develop in relationship to one another. Fugue is derived from the Latin word “fugo,” meaning “to flee.” The book of Job is like a fugue but is less predictable and more adversarial than its musical counterpart since it is a manifestation of historical rather than synchronic counterpoint. Since a less sophisticated ear may hear less of the themes, James is considered as their representative as he simply reports what he has heard. The Joban counterpoint does not end in James though since one can always consider how the various rabbis, patristic fathers, and medieval commentator, to name a few, continue to read the book of Job. The book chooses to end with James since he sets the most decisive mark on Job.