How to Analyze A Escape Of J. S. Bach

Introduction

The Fugue is a fundamental musical experience, an essential poetic-compositional model with which every composer has tried. The great classics of the Primat the Vienna School, namely Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven were very accustomed to this compositional form. Beethoven recovers in the last quartets the Fugue as a fundamental compositional model; even the composers of the early twentieth century will consider it a central stylistic element, along with the Sonata Form.

How does the escape come about?

The Fugue comes to light after a long labor that began in the fifteenth century, when polyphonic vocal models were still fundamental: over the centuries, we will see that a polyphonic composition inherited from the Renaissance, that of the Motet, gradually begins to be transposed into a keyboard form not intended to be sung by human voices. This new transposition will be called Ricercare. Thanks to a slow emancipation from the vocal models of Ricercare, in particular from the influences of The Motet, the Fugue will establish itself only in the seventeenth century as a synthesis of the Ricerca with other compositional forms gradually assuming an autonomous role; with this, instrumental music, the one without the explicit presence of a human voice, begins to gain a certain deserved autonomy.

How is an escape made?

The Fugue consists of the musical chase between Dux and Comes, and that is why it takes this curious name. In the Escape, in fact, there is always a subject who flees and is chased by an answer. The subject is called in this way, and I do not fear as it happens in other compositional forms, because it is defined by a single voice and represented by a melody exposed to a single voice; this term is due to Zarlino, who called the Dux subject and not theme also to emphasize its central role in the musical treatment, as if it were something that already has an extremely concise and incisive character.

The Subject: Logogenic Or Pathogenic?

In the analysis of a Fugue it is used to make a distinction between subjects who are logogenic and subjects who are pathogenic. The pathogenic subject is the one who brings with him a sort of emotional pathos, while a logogenic subject is a much more sober and neutral subject from an emotional point of view, more suitable to be developed in a discursive sense. The rhetorical difference lies in the fact that there are musical topics that lend themselves to a debate, and there are other topics that favor emotional outburst: an abrupt emotional impetus does not usually favor conversation. Let's think of a person pierced by immeasurable pain: surely he is not inclined to start doing a desk dissertation around the themes of his malaise; in musical terms, the logogenic subject is normally very anchored to the notes of the triad and extremely posed in character, while a pathogenic subject tends to insist on very rich intervals from a rhetorical point of view, which encroach on the structure of the chord.

Interpretative Errors

A subject in which the harmonic coordinates are traced very well makes us in a meditative, focused disposition. A typical mistake is to play a logogenic subject in a very expressive way: we must not think of treating with expression an element that instead is born with a discursive intent. In a Bach Fugue there will be pathogenic passages, but certainly not the beginning where the topics of the entire composition are exposed. Adding excitement dirties the melodic sense of the treatment. The amateur in music is recognized for this: he tends to weigh down a logogenic subject with an expressiveness that becomes cloying.

The Fugue in C minor BWV 871

The exposition of a subject must have its own melodic completeness. Let's examine J's Fugue in C Minor BWV 871. S. Bach, taken from the Well-Tempered Harpsichord.

---

Bach, writing a prelude and fugue for each of the tonal tones of the tonal system, tries to enhance not only and technical and keyboard possibilities inherent in a given tonality, but also seeks the affective characteristics of each tone treated. This collection represents in other words an essential resource, a historical-analytical encyclopedia that no pianist can do without. You can download the score for free below or buy the paper score from the banner below: in this second way, a small part of your purchase will go to support this blog.

---

In this fragment its completeness is given by the fact that the subject stops on an important note of harmony that is the third of the triad of tonic:

In addition, in the subject there are all the intervals within the fifth, and the tonic is touched only once.

---

The answer: real or tonal?

A Fugue provides for the presence of several voices: the second voice enters with a revival of the subject to the fifth, which takes the name of answer. The answer, that is, the transposition of the subject to the fifth, can be of two types: it is real, when the subject is transposed exactly to the fifth. In the example below, the first note is not a king; in this case, that is, if there is the presence of a mutation in the response, we will speak of tonal response:

If the subject begins with the dominant, the response begins with a dominant and vice versa. The answer is therefore the Comes, that is, the voice that, in fact, responds to the Dux. 

The Countersubject

The Answer can be accompanied by a thematic element that is not the subject: this element, if recurrent, is called the Countersubject. In the same fugue there may be several countersubjects to the Answer, which are indicated by numbers (CS1, CS2, CS3 and so on). Once subject and response have been identified, this element is rather simple to identify, since it is usually located immediately after the subject (hence the name counter-subject) and in correspondence with the answer as a thematic element that recurs in the passage. If there is no characteristic recurrence, one cannot speak of a Countersubject.

The inversion

At the microstructural level, among the compositional techniques of the fugue we include inversion: with this instrument the intervals of the response, that is, of the Comes, reverse their direction. For example, a second descendant becomes a second ascendant; a sixth ascendant becomes descending, and so on for all intervals.

The Increase

Another fundamental compositional technique to know if you want to learn to correctly analyze a Fugue is that of Augmentation, more widespread at Dux than at Comes; for example, the values that are previously eighth dilate and become semi-minimal. This compositional technique is also called aggravation, and can be double, triple or quadruple of the constitutive value.

Since any element of the Fugue can undergo Augmentation, in your first analysis exercises you may have difficulty distinguishing the Subject, the Response, the Countersubject and any other thematic element of the Escape. I give you a suggestion: in the first phase of analysis a Fugue do not dwell too much on its rhythmic characteristics. Focus rather on the interval ratios and therefore largely on the names of the notes of which you try to identify the recurrence: the latter,as we have already seen in a previous article, give you infallible information on the numerical nature of the interval you are taking into account.

The Retrograde Form

Another form of treatment of the theme is the retrograde one, another term was also used that is cancrizing, from cancer, that is the crab. The fact is that the crab does not walk backwards, perhaps it would be better to say shrimp … But so much so, let's pretend with a smile that it is precisely for this reason that this second term has fallen into disuse.

The Reverse Retrograde Form

The retrograde form can also be found in reverse form, giving rise to reverse retrograde processing.

---

---

Exhibition

The Fugue also presents a macrostructure, which begins with the exposition of the subject and the response: the subject acts as a counterpoint to the answer, and little by little all the voices enter.Since the entries can be numerous, the exposure phase has a variable duration and size. Inside you can find the first entertainment.

Amusement

Fun has the function of creating a moment of diversion, that is, a moment in which from one tonal plane you move to another. We start in C minor, we let in all the voices, then we move on to that moment that represents the shift to another tonal plane. As we have already mentioned, very often there is a revival of the subject to the near tone: this is called repercussion, and represents the moment when the subject or response is presented in a nearby tonal plane.

Development

In the development, the themes presented in the exhibition are re-proposed in the shades close to each other and connected to each other through broader amusements than those of the exhibition. In Baroque music a piece ends when an exploration of the neighboring tones has been made to return to the starting point. It is a fundamental element of the Music of this period: if we start in C major, the piece cannot end without having moved to some close tone, indeed we could go so far as to say that the logical sense of a Baroque piece is to start from a center and begin a journey that must end when an entire rotation ends: that's why I decide to move away to various nearby tones to return to the starting point.

Strait

The narrow rhetorically is the moment in which the Comes comes is a little closer to the Dux, that is, the distance between the subject and the response is reduced so it makes the chase more excited. This is not true if the voices of filling or accompaniment of Dux and Comes are approaching. In Bach the straits can be of great, magnificent complexity. A peculiar feature of his straits is that of the mystical allusion to the double temporality, with a subject that is exposed by the Dux in original form and under a voice, for example a tenor, who sings the same thing but increased by double, as if Dux and Comes were two different things but at the same time the same thing. This means conceiving something that has a very engineering sense: in Bach there is still that taste typical of Renaissance culture for invention, understood in Leonardo's way as an invention of complex machines.

Royal Strait

The strait that implies the minimum possible distance between the voices is called the real strait, which usually coincides with the moment of maximum excitement of the piece.

A symbolic meaning of escape

When a composer writes something complex, does he expect anyone to grasp its complexity?

Qis the complexity inherent in an Escape audible?

One cannot be thought of being able to grasp at a first listening of the Fugue in C Minor reported above all the discourse of inversions, themes, aggravations and contrapuntal games. Here the debate opens between what in Music is immediately understandable and what is not comprehensible. This is a bit the fundamental debate of Art, which must be perceived as something so simple as to be natural and almost obvious, to flow as an element of nature: the composer tries to hide the compositional engineering within an aesthetic of great naturalness. This makes us reflect a lot on how we must approach Music: according to some it is an Art that needs a continuous swaying between an analytical listening and a spontaneous one.

Conclusions

I leave you below a summary table of what has been said so far, with small enrichments: you can use it for your musical analysis.

---

Identify the salient characteristics of the Subject	Pathogenic or Logogenic?
Identify the nature of the response	Tonal or Real?
Detect the presence of one or more regular countersubjects	Is there a recurring pattern that accompanies the Answer (other than the subject)?
Identify the recurrences of the Subject, the Response and the Countersubject	In which lines are they (to be reported with S, R, CS, CS1, CS2 etc.)?
Exemplifying the nature of Counterpoint	Is there a double counterpoint?
Countersubject Increases	Double, Triple, Quadruple…
Locate Entertainment	On what elements are they made? Are there any in correspondence with the Modulating Progressions?
Identify the main cadences and tonal areas lapped	In which lines are they realized/touched?
Detect the presence of Straits	What jokes are they in?
Locate the presensa of Pedali	Tonic, Dominant…

When we have to study an Escape, we often need to articulate the whole construction of the same; then there is a moment when we have to get rid of all the aggravation of complexity… But here we must return to reflect, and this continuous oscillation forms that continuous cycle for which Music becomes an all-encompassing experience through all human experiences, between the rational and the irrational, the artificial and the spontaneous. Bach is the total synthesis of this apparent dichotomy.