ark@alice.UUCP (Andrew Koenig) (02/10/85)
The obvious place to begin here is with Bach's WTC I, fugue #1 (C major). Its theme is more than a measure long, and in the 27 measures of the piece appears 24 times!
carnes@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP (Richard Carnes) (02/11/85)
In article <> ark@alice.UUCP (Andrew Koenig) writes: >The obvious place to begin here is with Bach's WTC I, fugue #1 (C major). >Its theme is more than a measure long, and in the 27 measures of the >piece appears 24 times! The best stretto fugue I know of is the D major in WTC Book II. It is full of stretti and ends up with a grand quadruple stretto. Three-fourths of the notes are accounted for by a single four-note figure from the subject. (It even has the same rhythm as the four-note theme [or is it a motif?] from Beethoven's Fifth. Beethoven fans will also be interested in the first four notes of the subject. It is well known that Beethoven studied the entire WTC -- draw your own conclusions.) In addition this is as great a fugue as any Bach ever wrote. There are some great stretti in late Beethoven. In the 19th century, I believe, the dogma was laid down that every fugue had to have a stretto, thus disqualifying most of Bach's fugues. Perhaps we could start a discussion of, say, canons at the fifth, or "my favorite recapitulations" in sonata-allegro movements. Or "stupid things written by writers of program notes," such as the claim that Mahler borrowed a theme from the Hallelujah Chorus ("And He shall reign...") in the finale of his First Symphony, when the two themes are actually dissimilar in spite of a superficial resemblance. Richard Carnes, ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes