Fugue State: Day 7

In yesterday's featured summer fugue, I mentioned that I was more openly flirting with intentional parallel fifths. The next week when, as best as I recall, I needed to produce two fugues in short order, I decided I'd go all in on the open sound of fifths as a sort of voice-leading motif.* I was facing down Stuttgart, a very square, generic tune for which Hymnary.org shows 78 different text pairings! It's not a favorite of mine, but we still use it fairly regularly, and it's certainly inoffensive.

As with several others of these fugues, Stuttgart is not an ideal fugue subject because it has zero rhythmic interest. I decided I could take advantage of its neutral quality by having the subject heard almost continuously throughout the fugue, albeit sometimes in inversion. (A more lively subject might wear out its welcome if heard non-stop.) Most fugues have "episodes" which allow for freer counterpoint to connect various entries of the subject, but here it's pretty much Stuttgart all the way.

As with a previous four-voice fugue (on America), the voice entries follow an unusual progression. Instead of the more common tonic centers of F-C-F-C, we have F-C-d-F. (Because this tune begins on the 5th scale degree, that means the actual pitch starts for the voices are: C-G-A-C.) This gives the entry of the bass voice a special role in bringing the exposition back to the prevailing tonic, but the music then modulates regularly, with the generic subject serving as a gateway to...well, wherever I felt like going.

The combination of a not particularly distinctive subject and lots of parallel voice-leading means the whole fugue is a little less fugue-like than the others I've written since there's not a strong sense of independence among the voices; however, the subject is regularly passed around the four voice parts, which gives the texture a subtle shape-shifting fluidity. I think what I've most enjoyed about playing it is the combination of squareness and steady forward motion, and the process has actually made me appreciate the versatile tune more than I had before.



* So, for example, you can see right away that when the left hand comes in with the second entry of the subject, the right hand voice is simply shadowing the pitch changes a fifth above. This is not something Bach would have done.