Instrumentation |
Piano, Organ, Keyboard |
Scored for |
Solo |
Type of score |
For a single performer |
Publisher |
Stephen Smith |
Difficulty |
Advanced |
Duration |
2'0 |
Not your "standard-issue" fugue, this one departs from baroque norms in several ways. For one thing, the harmonies are more adventurous. While the fugue is far from a "twelve-tone" composition, the subject does consist of twelve notes, and it does undergo all the transformations usually applied to tone-rows (inversion, retrogradation, and retrograde inversion).
Rhythmically, the subject consists entirely of half-notes, and even when the subject is not present, the voices tend to move in half- and whole-notes, so the texture is more homophonic than that of a typical fugue.
Another unusual feature is the "unwinding" at the end: as each of the four voices finishes stating the retrograde form of the subject, it falls silent, until only a single voice remains. I say "at the end," although the piece has no final cadence--only a repeat sign directing the player back to bar 1, suggesting the possibility of an infinitely-repeating cycle... Is enigmatic, no? ;-)