As mentioned, I’ve been a fan of fugues for a while, having leveraged it as a concept in several of my compositions. There is something elegant in how it takes a single melody, and gradually weaves it into a complex fabric. (I tried my hand at knitting and crocheting a very long time ago, and the process in music is not unrelated.) Bach and many of his contemporaries flooded the recital halls and churches with fugues. Although the form hadn’t disappeared by the 20th Century, it had lost a lot of its popularity and presence, but I listened to the following examples while exploring this form.
Béla Bartók – Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta
This piece found its way into the list of inspirations for my “Idea’logy” — it’s here because the entire first movement is a fugue. Bartók’s approach is, from a theoretical/logical/mathematic standpoint, pretty simple (I’d use “elegant”) — it starts with the traditional thematic statement in solo violas, followed by episodes following the circle of 5ths precisely, with a gradual increase in density and complexity leading to a climax at the tritone from the original key, right at the middle of the movement. He then turns the theme upside-down, and “unwinds” it, still using the circle of 5ths, back to the original tonic. Along the way are some really great instrumental moments, most notable is a swirl of fast-moving chromaticisms from the celesta. Being as I avoid the circle of 5ths pretty religiously, my theoretical approach is different. But Bartók and I share an off-center approach to underlying tonalities – I just get there through non-standard tonal center sequences and deceptive cadances, whereas he gets there through very chromatic melody lines and their interaction.
Benjamin Britten — The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra
The entire work is “Variations on a Theme of Purcell” — the fugue is the final variation. In contrast to the moody musings of Bartók, it’s playful without getting too complex or serious, layering from top (piccolo) down. The episodes are all a fifth apart (F♯, then B, then E, etc.), a little closer to my approach, but still the circle of 5ths like Bartók. (Ultimately, the fugue theme dances on top of Purcell theme. The result serves as a coda to the entire work.) Britten intended this to be a simple example of the form for young ears, so it caricatures the Bach-inspired formal approach. It really is a lot of fun! (The link above is directly to the fugue, at 14:26.)
Igor Stravinski: Symphony of Psalms
The second movement of the Stravinski work, written during his “neo-classical” period, is a “double fugue”, having two distinct subjects which are both treated fugally. The first subject is quite chromatic, The episodes, just like Bach, go between the tonic and dominant keys. The second subject appears at the choral entrance, using the same sequence of keys (though very different from the first). (The link above is directly to the fugue, at 3:14.)
John Williams
John Williams movie scores use fugue-like passages extensively, though none could be called “proper” by most definitions. But you can often pick out passages that weave repeated episodes of thematic material in a very fugue-like way. The link above is to a fan-assembled collection of several examples, from “Jaws” to “Harry Potter: Prisoner from Azkaban”.
