#106: Fughetta


As with the sonnet, suggests the Encyclopedia Britannica (see below), the fugue's satisfying lacing, weaving, crosshatching of notes or words or images binds us to ourselves, wringing from our taut mindstrings unprepared-for passages of  lucidity, carving bounded epiphanies from the realms of unprincipled license we normally grant form.  We ought to worship the fugue-idea--in small lifeside chapels.

"Fugue, in music, a compositional procedure characterized by the systematic imitation of a principal theme (called the subject) in simultaneously sounding melodic lines (counterpoint). The term fugue may also be used to describe a work or part of a work. In its mathematical intricacy, formality, symmetry, and variety, the fugue holds the interest of composers, performers, and listeners of Western art music in much the same way as the sonnet engages English-language poets and their readers"--Encyclopedia Britannica.