Johann Sebastian Bach was born in Eisenach, the capital
of the duchy of Saxe-Eisenach, in present-day Germany,
on 21 March 1685 O.S. (31 March 1685 N.S.). He was the
son of Johann Ambrosius Bach, the director of the town
musicians, and Maria Elisabeth Lämmerhirt.
A fugue generally consists of a series of expositions
and developments with no fixed number of either. At its
simplest, a fugue might consist of one exposition
followed by optional development. A more complex fugue
might follo...(+)
Johann Sebastian Bach was born in Eisenach, the capital
of the duchy of Saxe-Eisenach, in present-day Germany,
on 21 March 1685 O.S. (31 March 1685 N.S.). He was the
son of Johann Ambrosius Bach, the director of the town
musicians, and Maria Elisabeth Lämmerhirt.
A fugue generally consists of a series of expositions
and developments with no fixed number of either. At its
simplest, a fugue might consist of one exposition
followed by optional development. A more complex fugue
might follow the exposition with a series of
developments, or another exposition followed by one or
more developments. Fugues that are tonally centered
will expose the subject without venturing out of an
initial tonic/dominant constellation. Before form, the
fugue is metaphorical; its purpose is to reveal
connections between seemingly unlike things. Its method
is to develop an idea in never precisely the same way.
Its character is to demonstrate relationships, unveiled
both in terms of new ideas born of old, but also in
counterpoint with the old. The fugal essence is
experienced in discovery of the new to be of the stame
"stuff" as the old.
By the time of Bach, the fugue as a complete
composition, or as a named and self-contained section
of a larger composition, had been well established in
keyboard works by Dietrich Buxtehude, Johann Pachelbel,
Georg Muffat, and many others in Germany, as well as in
orchestral concerti by Antonio Vivaldi and others in
Italy. The works of Bach stand at the very pinnacle of
the history of the fugue. Bach’s fugues remain
unsurpassed in their extraordinary variety and in their
individual perfection, and no other composer produced
so many resplendent examples of fugues large and small
for every medium available to him at the time. Hardly
less impressive, though not as numerous, are the
large-scale choral fugues in the oratorios of Bach’s
contemporary.
Source: Britannica
(https://www.britannica.com/art/fugue).
Although originally written for Violin & continuo, I
created this Arrangement of the Fugue in G Minor (BWV
1026) for Viola & Classical Guitar.