Page:Fugue by Ebenezer Prout.djvu/10

iv In writing the present treatise, the author has consulted all the standard authorities, but (as may be inferred from what has just been said) has followed none. He has proceeded on the same principles which have guided him in all the preceding volumes of this series, and has gone to the works of the great composers themselves, has carefully analyzed and examined them, and from their practice has deduced his rules, without paying the least regard to what might be said on the subject by Marpurg or Cherubini. He has started with the axiom, which few will be bold enough to dispute, that Bach's fugues are the finest in existence, and that whatever Bach does systematically, and not merely exceptionally, is the correct thing for the student to do. He therefore first put into open score and carefully analyzed the whole of the forty-eight fugues in the "Wohltemperirtes Clavier." He next examined every fugue, vocal and instrumental, to be found in the forty volumes of Bach's works published by the Bach Gesellschaft, making notes of all points of importance. But he did not confine his attention to Bach. He examined probably at least a thousand fugues, including all those by Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and Schumann, besides a large number by other writers of more or less eminence, to find out what had been actually done by the greatest masters of our art. The farther his researches extended, the deeper became his conviction of the necessity of placing the laws of fugal construction on an altogether different basis from that hitherto adopted. The result of his investigations will be found in the following pages. In the words of the Psalmist, he may say, "I believed, therefore have I spoken." A great deal to be found in this book will probably horrify old-fashioned musical conservatives; but not a single new rule is propounded for which warrant is not given from the works of the great composers; and if he shrank from the logical consequences of the examination of these works, the author would be untrue to his own convictions.

The general plan of this volume is to some extent the same as that adopted by Mr. James Higgs in his admirable Primer on "Fugue," by far the best treatise on the subject in our language. It would be dishonest of the author not to acknowledge the