Page:Fugue by Ebenezer Prout.djvu/233

Chap. XI.] As the last notes of this extract are the commencement of the first episode, we have here the complete exposition of the fugue. With the indications we have given of the entries of the subjects, &c., the student will easily understand it. In a fugue for so many voices and with so many subjects, it is not needful that each subject should be heard in every voice in the course of the exposition. Were it so, the fugue would be protracted to an inordinate length. Let it be also noted that, with so many subjects, the rule that all shall end together is relaxed. Here the second subject ends in the third bar, and the other three not till the fourth. Slight modifications will also be seen in the two countersubjects.

414. In the later developments of such a fugue as this, it is not necessary that all the four subjects should be invariably present together. It will give more variety if sometimes only two or three are treated and developed at once. We advise the student to obtain the score of this 'Credo,' by Cherubini, which is published for a mere trifle in the well-known 'Peters Edition,' and to analyze the whole piece carefully for himself, as we have done the opening bars for him. He will thus probably learn more about the construction of a quadruple fugue than we could tell him in twenty pages of this volume.