Page:Pratt - The history of music (1907).djvu/227

 *cessions, manifold unvocal passages and figures, striking effects of contrasted tone-color. The trend of invention was long toward chaotic fantasias or ricercari with much use of aimless scales and embellishments, and of tedious or ill-organized imitations. As an offset, various dance-patterns were often transferred bodily to the organ, though these did not fully comport with its dignity or its church associations.

In the 17th century better standards came in, especially in the adoption of definite 'subjects' for exposition, in the invention of appropriate 'figures' for elaboration, and in the devising of harmonic and modulatory plans with real coherence and progress. In Germany we now find increasing emphasis on two particular forms, the true fugue, with its systematic unfolding of a 'subject' and its 'answer,' and the chorale-elaboration, with its orderly and ingenious treatment of the melodic and harmonic substance of church songs. The genius of Germany began to exercise itself in a new sort of counterpoint, one based upon the keyboard and the organ tone instead of upon the voice, and hence far freer in details and more sensuously impressive than the old polyphony. This was a legitimate advance, though distinctly novel, and pointed toward the extremely liberal and majestic contrapuntal styles of the 18th century. Its reaction was profound upon choral music and upon all keyboard writing.

The 'fugue' is the most elaborate of contrapuntal forms. Its technical basis is the principle of strict imitation that was first wrought out by the Netherlanders in vocal works, especially in the 'canon'—a work or passage in which a 'subject,' after being stated by one voice, is repeated note for note or interval for interval by another voice or by several voices in succession, each voice proceeding in counterpoint as the others enter, and the imitation continuing throughout. (If the imitation uses the same tones as the 'subject,' the canon is 'at the unison,' if those a tone higher, 'at the second,' etc.) Experiments with this kind of writing early showed that there is a peculiar value in a canon 'at the fifth,' that is, one in which the imitation is in the key of the dominant or at least circles about the dominant as the 'subject' does about the keynote. This species of canonic imitation is characteristic of the true fugue. If the dominant relation is regarded somewhat as in the mediæval relation of plagal to authentic modes or vice versa, so that both the tonic and the dominant series utilize the same scale-tones, the fugue is called 'tonal.' If, however, the imitation is literally in the key of the dominant, using one tone not in the original scale, the fugue is 'real.'

Throughout the 16th century the name 'fuga' was not uncommon, usually designating what would now be called a canon. The derivation