Page:Pratt - The history of music (1907).djvu/329



the several voice-parts in various contrapuntal ways, with much freedom of key and usually with the insertion of episodes, often of considerable extent, the whole section culminating in an extended passage on a stationary bass, usually the dominant ('pedal-point' or 'organ-point'); (c) the recapitulation, in which the theme as subject and answer is again presented by all the voices in turn, often in reverse order and usually with a crowding or overlapping of the entries ('stretto'), the whole leading to a climax of intricacy and intensity. The ideal method throughout is to keep to strictly polyphonic devices and to use many varieties of imitation, so as to unfold fully the striking possibilities of the theme.

A 'fugato' is a movement or passage treated with some selection of the above features, often with many omissions, compressions and licenses.

Every important composer of the period, except some of the opera-writers, was a fugue-writer as a matter of course, and the number of fugues produced was enormous, especially for the organ. The best of them have hardly been surpassed since. Thus the old art of counterpoint began a new life, but chiefly now in the instrumental rather than the vocal field.

It would be entirely impossible to give any satisfactory résumé of the many fugue-writers. Of course, Bach overtops all his contemporaries in the organ-fugue, and his Wohltemperirtes Clavier (1722-44) was a monumental demonstration of the suitability of the form to the clavichord and hence to the pianoforte. Both he and Handel wrote majestic fugues for voices also.

140. The Overture, Sonata and Concerto.—Besides the suite and the fugue, there were several other large composite forms that manifested an increasing tendency to utilize principles of development in a different way. These were the overture, originally a part of dramatic composition, the sonata, originally a chamber-work for solo instruments, and the concerto, originally a similar work with orchestral collaboration. All of these were properly laid out in three or more distinct movements. While some of these movements or passages in them were in dance-form and so like extracts from a suite, and some were polyphonic and so fugues or at least fugal, others were homophonic or harmonic in ways that demand special notice.

The 'overture' was properly an orchestral form, intended as the introduction to a dramatic work. Of the two existing plans for it, the French and the Italian (see sec. 124), the latter had the greater subsequent influence, since, with the insertion of a minuet as a third movement and with some modifications of the final movement, it led to the plan of the modern sonata and symphony. But the inner structure of the first and second movements often presented points of fresh importance, because