Week 30: Music Forms of the Baroque Era II: Toccata and Fugue

1. Stuff done these weeks

  • Continued my study of Baroque era music forms. My notes are presented below.
  • Practiced "Bourree" from the "Water Music" by Handel on the mandolin.

2. Listening done these weeks

Love this folk song "Hang Me, Oh Hang Me" by folk singer Dave van Ronk from 1963. This rendition is by Oscar Isaak and features mandolin virtuoso Chris Thile. The song is in the major key, providing a foil for the melancholy, yet naive song. Sugar added to the bitter medicine. To quote Tom Waits: "I like beautiful melodies telling me terrible things."




Also listened to this performance of Handel's Bourree:


3. What I have learned

Toccata

Burkholder et al. (2014) define a toccata (Italian "touched") as a piece for a keyboard instrument or lute that resembles an improvisation that may include imitative sections or may serve as a prelude to an independent fugue (Burkholder et al., 2014)
Similarly, The Oxford Companion to Music (2003) defines a fugue as a piece in a free and idiomatic style, usually for keyboard and often in several sections and incorporating virtuoso elements designed to show off the player's "touch".
Randel (2003) states that the principal elements of toccata style are more-or-less improvised disjunct harmonies, sweeping scales, broken-chord figuration, and roulades that often range over the entire instrument; in other words it is much a demonstration of skill.

 Toccatas first appeared in 1536 as codas to sets of lute dances. Towards the end of the century Venetian organists firmly established the genre and its style, which spread quickly trough Europe (Randel, 2003: p.895). The first important collections date from the last decade of the 16th century, including publications of Andrea Gabrieli and Claudio Merulo (Alison, 2003: page 1277). The first great master of the keyboard toccata during the Renaissance was Frescobaldi (Randel, 2003, p. 896; Latham, 2003, p. 1277). 

 The Baroque toccata in Austria reached its peak in the works of Georg Muffat (1653-1704) and Johann Pachelbel (1653-1706); in the Netherlands the form was cultivated by Sweelinck, while in north Germany such protestant composers as Dietrich Buxtehude (ca.1637-1707) developed a large-scale, rhapsodic type of toccata. With Buxtehude and Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), the genre reached great heights of virtuosity.

Bach wrote six harpsichord toccattas (BWV912-15 and 910-11) and several for organ, probably modelled on Buxtehude's. Some are coupled with a fugue, in the manner of a prelude. His best known example is the Toccata for organ (often called Toccata and Fugue) in D minor BWV565. Here is a beautiful performance by Hans-André Stamm on the ornate Trost organ of Waltershausen, which is the largest baroque organ in Thuringia, Germany (Maier, n.d.). It is a compelling idea that Bach may actually have played this organ.



Fugue

The term "fugue" comes from the Italian word for "flight" or "chase". It is a music composition that uses an imitative texture that is based on a single melodic line - referred to as the subject -  and begins with successive statements of the subject in different voices. The usually three or more voices enter imitatively one after the other, each figuratively "giving chase" to the preceding voice (Latham, 2003; Hartong, 2006; Randel, 2003; Burkholder et al., 2014).

 Hartong (2006) qualifies it as "the most highly developed form of contrapuntal imitation in Western art music". In this music form, a principal melodic theme (dux) first enters and is then successively stated in other voices (comes). A four-voice fugue is one which has four participating voices (Hartong, 2006).

So, a fugue is rather a style of composition rather than a fixed structure. However, all fugues do have features in common (Latham, 2003), namely with regard to:
  • roles of individual voices
  • component parts of the fugue
  • technical devices used: counterpoint and imitation
The first voice to enter carries the principal theme, known as the "subject". After this theme has been presented the second voice enters, transposing the subject to the dominant, referred to as "the answer". The third voice enters with the original subject (in a different octave), and so on. This opening section is called the "exposition"; it concludes when each voice has presented the subject or answer.

As the second voice enters (with the answer) the first voice provides a counterpoint against it; similarly the second voice provides a counterpoint to the third voice (subject), and so on.

 After the exposition most fugues continue with an alternating sequence of episodes and middle entries - the latter in related keys - and conclude with a final entry in the tonic (Latham, 2003: p. 496).

 Bach's Fugue No 1 in C Major from book 1 of the "48" illustrates some of the characteristic features of a fugue. It is a fugue in 4 parts.


4. Sources

BURKHOLDER, J, GROUT, D. and PALISCA, C. (2014) A History of Western Music, 9th edition, New York: W.W. Norton (Glossary: A5, A10, A13, A18, A19).

 chriscw0207 (2010) George Frideric Handel : Water Music Suite No. 1 in F major HWV 348 - Bourree, Youtube, viewed 9th of August 2017, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEuWUiXVwgM>.

 Dave Conservatoire (2013) What is a Fugue?, Youtube, viewed 9th of August 2017, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tU1PDS9kyI&list=RD3tU1PDS9kyI&index=1>.

 Diogo Carneiro (2013) Hang Me, Oh Hang Me - Oscar Isaac, Youtube, viewed 9th of August 2017, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X672aJ3iytY>.

HARTONG, J.L. (2006) Musical Terms Worldwide, 1st edition. The Hague: Semar Publishers, srl.



LATHAM, A. (2003) The Oxford Companion to Music, Oxford: Oxford University Press.



MAIER, H. Prof. (N.D.) 1730 Tobias-Heinrich-Gottfried-Trost Organ, <http://www.organartmedia.com/trost>


 OpenGoldberg (2015) J.S. Bach, The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book I, Fugue No 1 in C Major, BWV 846 - Four voices, Youtube, viewed 9th of August 2017, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGvl_94Bb_M>.

RANDEL, D. (ed.) (2003) The Harvard Dictionary of Music, 4th edition. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

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