Anatomy Room
Contrapunctus 1
Monothematic fugue, 4 voices, 2/2 beat, 78 bars


This piece falls in the category of simple fugue, but is not simple as it looks.
It is quite different from school fugues (ex. "The Little" BWV578).We focus
on the treatment of the theme and explain the whole piece as follows.


Initially exposed theme is surly the one commonly employed throughout the
cycle of the art of fugue. Remarkable distinction from school fugues can be
seen in the response at the beginning of the piece. The tonal response is
utilized instead of the real response.



The counter melody in alto accompanied to the response is the counter
theme, which also found later in bass from bar 14 and tenor from bar 25
and so forth, with its figure changed somewhat.


From bar 17, soprano and alt exchange motif, and this is what we call
sequence.



The sequence by the same motif can be seen from bar 36 (bass and alt)
and from bar 67. (bass and tenor)

From bar 29, the fragment of the opening theme can be seen in bass, which
serves as the stretto together with the theme in soprano.Then the
following is the theme in bass from bar 32, in which you might find the
kaleidoscopic changes from the tonal response in principal key to
subdominant key.



The fragments of the opening theme appear in alto from bar 48 and in
soprano from bar 55, functioning as stretto with the other voices.




The theme in tenor at coda goes back and forth between
the tonal response in principle key and subdominant key.



Other than the above mentioned, thematic variance occurs sometimes,
not always keeping its opening basic form though. It can be said that this
kind of flexibility for a theme and ever changing counter melody to a theme
are what Bach has finally reached to in his closing year.

Anatomy Room