What is a fugue? An answer for kids

A fugue is a piece of music in which one short tune enters again and again, in one voice after another, while the earlier voices carry on with something new. The word comes from the Latin for “flight” or “chase.” The voices seem to chase the tune around.

Start with a round

Sing “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” with a friend. One of you starts. The other starts the same song when the first singer reaches the second line. Two copies of one tune overlap, and they fit.

A fugue begins the same way. Then it does more.

	A round	A fugue
How it starts	One voice alone with the tune	One voice alone with the tune
The next voice	Sings the same notes	Plays the tune higher or lower
After the tune	Each voice keeps copying	Each voice goes its own way
The plan	Around and around	The tune returns in new keys, with free passages between

The parts of a fugue

• Subject. The main tune. It is short, often two to four bars, and easy to recognize.
• Voice. One line of the music. A fugue has two, three, four, or five voices. They are called voices even when a piano or an organ plays them all.
• Answer. The subject when the second voice plays it, starting on a different note.
• Countersubject. What the first voice plays while the second voice has the subject.
• Exposition. The opening, up to the point where every voice has had the subject once.
• Episode. A passage where no voice plays the whole subject. It gives the ear a rest.

After the exposition, the composer brings the subject back in different voices and keys, with episodes between.

Tricks composers play

Trick	What happens to the subject
Stretto	A second voice starts the subject before the first has finished it. The entries pile up.
Inversion	The subject is turned upside down. Where it went up, it goes down.
Augmentation	The subject is played in notes twice as long.
Pedal point	One low note holds under everything, near the end.

Bach, the master

Johann Sebastian Bach is the best-known writer of fugues. Pianists still study two of his collections.

• The Well-Tempered Clavier. Two books, each with a prelude and a fugue in every key. That makes 48 fugues.
• The Art of Fugue. A whole set of fugues on one subject. Bach left the last one unfinished. Near the point where it stops, he worked in the notes that spell his own name in German: B-flat, A, C, and B.

Read Bach for kids.

Fugues to hear first

1. “Little” Fugue in G minor, by Bach. An organ fugue of about four minutes. The subject is long and catchy, so it is easy to spot each time it enters.
2. Toccata and Fugue in D minor. Read the guide.
3. The end of The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, by Britten. A piccolo starts a fast subject alone. Then every instrument of the orchestra joins, one by one. Read the guide.
4. “Geographical Fugue,” by Ernst Toch. A fugue for speaking voices. There are no pitches at all, only the names of places, chanted in rhythm.
5. “So You Want to Write a Fugue?” by Glenn Gould. The Canadian pianist wrote a funny fugue in which four singers explain how to write one.

How to listen to a fugue

1. Learn the subject. Play the first ten seconds three times. Hum it.
2. Count the entries. Raise a hand each time a new voice starts the subject.
3. Follow one voice. On the second hearing, try to stay with the lowest voice all the way through.
4. Wait for the pile-up. Near the end, the entries come closer together.

Make a spoken fugue

You need three people and one sentence.

1. Pick a subject, such as “I would like a peanut butter sandwich, please.”
2. Person one says it in rhythm.
3. As person one finishes, person two starts it. Person one goes on to a new line, such as “with jam, with jam.”
4. Person three starts as person two finishes.
5. End together on the word “please.”

You have made an exposition.

A fugue and a canon

A canon is stricter than a fugue. In a canon, the second voice copies the first one all the way through. A round is a kind of canon. Read the Canon in D guide.

Words to know

• Fugue: a piece built on one subject that enters in each voice in turn
• Subject: the main tune of a fugue
• Counterpoint: two or more tunes that fit together at once

For the fugue’s simpler relatives, read what is a canon and a round? For other kinds of piece, read symphony, concerto, and sonata explained and musical form for kids. For the age of the fugue, read Baroque music for kids.