A Fugue

Summary

(A talk delivered before a teachers' convention about 1963)

(A fugue is a musical composition in which different parts are serially introduced, following one another in the manner of a flight or chase. The name derives from fuga, the Latin word for flight. The main parts of a strictfugue are an exposition, conducted by four voices, followed by a discussion. The exposition begins with the subject (theme) in the first voice. The second voice gives the answer, which is merely the subject transformed a fifth upward or downward. The third voice then introduces the original subject an octave below or above the principal key, and the fourth voice paralleling the second voice answers. The following discussion consists of less formal repetitions of the subject and answers.)

Exposition

First voice

There was man in Vermont who in his youth started an apple orchard from choice young trees. After years of carefully tending his developing trees, he found himself the possessor of a very impressive and lucrative orchard. His apple business so prospered that he found he needed a good-sized barn (instead of the inadequate shed he had started with), for storing his apples, keeping his ladders, baskets, barrels, and other picking gear, a small tractor for controlling the weeds and tilling the areas between his rows of trees, and a space to house a cider press and its allied equipment.