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The fugue is a music form perfected by J. S. Bach. Compare it with a typical song. A song is a single melody, and the accompaniment provides harmonic structure and some kind of rhythmic skeleton. A fugue is made up of 3, 4 and sometimes 5 independent voices that move very much like melodies. Following the form as Bach used it, the voices come in one at a time, a few measures apart. There is no fixed order to the entry of the voices. They might enter in the order of Alto, Tenor, Soprano, Bass. It is up to the composer. Each time a voice comes in it gives the exact theme of the fugue. They will sometimes begin in the same key as the one before, and sometimes a voice will begin in a related key. After the voices are introduced, the theme moves from voice to voice, sometimes with interesting modifications, and sometimes the themes will overlap in various ways. Bach's Well Tempered Clavier, books I and II, are wonderful primers in the art of fugue. Of course, there is rich and complex harmony in a fugue, but not because the composer deliberately chooses a chord for a given moment in the music and plays it out. The harmony is embedded in the movements and interconnections of the voices. It is said that Bach was able to improvise fugues based on themes that were given to him as he sat at the keyboard.

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