Test your theory chops with my weekly challenge! You’ll find a new question here every Monday. Please comment to post your reply.
This Week’s Challenge:
This is the beginning of Contrapunctus V from J.S. Bach’s Die Kunst der Fugue (The Art of Fugue). As opposed to a more conventional fugue, this one has an unusual answer…why?
Post your reply and come back Friday, June 10th for the answer!
ANSWER for 6/6/22
While a typical fugal answer is more or less a literal restatement of the subject, this answer is the inversion of the subject. It also remains in the tonic key, a further departure from conventional practice; fugal answers usually bring the music into the key of the dominant. It isn’t until later in this fugue that Bach employs a more typical answer–a tonal answer in the key of v….but still inverted!
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The answer is a mirror image of the subject.
The answer is the subject backwards.
Hi Mike, retrograde is certainly something that J.S. Bach would do (and certainly did). But in this case, the answer isn’t backward, but a closely related device 🙂
I love a good inversion!
Inversion
Right you are! It’s Stranger Things, and Bach takes us into the “upside–down!”