Culture | Don’t change the subject
American-football fans, Romantic composers, Spanish rockers and bluegrass mandolin-players have all offered their own variations on the theme
By A.V.
JUST before this year’s Super Bowl, a Philadelphia Eagles devotee sat down at an organ and started to play. There were more melodies than the average fan may have been used to, but the instrument soon quivered to the familiar sound of the Eagles’ fight song, “Fly Eagles Fly!” Elsewhere on the internet, a rival musician quickly composed a reply, riffing off “Shipping Up To Boston” to honour the New England Patriots. Remarkably, both pieces were fugues, a musical genre polished 300 years ago. They have challenged and seduced musicians ever since.
European composers have used counterpoint, the art of harmoniously tying different melodies (or voices) together through a piece, from at least the ninth century. Fugues themselves are a variety of counterpoint. Derived from the Latin for “flight”, their name hints at how fugues work. A catchy “subject” melody comes in first. It is then “chased” by different voices, all entering in turn and imitating what came before. Sophisticated fugues have four or five voices, each one picking up and savouring the subject before passing it on, like a group of friends discussing a philosophical idea at a party. To continue the analogy, no one in the room is ever quiet for long. Even when none of the voices are holding forth on the subject, they will still glimmer in and out of the musical conversation.