0 a piece of music consisting of three or more tunes played together: --
a Bach organ fugue
1 a piece of music in which one tune is played or sung and then repeated in different ways to make harmony --
This is by far the fugue's longest passage in the full five-part texture.
Most of the fugue is in three parts only, with rests to give emphasis to a new entry of the subject.
The fugue is determined by its style rather than by its function: it is a texture with a highly disciplined format.
The effect of the fugues' many thick passages is like being at a crowded party where everyone is talking loudly at once.
Nevertheless, until late in the fugue the first and last notes of the subject are most often expressed as chords or dyads.
As with the other works considered above, an underlying formal scheme (a prelude followed by a fugue) is used to structure the musical events.
As for the preludes and fugues themselves, the prelude could have been anything.
The least interesting playing is in the fugues, which contain the least interesting music.
