J. S. Bach - Little Fugue in G Minor

Happy birthday to Johann Sebastian Bach, here represented by Wendy Carlos playing the Little Fugue in G Minor.

My grasp of the term "fugue" is better than that of the average person in the street but worse than that of a trained classical musician. Basically a fugue is a more complicated version of a round, such as "Row Row Row Your Boat," in which the same part is played by multiple performers in alternating sequence, so that the parts overlap and form harmonies in counterpoint. Where it gets more complicated is that the underlying melody in a fugue can be varied in a number of ways, unlike our boat-rowing song. Those variations are what can take a fugue from mechanical to sublime, in the right hands. A lot of people think that Bach had the best hands for this purpose.

This is not the best version ever, but it's pretty good. Listen for the ways in which the original melody keeps reappearing throughout the piece, passed around the different parts, then gets modified. Also note how each of the four instrumental parts is both its own voice and a necessary part of the entire ensemble. I've been told that with the right training, almost anyone can write a fugue -- the hard part is writing one that's worth listening to. Hardest of all would be writing one that people still want to listen to three hundred years later.