Fugue

There is probably no branch of musical composition in which theory is more widely, one might almost say hopelessly, at variance with practice than in that which forms the subject of the present volume. In Harmony, we are frequently meeting with cases in which the rules of the old text-books need much modification but with regard to Fugue there are few indeed of the old precepts are not continually, not to say systematically violated by the greatest masters. The reason for this is no doubt that the standard authorities on the subject, Fux and Marpurg, treated it from the point of view of the seventeenth century, and that most of their successors, such as Cilerubini and Albrechtsberger to name two of the most illustrious, have in the main adopted their rules.