much greater amount of freedom is allowed to the composer; in fact, there are hardly two fugues the middle sections of which are identical in their construction. There are no restrictions in this section as to order, interval, or key of entry, though in the best models we mostly find that here the two principal keys (tonic and dominant) of the fugue, which have been almost exclusively employed during the exposition, are in general avoided, or only incidentally touched on. The entries of the subject in other than the chief keys of the movement are here also mostly divided by episodes.
15. The Final Section of a fugue is that in which a return is made to the original key. Here the subject appears once at least; very frequently the answer is also repeated. It is not uncommon, especially in vocal fugues, to find a Pedal point (Harmony, Chapter XX.) introduced toward the close of this final section. Sometimes there will be two pedal points; in this case a dominant pedal will come first, and a tonic pedal at the conclusion of the piece. Pedal points are also occasionally, though much more rarely, to be met with in the middle section of a fugue. A good example will be seen in the fugue in F major, No. 11 of the second book of Bach's 'Wohltemperirtes Clavier.'
16. An important feature of many, though by no means of all, fugues, is what is known as a Stretto. This is an Italian word meaning "close," and is applied to that part of a fugue in which the entries of the subject and answer succeed one another more closely, that is, at a shorter distance of time, than in the first exposition. For instance, if the subject be four bars in length, the answer will, in all probability, enter at the fifth bar. If, now, in the subsequent developments of the fugue the subject is followed by the answer (or by the subject itself) in another voice at the fourth, third, or second bar instead of the fifth, so that the first entry, so to speak, overlaps the second, we have a stretto. A stretto may be merely for two voices, or all the voices of the fugue may take part in it in turn. Very frequently we find more than one stretto in the same fugue. In that case the interest of the music is not only maintained, but heightened by making each successive stretto closer than the preceding.
17. We sometimes find fugues in which a stretto is seen in the first exposition, that is to say, in which the answer enters before the completion of the subject, not infrequently immediately after its commencement. A fugue of this kind is called a Close Fugue.
18. The old theorists used to draw a distinction between strict and free fugues. A Strict Fugue was one which either contained no episodes at all, or in which the material of the episodes was entirely drawn from the subject or countersubject. Most of the fugues in Bach's 'Wohltemperirtes Clavier' belong
