A fugue is a composition built on a short melody (the "subject") that enters in one voice and is then imitated by other voices at different pitches, layering on top of each other. The word comes from Latin fuga ("flight"), because the melody seems to flee from one voice to the next. Bach's The Art of Fugue (Die Kunst der Fuge) is considered the pinnacle of the form. He was still working on it when he died in 1750, leaving the final fugue unfinished. The last piece, Contrapunctus XIV, breaks off mid-phrase. The manuscript just stops. Some printed editions include a note at that point: "At this point the composer died." A movement built on interweaving voices, cut short in the middle of a sentence.
A fugue is a composition built on a short melody (the "subject") that enters in one voice and is then imitated by other voices at different pitches, layering on top of each other. The word comes from Latin fuga ("flight"), because the melody seems to flee from one voice to the next. Bach's The Art of Fugue (Die Kunst der Fuge) is considered the pinnacle of the form. He was still working on it when he died in 1750, leaving the final fugue unfinished. The last piece, Contrapunctus XIV, breaks off mid-phrase. The manuscript just stops. Some printed editions include a note at that point: "At this point the composer died." A movement built on interweaving voices, cut short in the middle of a sentence.