Jean-Philippe Rameau · section 42 of 109

Chapter twenty-eight

On design, imitation, fugue, and their properties

Words set to music always have a particular expression, sad or cheerful, which must be conveyed through melody, harmony, and movement alike. Even someone not guided by words imagines a subject that imposes much the same constraint. The entire design of the piece therefore turns upon this melody, harmony, and movement. One first chooses a key, mode, movement, and melody appropriate to the expression, then conforms the harmony to the melody composed for that subject. Since the movement should not change unless the words' meaning demands it, and key or mode changes only to introduce variety into melody and harmony, the entire design rests chiefly on the melody's continuation and development.

After devising a particular melody, examine whether the subsequent words contain feelings requiring roughly the same expression, whether the same words are repeated, or whether repeating them would be appropriate. These are precisely the occasions where imitation and fugue, which belong to design, are especially suitable.

If feelings correspond in several passages of the words, a corresponding likeness should appear in the melody used to express them. This is what we call imitation. Its only limits are that its length or excessive repetition must not weary the listener. The composer is free to imitate part or all of the melody according to sound judgment. The pitches upon which this imitation proceeds depend entirely on taste, provided the melodic uniformity intended can be recognized.

If the same words recur, or can be repeated, it is good to make them always heard with the same melody. This introduces another kind of imitation, more restricted than the preceding kind, called fugue. We prescribe its rules in Book III.

Fugue differs from imitation in that imitation may occur in a single part, ordinarily the one called the subject. Fugue, however, must be heard alternately in each part, where the part that began seems to follow the one that follows it, continuing in a chain from one to another.