«The choral fugue of F. Mendelssohn “AustieferNothschrei‘ ichzudir” through the prism of Bach traditions».
The identification of a place in a piece of music, the determination of inherent functions of the choir fugue, the historical and theoretical formation, the role of the fugue in forming the meaning presents a crucial task, the solution of which is impossible without referring to musicology. The fugue on choral (on cantus firmus) appeared in the age of the Renais-sance, combining imitation, includingstrettostyle, with the technique of cantus firmus, therole of whichwas taken on by the choral. Special attention is paid to choir – and, in particular, to choral – fugues in works by: E. Prout in his work “Fugue”, T. Muller in a manual for a special course of polyphony, N. Simakova in “Counterpoint of the Strict Style and Fugue”.The researcher Prout draws to the widespread form of a choral fugue, where the choral is in a free section, and an independent theme, passing in three voices, forms a fugue. Muller examines the choir fugue in arias, recitatives and ensembles, as well as orchestral sections of cantatas, emphasizing similarities with opera work, but in choir parts, intonations of hymnal (choral) melodies are noticeable. The form of such choirs corresponds to the form of the choral, that is, the bar form, the choir form of the composition has always been “dictated” by the attentive composer reading of the text. In the article “Choral in Bach Cantatas”, the scientist notes that the Protestant choral is the leading one in the formation of the style of J.S. Bach.Noting the extraordinary variety of methods for using choral melodies in Bach cantatas, among the most frequent ones, T. Muller mentionsa principle, relevant enough to our work, of using the intonational content of the choral as a source of thematic invention for various parts of the cantata. N. Simakova also points out the importance of timbre filling of the theme for emphasizing the figurative content of words, since the most striking in the process of evolution of a fugue is the register-timbre mode. The coral fugue was finally formed in the Baroque era. Like other types of fugues, its “classic” version was defined in works of J.S. Bach and his contemporaries. The examination of individual structural and content compositional character-istics of the fugue for the choir from the first part of “Kirchenmusic” by F. Men-delssohnfrom “Kirchenmusic” op. 23 in the aspect of combining Bach traditions in it with the individual approach of the composer is the task of this article. The basis for this composition, in particular its first section, was the well-known Protestant choral “AuftieferNothschrei’ ichzudir”, based on a free “retelling” of the 130th Psalm from the Holy Scripture. Analyzing this fugue, we could take it for a double (two-theme) fugue with a joint exposition, but the alternate nature of the exposure of the free and, espe-cially, the final part where this topic is not held, leaves no doubt that this is not so. However, it is interesting that during mostof the fugue, along with the theme, as an accompanying melody, its continuation from the second half-strophe of the choral sounds.Thus, in the exposition there is a theme (A 1 ), which is accompanied by a steady thematic idiom (A 2 ). The exposition is filled with two-bar thematic introductions (a theme or the accompanying thematic “satellite”, but necessarily there is some thematic “event”). In such a measured two-bar division, the exposi-tion sounds, but in the subsequent, this regularity is not observed. The free part is thematically very rich, it contains, apart from the mainde-velopments, a stretto, a bass organ point, against the background of which the “delayed” thematic material in the soprano part sounds, attracts attention. This section of the fugue sounds in the dominant tonality, led by a bass part, where there is no theme in the inner part, and the leading one is alto, which conducts the theme three times. The exposition and the free part are built on a single text material, making up the section A of the choral form described above. Only in the final part there is a new text, not previously sounded (this part corresponds to the section B of the choral bar form). F. Mendelssohn’s fugue from the first part of “Kirchenmusic” was greatly influenced by the “classical” structure of the choral fugue, formed primarily in works of J. Bach, in particular, in his church cantatas. Traditional development methods, providing the similarity to Bach traditions, in this choir fugue may be: the chord progression of the choral, tonal plan, bar form, presence of three stag-es of fugue formation, the use of thematic material for the choral fugue. On the other hand, there is the evident presence of characteristic author’s features in the interpretation of the choral fugue by the composer: “a cappella” composition of the choir, as well as the presence of accompanying themes – melodic idioms, al-ternately “supporting” the main theme throughout the whole composition, which provides a certain similarity of this fugue to the old genre of ricercar.