page_title: Fugue
section_title: False entries
hierarchical_section_title: Fugue / Musical outline / False entries
caption_attribution_description: English: Example of a so-called 'false-entry' in J.S. Bach's Fugue no. 2 in C minor.
context_page_description: In music, a fugue is a contrapuntal compositional technique in two or more voices, built on a subject that is introduced at the beginning in imitation and which recurs frequently in the course of the composition. It is not to be confused with a fuguing tune, which is a style of song popularized by and mostly limited to early American music and West Gallery music. A fugue usually has three main sections: an exposition, a development and a final entry that contains the return of the subject in the fugue's tonic key. Some fugues have a recapitulation.
  In the Middle Ages, the term was widely used to denote any works in canonic style; by the Renaissance, it had come to denote specifically imitative works. Since the 17th century, the term fugue has described what is commonly regarded as the most fully developed procedure of imitative counterpoint.
  Most fugues open with a short main theme, the subject, which then sounds successively in each voice; when each voice has completed the subject, the exposition is complete. This is often followed by a connecting passage, or episode, developed from previously heard material; further "entries" of the subject then are heard in related keys.
context_section_description: At any point in the fugue there may be "false entries" of the subject, which include the start of the subject but are not completed. False entries are often abbreviated to the head of the subject, and anticipate the "true" entry of the subject, heightening the impact of the subject proper.
caption: Example of a false answer in J.S. Bach's Fugue No. 2 in C minor, BWV 847, from the Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1. This passage is bars 6/7, at the end of the codetta before the first entry of the third voice, the bass, in the exposition. The false entry occurs in the alto, and consists of the head of the subject only, marked in red. It anticipates the true entry of the subject, marked in blue, by one quarter note.
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