Josquin's Legacy in the Imitative Prelude, Toccata and Fugue; the Non-imitative Prelude and the Role of the French Ouverture in Prelude-Fugue Pairs

The learned style of the motet of the Renaissance, once held up by the church as the apogee of musical composition, did not flourish in church music in the seventeenth century. Beyond the polychoral choral works of Giovanni Gabieli (c1555-1612), the lineage of great Catholic Church composers came to an end. Pervasive imitation, so powerful in the Renaissance, did not get carried to its apogee of development in the Baroque in sacred Catholic music. Ironically, imitative composition flourished in solo instrumental music, particularly in organ by northern composers, under a variety of names, and in the movements of the J.S. Bach's Lutheran cantatas. The impact of imitative techniques would also pervade other genres of instrumental music including the dance suite, the sonata, and the early concerto. Here, however, imitation would not be applied pervasively but would be combined with continuo!

Imitative compositions for lute or keyboard had existed from the 1530s as the fantasia, a music composition that was essentially an instrumental motet or wordless Franco-Flemish chanson.

Improvisatory lute pieces, both imitative and non-imitative, made the transfer to the keyboard in the second half of the sixteenth century. The non-imitative prelude types have been linked to musical “warm-up” or tuning exercises employed by lutenists, both in the earliest days and again in the evolution of French clavecin music. Venetian organist Claudio Merulo (1533-1604) helped to lead the way in transferring lute music to the organ, further developing a genre of music that, while in reality composed, was designed to give the impression of extemporization. The "improvisatory" character led to the application of the name toccata, from the Italian verb toccare, to touch. Other names were also applied to these pieces, including intonazione and prelude. Whereas Merulo's music was not imitative, it did fully utilize the idiomatic capability of the organ to sustain notes as well as explore the rhapsodic (flashy) possibilities of this quasi-improvisatory music.

In the early seventeenth century, keyboard composers such as Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583-1643) retained the imitative fantasia concept, but followed Merulo's lead and imbued the music with a more rhapsodic and improvisatory character. The term fantasia, already in common use to describe truly imitative pieces based on the motet or Franco-Flemish chanson, was applied to toccate and similar pieces. These pieces were often used to introduce other music.

In subsequent development, the different subjects of each imitative exposition were reduced to a single one. To attain variety and keep the music driving forward, the subject appeared at each exposition in a different key. Early monothematic pieces that served as the transition to the fugue were called ricercare. The earliest imitative ricercare appeared at mid-sixteenth century and appears to have been heavily influenced by the Franco-Flemish chanson. The ricercare may be regarded as a sub-type of fantasia. The monothematic ricercare did not emerge until the close of the sixteenth century and the early decades of the next. For a time, the composition of the monothematic ricercare overlapped the Renaissance fantasia, and both imitative types can be found anywhere in the late sixteenth-century literature. The name “ricercare” made occasional appearances in the literature to the time of Bach.

By the mid-seventeenth century, Geman composers actively cultivated large-scale imitative works for the solo keyboard, in particular the organ. These compositions included the full range of possible variants under the names toccata, prelude, fantasia, fugue, and, occasionally, ricercare. These composers also developed new genres such as the chorale prelude in order to meet the needs of the Protestant church service.

Important early northern organ composers were Samuel Scheidt and Jan Pieterzoon Sweelinck. Later composers included Johann Jacob Froberger, who was also critical as a conduit for musical ideas from Italy and France to the north, Johann Pachelbel, and Dietrich Buxtehude, Bach's teacher. Organ music reached full bloom in the early eighteenth century, of course, in the works of J.S. Bach.

The rhapsodic characteristics of the toccata remained fairly constant throughout its life. The toccati of Bach, though far more mature musically, still essentially retain the basic dramatic elements of those of Frescobaldi. Other titles began, however, to imply different types of music, and a prelude by Bach was more often than not rhapsodic but not imitative. This practice is demonstrated in the widespread pairings among his works of prelude and fugue. In Bach's prelude-fugue pairings, the influence of the French ouverture of Jean Baptiste Lully is evident.

Like the slow section of the ouverture, Bach’s preludes sometimes feature elements of “measured” recitativo and dance in a way to create suspense and drama in a slowly unfolding music. Here the melody spins out in a meandering, almost speech-like fashion reminiscent of recititavo, but the melody can also be informed by the dotted rhythm of French dance music or the rhapsodic figuration of the toccata. Bach's preludes are invariably carefully planned. Dazzling figures are never incorporated for their" show" value, but for their capability to build contrast and heighten tension. Unlike the fast "imitative" section of the ouverture, which often gives way to polyphonic and even homophonic passages after the initial imitative exposition, Bach's fugues are true and powerful ones, conceived and executed on a grand scale. Bach composed other keyboard preludes, such as those in Das wohltempiert Klavier (Well-Tempered Clavier), often dispense entirely with the recitativo-type of melody. Instead, they consist of a single arpeggio pattern applied to ever-changing harmonies.

Although the chorale prelude represents a separate genre that we will study later, “improvisatory” pieces used to introduce larger works went under the titles fantasia (and sometimes ricercare), toccata, prelude or preludium, and, occasionally intonazione. The various terms were not universal in describing imitative forms and were often casually applied. Beyond general expectations about the character of the music that the title implied, the listener never really knew what the music would be until actually hearing it.

We can, however, list these general expectations. The fantasia remains pretty solidly within the definition of the wordless motet or wordless Franco-Flemish chanson, that is, a piece that employs pervasive imitation on a variety of subjects. Ricercare may be regarded, as noted earlier, as a sub-type of the fantasia, differing from the fantasia in that it is monothematic. The toccata may or may not be imitative but will develop n the listener’s ear the impression that the music is improvised. As we learn, the toccata of Merulo is not imitative but the later toccata of Frescobaldi and Buxtehude use the same techniques as the fantasia and ricercare. J.S. Bach’s toccati are not generally imitative, but do retain the rhapsodic character inherent in the genre from the earliest examples. The prelude of Buxtehude is essentially the imitative toccata, but the prelude non mesuré of the clavecin suite does not use imitation at all. Similarly, the opening portion of the ouverture of Lully functions essentially as prelude but resembles non-imitative “processional” homophonic dance music. The first movement of the Corelli-type concerto is also a binary homophonic processional dance movement that resembles the ouverture. The prelude of Bach can possess a variety of traits ranging from a measured version of the prelude non mesuré to arpeggiated chords, but one trait that is not found is imitation.