Editing Fugue (section)

===Musical form or texture===
A widespread view of the fugue is that it is not a musical form but rather a technique of composition.<ref>{{cite book | first = Donald Francis | last = Tovey | title = Essays in Music Analysis Volume I: Symphonies | location = London | publisher = Oxford University Press | year = 1962 | page = 17 }}</ref>

The Austrian musicologist [[Erwin Ratz]] argues that the formal organization of a fugue involves not only the arrangement of its theme and episodes, but also its harmonic structure.<ref>{{harvnb|Ratz|1951|loc=Chapter 3}}</ref> In particular, the exposition and coda tend to emphasize the [[tonic key]], whereas the episodes usually explore more distant tonalities. Ratz stressed, however, that this is the core, underlying form ("Urform") of the fugue, from which individual fugues may deviate.

Although certain [[closely related key|related keys]] are more commonly explored in fugal development, the overall structure of a fugue does not limit its harmonic structure. For example, a fugue may not even explore the dominant, one of the most closely related keys to the tonic. Bach's Fugue in B{{music|flat}} major from Book 1 of the ''Well Tempered Clavier'' explores the [[relative minor]], the [[supertonic]] and the [[subdominant]]. This is unlike later forms such as the sonata, which clearly prescribes which keys are explored (typically the tonic and dominant in an ABA form). Then, many modern fugues dispense with traditional tonal harmonic scaffolding altogether, and either use serial (pitch-oriented) rules, or (as the Kyrie/Christe in [[György Ligeti]]'s ''Requiem'', [[Witold Lutosławski]] works), use panchromatic, or even denser, harmonic spectra.