So You Want to Write a Fugue?

Gould wrote this fugue as the finale to, "The Anatomy of the Fugue," a television program he also wrote and directed. Airing in the early 1960s, it discussed the concept and construction of fugal music. The four-voice fugue is terrific fun, quoting and demonstrating as it does some bad contrapuntal practices.

Years later in a 1974 interview with Bruno Monsaingeon, Gould would reflect on writing the piece and some of its many music-theory jokes.