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Isamy Camreon, a poetical fugue in six voices By Raymond Succre
For a poetical fugue, each voice will repeat absolutely once after its initial appearance, and thereafter be 'freed' of the exactness, and be repeated only in rhythm and meter, and not in rhyme and word. This means that a line will be repeated once, and only once. After the repeat, the voice repeats thereafter, not the word-for-word line. Also, punctuation must be addressed. Since lines are going to be repeated in the poem per schedule, and to a strict rule, the author of a fugue must decide HOW strict that rule will be. Word-for-word repeats of the line are a foundation of the fugue, and must appear exact for their repeat. And, syllables aren’t to be changed once the line is set into the fuge’s cycle (for exceptions to this, see Deviations at the book’s appendix), however, does this mean that even the punctuation shouldn’t be moved? I chose to augment the punctuation. Therefore, the first version of a line might be:
The listing hare compares his mind to what entails his life’s compose.
But, it’s repeat in the next stanza, while word-for-word, may show as thus:
The listing hare compares his mind. To what entails his life’s compose?
So, as part of the author’s expression in writing a fugue, punctuation is free to be moved to the author’s whim, so long as the words are not changed, nor the rhythm and its meter. Capitalisations, hyphenations, italicizing, periods, commas, semi-colons, dialogue encapsulating, an elipse… even colloquial spellings can be reverted to (so long as the words, their placement, and their syllable count and stresses are not changed).
Defining Terms for Fugue Theory
Rhythm A mode of accenting syllables to provide a system of rhythmic pattern. The forms of rhythm are covered below. A rhythm is comprised of a metrical ‘foot’, of either two or three syllables long.
Meter The way in which rhythm is measured. A single foot, or, the rhythm done once, is monometer, twice is dimeter, three times is trimeter, etc… The number of rhythmic feet in a line is the meter used. Meter is:
Stanza A single unit of poetry equal to a poetical paragraph. The blocks of text with which a poem usually consists of, and of which a metrical poem always consists of.
Voice The primary element of a poetical fugue. A fugue is made up of voices, and they are what define the form as a fugue, and not a usual poem. The voices chosen in a fugue are only rhythms and the meters prescribed them. For example, a fugue with three voices is, really, a poem that will use three of the metrical rhythms (listed in next section), and three of the meters (listed above); however, which three rhythms are up the the fugue’s author and can be any of the rhythms known (Iambic, Anapestic, Dactylic, etc...). Voice is the building block of the fugue form, and it’s made of rhythms and their meters, nothing more. The number of voices used in a fugue is up to the author choosing them, however it should be noted that the larger the number of voices, the EXPONENTIALLY larger the fugue (I found six voices to be more than a handful for a first try). You may also use a rhythm more than once. The meter of the rhythm you choose is dependant on the rhythm. Meter in a fugue is decided by the equation at the end of this notation (see FORMULA). If you wanted, you could use nothing but Iambs or Trochees. Choosing your voices is the key to opening up your fugue, so this choice should be thought out at length. Symmetry, textual devices, repetition, rhyme, even the general flavor of the fugue is augmented directly by your choice of voices, both in number and in their components.
The Number of Voices chosen is always equal to the number of introductory stanzas, number of repeats, and number of rhythms necessary to complete the fugue. Voice will be represented by the variable ‘V’. As an example, we'll use 3 as our number of Voices.
Multiply V by 2 to get the syllable count for each line (S).
Decide the rhythms you would like to use (We picked V as 3, so there will be 3 rhythms), and divide the syllable amount of each rhythm's base foot- ‘F’ (this is either 2 (disyllabic) or 3 (trisyllabic)) into S to get the meter (M).
Let's say we are going to use the Anapestic, Iambic, and Trochaic rhythms for our voices. The anapest, being trisyllabic divides into S (6) 2 times. Our meter for the anapest will be one of 2 feet then, or Dimeter. It would appear as: OO/OO/. If we divide the Iambic foot into S, we get 3. This would then be Trimeter, and would appear as: O/O/O/. The trochaic would be the same, and appear as: /O/O/O. And there we have it, 6 syllables per line, regardless of the rhythm or meter accounting it. So, by chosing V, we've been given M.
The use of rhyme is at your discretion, though it is important to stick with your rhyme scheme once it's been established. for our example, we might use AAB, or ABA, or even AAAAAA... that option is yours. The rhyme in a fugue is free.
If you choose Anapestic, Dactylic, Spondaic, Syntaxic, Systolic, or Diastolic, F (foot) will always have a value of 3. If you choose Iambic or Trochaic, F will be 2. V, the number of voices you decided to use for your fugue, will also end up the same as the number of lines in your introductory and exit stanzas.
A Walkthrough Example of a Fugue Let's run through the simplified equation and construct a basic fugue. Let’s say we decide to write a fugue, and we decide on using 3 voices. For the voices, let’s say we choose Anapestic (3 syllables), Iambic (2), and Trochaic (2).
Applying the above-mentioned rules gives you all the information you need:
There you have it. All the information you need to write your fugue. You simply have to choose your number of voices and pick your rhythms. It’s a good idea to know why this equation works as it does, however, a simple use of it should be satisfactory for basic fugal composition. The structure itself is plottable.
Here is the actual tablature of the fugue we just designed. Lesson stanza one
Lesson stanza two
Lesson stanza three
Lesson stanza four
Lesson stanza five
And there you have it. Your scansion of the three voice fugue (had you written it) would look like what we’ve just been shown. This is, of course, without any deviation. Deviation will be covered a little later, and is an important topic for the author who would like to design fugues. But count the lines, the number of lines per total and also in each section… was the equation accurate in providing these details before the scansion was even completed? Yes, the equation predicted all of it. Here we touch down on what the fugue really is. It’s a mathematical bundle of numbers, all interrelated by common multiples and divisors, meshed into each other symmetrically to create a poem that actually composes itself based on your initial input. Obviously, the words written are yours, the rhymes, every part the average reader would see is you, however the underlying reasoning behind the rhythms and their mathematical conduct is all plottable and laden with interreacting rules. The fugue, really, is the hybrid of a plottable mathematical system and poetry. Where the two meet is in the scansion. Hence all the O’s and /’s in the tablature.
There are six voices in Isamy Camreon, each going through the single exact repeat in the stanza following its outset. Because there are six voices, and each will repeat once, the sixth stanza will mark the last voice's introduction, and the seventh stanza will be it's exact repeat. After the seventh stanza, in a symmetrical opposite of the first six introductory stanzas, there will be five exiting stanzas, for a total of eleven stanzas to the entire fugue, and 216 lines completed. The rule marking this work as fugal follows: The voice repeats exactly, and will follow the introduction of the next, successive voice, in a sense, placed between this following voice's lines. Because of this repeat and, later, freed repeat, each stanza increases in line number from it's preceding stanza by the same number of lines as there are total voices. The stanzas in Isamy Camreon increase and decrease by six lines, as it has six voices total. Now, let's run Isamy Camreon through the fugue form equation. I chose 6 voices, being Iambic, Anapestic, Syntaxic, Syntaxic, Dactylic, and Trochaic. Following the formula, we can discern before ever writing it that Isamy Camreon:
Check the poem and you'll see that this is the case, and the equation is accurate for determining the fugal elements necessary to write a fugue. A comprehensive scansion of Isamy Camreon will follow the poem itself at the end.
As a last note, I should say that attempting to work with the fugue form, or studying it without a knowledge of rhythm and meter is like trying to design or study an atom bomb without a knowledge of atoms or molecules. It will be a headache, and I'm sure, highly unpleasant. An adept understanding of the rhythms in verse isn't necessary, as you'll learn them while building your fugue (and as a tutorial device, the fugue can be excellent for demonstrating the uses and abilities of rhythma and meter), but I must stress that knowing them beforehand will make the task vastly easier. So now, on with Isamy Camreon.
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The Tablature of Isamy Camreon
Here is an illustration of the rhythm structure of Isamy Camreon. The slash is the accent, and the circle is the unnaccented syllable. There are eleven stanzas in Isamy Camreon, but we will be concerned with illustrating only the first seven. The reason for this is that stanzas
one through six build the fugue up to its largest point, and most complex, as well as demonstrating all of the rules of fugue composition. The seventh stanza marks the recedence of Isamy Camreon, and is only illustrated to how, from seventh through eleventh stanzas, the design is steadily (and
symmetrically) dimished to it's basic point again. Seventh through eleventh stanzas are identical masks of the fifth stanza going back to the first stanza. Six lines in Iambic Hexameter (Alexandrine), with the rhyme scheme being A,A,B,B,C,C. For ease of description, from this point on, rhyme will be shown as a letter followed by a number. A,A,B,B,C,C, would actually appear A1,A2,B1,B2,C1,C2. Iambic rhythm is classified as an unaccent followed by an accented syllable, and appears thus: O/
Now, the first voice (6 lines of Iambic Hexameter, with full rhyme) is put down, and has been introduced.
The second stanza will be 6 lines of Anapestic Tetrameter, with it's own, new rhyme, also following A,A,B,B,C,C,. However, because of the Fugal Rule, the rule what makes a fugue a fugue, the 6 lines of the second stanza will now be interspersed with the 6 lines from stanza one, making the second stanza 12 lines long. The first six lines from above will come every other line in the second stanza. As they repeat in the second stanza, the exact wording will be used. These lines will not change their form, with the exception of punctuality, which is negotiable after the introductioN. In the following illustration, A1 only rhyms with other A's (In Isamy Camreon, A1 is the word arts, and A2 is the word part. B1 and B2, from the second stanza rhymes play and portray.) The anapestic rhythm is made of two unaccents followed by an accented syllable, and looks thus: O//. The second stanza of Isamy Camreon is seen as follows.
The first two voices are introduced now, and the first voice has been repeated. From now on, that first voice will no longer repeat exactly, meaning that the rhythm and meter will repeat (Iambic Hexameter) but the words are dropped and will be filled with what the author chooses. After the initial repeat, the verse is freed from the constraint of exact wording, though still very much liable to the rules of it's rhythm and meter, and also that it will still rhyme, though on whatever new words are used.
Six lines of Syntaxic Tetrameter, interspersed with the rhythmic lines of the first voice, and the exact lines of the second voice. One foot of Syntaxic tetrameter looks as follows: O//. The third stanza will be eighteen lines, owing to the repeat of the previous two voices.
The first three voices are introduced. The first has been free in this stanza, and the second voice has its exact repeat, while the third voice is introduced. Now, in the fourth stanza, following the pattern, the first voice (A) will still be free (as it will be until fugue's end), the second voice will now be free, having finished it's one repeat, and the third voice will do it's exact repeat. I should explain that, because I wanted the fugue to be as symmetric as possible (within reason), I chose to repeat the rhythm introduced in the third stanza, also in the fourth. As there are only six rhythms utilized in Isamy Camreon, I decided to make the third and fourth stanzas identical in rhythm, as they are the exact center of the voices, and the introduction of the voices.
Six lines of Syntaxic Tetrameter, interspersed with the first, second and third voices, the third voice being repeated exactly. There are 24 lines in the third stanza. Again, Syntaxic rhythm appears as: O//
The fourth voice (D) has now been introduced, and the third voice (C) will be free from now on, just as voices A and B were freed after their one-time exact repeat. In the fifth stanza, D will repeat itself, as following the pattern its brothers have laid down.
The fifth stanza will be 30 lines in length, and will introduce the fifth voice, in Dactylic Tetrameter. Dactylic rhythm is an accent followed by two unnaccented syllables: /OO
Now, voices 1-4 are free from exact repeat, and the fifth voice has been introduced. In stanza six, the fifth voice (E) will have its repeat, and the sixth and last voice (F) will be introduced.
The sixth stanza will be 36 lines in length and the sixth voice will be in Trochaic Hexameter, the rhythm of which appears as: /O. You may have noticed at this point that the very first voice, Iambic Hexameter (O/) was disyllabic, meaning that it had only two syllables per foot of rhythm. You may have also noticed that voices 2-5 were larger rhythms, and had three syllables per foot. The last voice will by disyllabic, just as the first one was, which makes the piece rhythmically symmetric. Also, the rhythms used in 2-5 are also symmetric to each other, in that the second and fifth voices are opposite eachother in appearance (OO/ versus /OO). This is why voices 3 and 4 are identical in rhythm, and why voices 1 and 6 must be opposites also (O/ versus /O). Here is the way it appears illustrated:
If I had wanted to make Isamy Camreon even more symmetric, I could have used Spondaic Tetrameter as the fourth voice, which would have appeared: O//. In this fashion, read left to right or right to left, the structure is symmetric, meaning that it is identical either way. However, I opted to repeat the Syntaxic rhythm in the fourth voice for making the sound of the fugue, the way it seems to the reader's ear, more symmetric (and a bit more comfortable), rather than the system of rhythm itself. Now, the reason behind the meters of these rhythms has its point as well. I wrote the first stanza in Iambic Hexameter, which means six feet of the Iambic rhythm (O/). This equates to a twelve-syllable line. I chose trisyllabic rhythms for voices 2-5, however. In order to make these voices equal in size, though they hold three syllables compared to the two syllables held by Iambic and Trochaic, I put them in tetrameter. Tetrameter means using the chosen rhythm four times. So, though the rhythm is longer, the shortened meter compensates for the size difference mathematically, making these voices appear ALSO in twelve-syllable lines. Though the meters and rhythms do not match eachother, the size of the line, how it is measured and it's termination point are identical. Compare the two following lines:
The first is Iambic Hexameter, the second is Anapestic Tetrameter, though both have the exact same number of syllables: Twelve, as it is the nearest number whose multiples include both four and six, the two meters used in the fugue. The structure of the sixth stanza (where we introduce the sixth and final voice) appears as follows:
Now, all voices have been introduced. The first five have been repeated, and the only thing remaining is for the last voice (F) to repeat itself exactly in another stanza, the seventh one. Since no new voice is being introduced in the stanzas to come, they can no longer gain in size. The seventh stanza, with nothing new being introduced in it voice-wise, will be no larger than the sixth stanza. Also, as we want the fugue to be symmetric in size, we're going to begin the descent of our fugue, what's goal is to come out with a last, six lined stanza. We're going to drop a voice per stanza until we end up with just the trochaic voice, which will be the end of the fugue. Stanza six was the largest one we'll have.
In the seventh stanza, the fifth voice is freed from it's exact repeat, and now all that remains to get the voices squared away and free, is to repeat that last voice (F). Also, we're now dropping the first voice, which has had its six appearances, as per the fugue rule we are bound to by choosing 6 voices. Had we chose 3 voices, each voice would only appear three times. In the fugal rule, you'll see that each voice will repeat itself once, and then be liable only to its actual rhythm and metric constrictions for five more stanzas, totalling six stanzas of use (including the voice's introduction to the fugue). Noticing a pattern around that mischievous number six? Six voices that last six stanzas each, of two and three syllable rhythms who's common multiple is six, and who's meters amount to twelve syllable lines, a multiple of six, along with the three (again, a denominator of six) rhymes per voice. Yes, the number six is all over this fugue. This is how we determine our fugal rule: THE NUMBER OF VOICES CHOSEN TO APPEAR IN THE FUGUE, DICTATES THE NUMBER OF STANZAS, REPEATS, RHYTHMS, METERS, AND RHYMES WITHIN THE FUGUE. An equation to this affect, for your ease in determining these factors appeared earlier in the notation and can be referenced at any time. Now, the tablature of the seventh stanza appears as follows. All we are doing from here on out is repeating the sixth voice its one time, and then dropping each voice stanza by stanza. The F repeats exactly in this stanza. The A is now removed. The B will be removed in the eigths stanza, the C in the ninth, D in the tenth, and finally, the E in the eleventh, leaving the eleventh stanza with nothing but the F, or, trochaic hexameter (which is symetrically opposite the iambic hexameter we began with). Stanza seven looks as follows:
This concludes the extent of the stanza dissection we'll require for Isamy Camreon, and a list of deviations I allowed will follow.
The following deviations from metrical absolution are to be found in Isamy Camreon: In the fourth stanza, the following line strays from the syntaxic rhythm by an extra foot: 'in good prosper, love nudges one's madness on its knife.' This syntaxic line, broken down reads:
The extra foot is underlined, is a soft accent just before the word 'knife'. For comparison's sake, a proper syntaxic line would have read:
Because this line is from the introduction of the second syntaxic voice, it did repeat in the fifth stanza, where I have made no change, thus making it a slight deviation in that stanza as well. I allowed the line to stray because I felt it had a strong enough purpose to warrant a deviation from the exacting syntaxic rhythm. In the fourth stanza, 16th line, the word we was added for continuity, and because I was cornered in a line.
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