Fugue

Fugue (pronounced fyoog)

(1) In music, a polyphonic composition based upon one, two, or more themes, which are enunciated by several voices or parts in turn, subjected to contrapuntal treatment, and gradually built up into a complex form having somewhat distinct divisions or stages of development and a marked climax at the end.

(2) In psychiatry, as dissociative fugue (previously called a fugue state or psychogenic fugue), a period during which a person experiences loss of memory, often begins a new life, and, upon recovery, remembers nothing of the amnesic phase.

(3) In literature, poetry, painting etc, a composition which resembles a fugue in structure or in its elaborate complexity and formality.

(4) In cryptography, a hash function written by IBM.

1590-1600: From the French fugue, from the Italian fuga (flight; a running away, act of fleeing, ardor), from the Latin fugere (to flee) & fugare (to chase), from fuga (act of fleeing (literally “flight”)), from fugiō (to flee), the related word in Ancient Greek was φυγή (phugḗ); a doublet of fougue.  The current spelling in English is noted from the 1660s and is from the French version of the Italian word; the plural is fugues.  The (rare) related forms include fuguist, fuguing, fugued & fuguer but although the adjective is fugal, the more common way to convey the adjectival sense is “fugue-like”.

Most associated with music, a fugue is a composition founded upon one subject, announced at first in one part alone, and subsequently imitated by all the other parts in turn, according to certain general principles to be hereafter explained.  The idea behind the musical form “pertaining to a fugue; in the style of a fugue” is thought to be based in the metaphor that the first part starts alone on its course, and is pursued by later parts.  The variants include fughetta (literally, "a small fugue") and fugato (a passage fugue-like in structure interpolated into another work which is not a fugue).

JS Bach (1685–1750) was a German composer of the late Baroque and his unfinished The Art of (the) Fugue, written in the last years of his life, has since a twentieth-century revival of interest been part of the classical canon although many academics and professional composers accomplished in structural analysis maintain the fugues were actually part of his pedagogical output and reflected his long interest in monothematic instrumental works.  The most intriguing suggestion is Bach deliberately left the last of the fugues incomplete to provide aspiring composers with a chance to write their own conclusion, that which preceded either template or inspiration depending on one’s view.

The Unfinished Fugue: Fuga a 3 Soggetti (Contrapunctus XIV).

Like Bach’s other memorable work from his last decade, the Goldberg Variations (1741), the fugues came late to the canon, the first complete performance undertaken only in 1922 but it would have seemed strange to him for the works to be assembled and presented as a whole because collectively they don’t assume any thematic form; they’re more a technical exploration of the possibilities he had learned from the hundreds of fugues he’d earlier written.  The Goldberg Variations had a not dissimilar history; a technically challenging piece written for what became an unfashionable instrument, it lay neglected until a startling performance on the piano in 1955 made it famous.  US physicist’s Douglas Hofstadter's (b 1945) 1979 book Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid invokes The Art of Fugue to illustrate the first incompleteness theorem of Austrian logician Kurt Gödel (1906-1978); it’s fun but it’s drawing a long bow.

In the fourth edition of the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV 1994), dissociative fugue was listed as a separate a separate disorder while in DSM-5 (2013) it was re-classified as a subtype of dissociative amnesia, a condition which involves a wide spectrum of degrees of impairment in memory and consciousness.  When a separate disorder, the diagnostic criteria was (1) sudden or unexpected travel away from one's home or work, (2) an inability to recall past experiences, (3) confusion about identity or (in whole or in part) assuming a new one & (4), significant distress and impairment about these issues.  A little unusually in psychiatry, dissociative fugue was noted as typically diagnosed only retrospectively since the patient may not show outward signs and it was thus often difficult to recognize the condition.  So, it was usually only when the fugue ended, whether abruptly or as a gradual emergence, that a diagnosis was made.

Lindsay Lohan and her lawyer in court, Los Angeles, 2012.

The refinement in the DSM-5 was that, becoming a subtype of the disorder dissociative amnesia, a dissociative fugue became the state of purposeful travel or bewildered wandering attached to the symptoms of dissociative amnesia.  In this the dissociative fugue joined the other subtypes including (1) localized amnesia, (2), selective amnesia, (3), generalized amnesia, & (4), continuous amnesia & systematized amnesia.  A hint at the editor’s rationale for making the re-classification lies in the newly added diagnostic exclusions: (1) ingestion of psychotropic substances, (2) a general medication condition, (3), dissociative identity disorder, (4), diagnosis of delirium, (5), diagnosis of dementia, (6), head trauma, (7), ingestion of drugs or alcohol & (8), diagnosis of epilepsy.  Previously, in DSM-IV, the exclusions were limited to (1) the effects of drugs & medications and (2), a general medical condition.  Ominously, they add that while rare, a dissociative fugue may be faked by those seeking to escape the consequences for their actions.  So, the dissociative fugue (once the fugue state or psychogenic fugue) is a mental and behavioral disorder classified variously as a dissociative disorder or a somatic symptom disorder.  Rare and almost always temporary (although cases which last years are noted in the literature and durations of months are not uncommon) and now thought just one of the possible manifestations of dissociative amnesia.