It's pretty crazy when you think about how many of Bach's fugue subjects are long, sprawling, compound lines. Most counterpoint students would try as hard as p

It's pretty crazy when you think about how many of Bach's fugue subjects are long, sprawling, compound lines. Most counterpoint students would try as hard as possible to make their fugue subjects short, simple and constrained to a very small range. Otherwise they'd risk the overall texture getting too thick and the voices jumping around each other and accidentally creating an incoherent mess. Meanwhile, Bach's fugue subjects-- like BWV 542-- are playing the lead while accompanying themselves. It's like van Halen's solo in Eruption, except Bach copy/pastes his solos on top of each other so that they help each other asplode together.