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Beethoven’s
Great Fugue
in B flat
major, op.133 is a struggle of spirit
over matter, a combat without
a winner, in which an immensity
of poetic imagination overlaps,
blends, then is excluded. It
becomes a world whose torrential
vigour oversteps its function. It is
the last – but the most grandiose –
confrontation of expression and
counterpoint in Beethoven.
14 BEETHOVEN