Supreme master of the fugue that he became, Bach did not win this mastery easily. The transformation from angular faceless subjects and paragraphs that cadence too frequently, to the seamless ever-developing textures made from characterfully shaped melodic subjects achieved by observation, experience, and applied intellectual power, is as astonishing as the variety of the fugue subjects themselves. Indeed, German writers divide Bach’s developing fugal style into four main types: the Spielfuge, the dance fugue, the allabreve, and the art fugue.