Final Countdown
by Europe
Full Orchestra - Digital Sheet Music

Full Orchestra - Level 4 - Digital Download

SKU: A0.1042286

By Europe. By Joey Tempest. Arranged by Mark Marrington. 20th Century,Baroque,Classical,Pop,Rock. Score and parts. 66 pages. Marrington Edition #647099. Published by Marrington Edition (A0.1042286).

The Fugue on the Final Countdown employs the famous theme by 1980s ‘hair metal’ band Europe as its subject. Those of a certain age will recall that it was impossible to escape this tune during the summer of 1986 (even the natives of the Solomon Islands were said to have learned it on the panpipes) and this piece constitutes my revenge. It was composed in 2005 following a discussion of fugue subjects during a Harmony and Counterpoint class. I was thrown a gauntlet by the students: ‘submit one of pop’s finest anthemic moments to a rigorous contrapuntal treatment worthy of the great Baroque masters’ (or something like that). As it turns out Europe’s theme is actually rather Bachian in character, being reminiscent in particular of the subject used in Fugue No. 2 in C minor from the Well Tempered Clavier. Evenings poring over Oldroyd’s The Technique and Spirit of Fugue, which helpfully showed me the number of ways in which Bach broke his own rules, have probably paid off! The resulting composition for a standard orchestral line-up is for all intents and purposes a genuine fugue in that it utilizes a countersubject which works in invertible counterpoint, contains modulatory episodes which use material derived from the main theme and even culminates in a stretto-like finale.