Editing Geographical Fugue (section)

{{Short description|Work for spoken chorus by German composer Ernst Toch}}
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The '''''Geographical Fugue''''' or '''''Fuge aus der Geographie''''' is the most famous piece for spoken chorus by [[Ernst Toch]].
Toch was a prominent [[composer]] in 1920s [[Berlin]] who invented the idiom of the "Spoken Chorus".

The work was composed as the third and final movement in Toch's suite ''Gesprochene Musik'' (Spoken Music). The suite was designed to be recorded by a chorus on [[Phonograph record|gramophone]] records at 78 [[Revolutions per minute|rpm]], then "performed" in concert by replaying the records at a much higher speed. As Toch wrote in his original program notes: "increasing the tempo, and the resulting pitch level ... created a type of instrumental music, which leads the listener to forget that it originated from speaking".<ref name="caines">{{cite journal |journal=Current Musicology |number=97 |year=2014 |first=Christopher M. |last=Caines |title=Preface to Gesprochene Musik, 1. "O–a" and 2. "Ta–tam" |pages=61–68 |url=https://currentmusicology.columbia.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/2016/08/CM97_Caines.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180627140633/https://currentmusicology.columbia.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/2016/08/CM97_Caines.pdf |archive-date=27 June 2018}}</ref>

The piece was first performed, in its original German, at the Neue Musik Berlin festival in June 1930. The performance, in front of an audience that included experimental composer [[John Cage]], was a sensational success.<sup>[''[[Wikipedia:Citations needed|citation needed]]'']</sup> When Toch arrived in the United States in 1935, as a refugee from Nazi Germany, Cage sought him out and obtained permission for the Fugue to be published in English translation.<ref name="caines"/>
It remains Toch's most-performed work, although the composer himself dismissed it as an unimportant diversion.<sup>[''[[Wikipedia:Citations needed|citation needed]]'']</sup>