So You Want to Write a Fugue? Why not enlist the help of the Pink Panther

On his blog, New York music critic Alex Ross has posted a video of French pianist-composer Stéphane Delplace playing a fugue on Henry Mancini's Pink Panther theme, one of 60 Preludes and Fugues he has written in "30 tonalities," to show off the many intersections between harmony, consonance, dissonance and counterpoint.

In an introductory chat, which Ross did not post, Delplace explains his thinking. One provocative thought he puts forward is that contrapuntal music does not exist on its own; rather, it is a way to carve out expression from tonal music. He says that counterpoint is not audible unless there is a "clear tonal centre" from which to perceive it.

To make it all perfectly clear, here is Delplace's chat, followed by Glenn Gould playing Contrapunctus II from J.S. Bach's The Art of the Fugue on an organ, followed by Delplace's Panther Fugue, as gorgeously and imaginatively filmed by Stéphan Aubé (the eagle eye behind the Berlin Philharmonic's digital concert broadcasts):