A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Fugato

FUGATO. A name given to an irregularly fugued movement, in which the fugue-form is not strictly followed (especially as to strettos and pedal-points), though the structure is fugal and contrapuntal. Fugato passages are often introduced in orchestral music with the happiest effect, as in first and last movements of the Eroica Symphony, in the Allegretto of No. 7, both by Beethoven, and in the first movement of Mendelssohn's Italian Symphony, immediately after the double bar, etc.

[ F. A. G. O. ]