J. S. BACH Jonathan Berkahn - Victoria University - Victoria ...

The significance of this sort of stuctural control becomes apparent if we
compare this fugue with that from Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in F major, BWV 540. It
seems hardly fair to pit a fugue where Krebs is only just in command of his resources
against one where Bach is quite clearly at the top of his game, a fitting companion for
the toccata which A. E. F. Dickinson describes as quite simply ‘the greatest example of
the genre by any composer alive or dead.’ 96 Furthermore, its length of 170 bars is not
really three-quarters of Krebs’s 238 but actually much less; his bars are shorter than
Krebs’s, being alla breve and having no need to deal with semiquaver material. The
Bach takes maybe five minutes in performance; at crotchet = 100, the Krebs takes
nearly ten. The comparatively modest(!) scope of Bach’s ambition shows a sound
grasp of what can and cannot successfully be achieved within the limits of his mature
fugal style. There were a number of dodges available to the composer who wanted to
expand a fugal movement beyond these limits. He could, as in the ‘St Anne’ fugue
BWV 552, join a number of separate but related fugues into a single movement, in the
manner of a ‘quilt’ canzona. Or he could, as in the ‘Wedge’ fugue BWV 548,
introduce lengthy passages of extraneous material, or (as in BWV 548 and 537) large
sections of literal recapitulation.
Here Bach avoids either of these devices; this is perhaps the second longest
fugue in which he does so, and, structurally, a good comparison to Krebs’s
movement. 97 It falls into two long arcs, the middle point being marked both by the
entry of a secondary subject, the temporary abdication of the pedal, and what is
virtually the only clear cadence in the course of the movement, on the dominant. 98
How does Bach achieve the sense of effortless motion toward his major structural
96 Bach’s Fugal Works: with an account of fugue before and after Bach (London: Pitman, 1956), p.25.
This praise is all the more significant, coming as it does from perhaps the most searching and
abrasive critique of Bach’s fugal style ever written.
97 The longest, that of the ‘Dorian’ Toccata in D minor BWV 538 (222 bars) contains extensive
canonic writing which has no parallel in Krebs’s fugue.
98 There is in fact one other perfect cadence, in A minor (b.143) but it has no comparable structural
significance.
102