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

goals? There are two clear respects in which his approach here differs from that of
Krebs, thematically and harmonically. In the course of twenty separate episodes,
Krebs takes up as many thematic ideas, only to discard them as soon as they have
served their turn. Each episode is exclusively occupied with its bit of material,
developing it by means of fairly literal sequence and imitation; local sections are
tightly organised, but apart from the subject(s) there is no larger thematic coherence.
Bach’s procedure is almost the opposite. On the one hand, the subject has a consistent
countersubject, considerably shorter than the subject and more flexible, that can be
introduced to the texture in all sorts of unexpected ways, both with and without the
subject. On the other, there is no other distractingly memorable thematic material at
all, no local symmetrical groupings to draw attention away from the freely evolving
shape of the texture as a whole.
Bach’s voice-leading reinforces this sense of continuity. Krebs’s texture is full
of potential cadences—root position V-I progressions. Continuity is nowhere
seriously impaired because the movement of the parts is maintained; but the tour de
force which is the first half of Bach’s fugue is on a wholly different plane. Between
the opening and the cadence at b.70 there is hardly a single uncomplicated root
position tonic or dominant chord to be found. Even more impressive is the inventive
variety of his harmonic evasions. In Ex.1.26, for example, the first beat of every bar
has an unstable sonority; but each is of a different kind, some dissonant, some
consonant but inverted, some on secondary scale degrees, some (the relationship
between the second bar of the subject and the countersubject, b.7 et seq.) difficult to
categorise.
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