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

to follow in his father’s footsteps turned out more successfully. Developing the latent
galant tendencies of J. S. Bach’s style one step further, Friedemann imbued his own
fugues with a melodic attractiveness and individuality comparable to much of the
WTC. On at least one occasion he demonstrated a large-scale mastery of contrapuntal
resource equal to all but the most expansive of his father’s fugues (cf pp.78-80). The
fugues of the next generation would have other qualities, but this sort of textural
sophistication and thematic distinctiveness became increasingly rare.
If, as seems likely, neither the Prelude and Fugue in F minor BWV 534 nor the
Toccata and Fugue BWV 565 are by J. S. Bach but merely from his circle of students
and admirers, we can trace in them two kinds of response to his example. BWV 534 is
modelled so closely on Bach that its authenticity remained unquestioned for 140 years,
and is not yet utterly disproved. The number of those, even among Bach’s students,
who could have written thus is small indeed; and it is in fact the two composers we
have just discussed, J. L. Krebs and W. F. Bach, who head the list. Certainly there are
few others who showed both the capacity and the desire to get so close to the heart of
their teacher’s style.
The D minor Toccata and Fugue is a different kind of creature altogether. It
seems likely that the discrepancies between it and Bach’s style are the result of
technical deficiencies—incompetence, to put it bluntly 100 —but, as the analysis on
pp.78-80 has argued, this does not prevent it from being a wonderfully effective piece
of musical rhetoric: from becoming, indeed, ‘the most famous piece of organ music
ever written.’ 101
During the following chapters we shall see many examples of both approaches.
All the composers we discuss at length: Wesley, Haydn, Mozart, Clementi, and
100 It would be rash to read into these peculiarities a ‘conscious attempt’ to make a new sort of fugue, as
Peter Williams does with regard to BWV 543 (p.48 above), an attempt such as Reicha clearly made
with his 36 Fugues of 1803, or Schumann did in his ‘Fughetta’, op.32/4.
101 P. Williams, ‘BWV 565’, 330.
108