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

instrumental fugues of Joseph Haydn,’ considers the role of indigenous Viennese
contrapuntal traditions in the development of his mature style. The significance of this
particular development extends well beyond its relevance to Haydn’s own oeuvre, for
the growth of Haydn’s quartet style has tended to serve as a synecdoche for the
development of the Classical style as a whole. If the ‘new and special manner’ of the
op.33 quartets really does represent Haydn’s first attainment of a ‘true quartet style’,
then they are the first such works ever—the first example perhaps of that perfect
integration of the part and the whole, means and ends, that we still call Viennese
Classicism. According to this reading, Haydn’s use of counterpoint is significant only
insofar as it is integrated with and transfigured by sonata procedures. The fugal finales
of the op.20 quartets and some of the earlier symphonies and baryton trios, therefore,
can only be seen only as intermediate steps on the way to the point de perfection of
op.33 (‘Gradus ad Parnassum’ indeed!) To regard Haydn’s fugal writing as being
significant in its own right—indeed, as a culmination of the Viennese fugal tradition—
is thus to raise questions about the entire shape of his achievement. In this chapter the
strong sense of evolutionary teleology present in the accounts of Sandberger, Rosen, et
al is contrasted with the revisionist approach of James Webster.
Chapter four: ‘Mozart, finished and unfinished’ reflects upon the nature of
musical incompleteness, exploring his curious inability or unwillingness to complete
so many of the fugal fragments he began. Mozart’s engagement with fugue, more
intense and more consistent than Haydn’s, was also more problematic. Several
explanations for this, both musical and psychological, are advanced and compared.
Until Baron van Swieten’s soirées of 1782, Mozart’s effortless facility had enabled
him to imitate—and usually surpass—any music he came across. With the
wohltemperirte Clavier fugues of J. S. Bach, for the first time he faced the challenge of
a style he could emulate with only the greatest difficulty. For the first time he heard
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