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

It is quite clearly a homage to the popular Presto that occurs in the third suite of
Handel’s 1720 collection (and several other places in his oeuvre; Ex.2.2). The
similarity of head-motif might have meant nothing more than it generally did to
Handel, who often re-used material in order to make something quite new; but here
Chilcot follows his model point for point, the only significant difference being an extra
ritornello at the beginning of the second half. In the preface to his edition Davitt
Moroney suggests that it may have been written as a compositional exercise—which
would explain the diligence with which he has followed his model. 13
One might compare the very skilful but rather flat-footed efforts of Krebs to
emulate J. S. Bach we discussed in the previous chapter. The music lacks an elusive
‘something’—a ‘something’ that in the case of Chilcot and Handel can be identified if
we compare their use of the apparently similar figuration which connects the ritornelli.
Although always purposeful, Handel’s figuration never allows itself to fall into
excessively literal patterns of repetition and sequence. Between the first two ritornelli
Handel uses no less than seven different kinds of semiquaver figuration, shifting from
moment to moment and never allowing plain symmetries to emerge for too long.
By contrast, Chilcot’s figuration is all to happy to group itself into regular
patterns. A comparison between the two demonstrates Handel’s instinct for diverting
a sequence just before it gets tiresome—something we tend to take for granted until it
is no longer present. All this is not intended simply to belittle the music of (the much
less experienced) Thomas Chilcot; but rather to illustrate how it was possible to
assiduously duplicate the surface idiom of Handel’s music, while neglecting important
principles of structure.
Much the same happened in relation to Handel’s fugal style. A good example
of the contrapuntal looseness—and musical energy—of his fugal writing can be seen
13 T. Chilcot, Six suites of lessons for the harpsichord or spinet (1734), ed. D. Moroney, preface,
(Paris: Heugel, 1975).
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