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

world of their own.
The study concludes with an epilogue pointing toward Mendelssohn and
Schumann, tracing their affinity with J. S. Bach and outlining the final decay of the
galant aesthetic.
Although each chapter has its own focus, there are a number of common
themes that unify this study. It will be seen that attention is directed almost entirely
toward ‘canonical’ composers: to Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, and the posthumous
influence and reception of Bach and Handel. This is not simply because these
musicians were ‘better’ at writing fugues (although, by and large, it is probably true),
nor because their engagement with the music and musical styles of the past was, by the
standards of their day, unusually rich and interesting (also true). The thing that
interests me most about these composers is a consequence of the live significance they
retain for us today. Haydn and Beethoven are a part of our musical life in a way that
Gassmann and Albrechtsberger are not. If simple clarity of perception is to be desired
above all else, then it is in one sense much easier to achieve a sound historical
perspective upon the Gassmanns and Albrechtsbergers of the musical world. Products
of and dwellers in their own age, they do not insist upon taking up residence in ours.
Their lives and achievements are not ‘compassed about with so great a cloud of
witnesses,’ obscured by the myths and mythologies, the critical debates, the Babel of
voices—and the very familiarity—which surround their great contemporaries. And yet
it is precisely this difficulty of getting a clear vantage-point, precisely (looked at
another way) this richness of identity that I find most fascinating. I am speaking, of
course, about reception-history; a term I almost hesitate to use for fear that it might
imply that there is a way of seeing the musical work as it really ‘is’, apart from such
considerations. Every performance, every critical judgement, every musical response,
every scholarly undertaking, is both a consequence of and a contribution to reception-
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