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

surprisingly grammatical, confirming Boyce’s judgement.
This dependence upon ‘nature’ rather than ‘rule or study’ was perfectly
adequate when fitting a bass to a simple melody. When attempting to write fugues,
however, the same course produced much stranger results. There are four fugues (so-
titled) in Ruth, along with a movement labelled rather curiously ‘IMITATION of a
FUGE’. In a sense, all are ‘imitations’ of fugues; and it is often almost comically
evident how much Wesley desired to emulate the combined grandeur and excitement
of many of Handel’s choral fugues, and how much he lacked the technical resources to
do so. The subject of the last fugue, ‘Hallelujah, Amen’ is almost identical to the final
chorus of Messiah, and this movement shows the same contrast between two-part
counterpoint on the violins and the full choral/orchestral forces. At other points the
repetition of the word ‘Hallelujah’ in massive homophony recalls another well-known
chorus. It is of course the very similarity of material that emphasises the difference
between the seven year old autodidact and his vastly more experienced model. There
are three kinds of material in Wesley’s fugue: thematic exposition, homophonic
peroration, and small amounts of homophonic transitional material. While Handel was
able to integrate these materials into a seamless quasi-antico texture, Wesley moves
abruptly from one to another. In particular (a common problem with musicians not
used to thinking contrapuntally), he finds it difficult to make a smooth transition from
the slender texture of the first few entries to a full texture when all the voices have
entered; a problem not helped by the difficulty he finds in handling four parts at once.
Little is known about compositional pedagogy in England at this time and that
little may be of small relevance to Samuel Wesley, for once David Williams (a Bristol
organist) had taught him to read music, he seems to have been left to his own devices
as a composer. 35 The last tutor of any significance, Henry Purcell’s revision of
35 Olleson, Wesley, p.9. Williams taught him for a year, but apart from this and some violin lessons
with William Kingsbury and a ‘Mr McBean’, he seems to have largely been an autodidact as a
performer as well.
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