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

The ending is rather curious: he replaces the exposition’s quiet conclusion with a rich
passage of chords in three registers (bb.465-72), then twice subverts the expected
perfect cadence in unorthodox ways (bb.471-74 and 481-83), preferring to finish
instead with a plagal cadence.
The first thing that strikes one about the piece is its sheer size of nearly 500
bars. With its inordinate length and unflagging energy it brings to mind two other
similar pieces, written at a similar stage in their composers’ careers: the Gigue in G
minor from the ninth suite of Handel’s 1727 collection (HWV 439) which he would
have known, and Haydn’s prodigious Capriccio in G (Hob XVII:1) which he almost
certainly would not have. All three were written upon their composers’ first arriving at
maturity (Handel’s gigue was written a long time before it was published, and Haydn’s
Capriccio dates from 1765), and all three display their composers’ exultation in newly
won powers, at extraordinary length. Samuel Butler described the Handel gigue as
being ‘very fine but it is perhaps a little long. Probably Handel was in a hurry, for it
takes much more time to get a thing short than to leave it a little long.’ 49 As with
Haydn’s Capriccio, the listener’s endurance begins to flag a little before the
composer’s. There comes a point about two-thirds of the way through at which the
prospect of yet another inventive sequence, yet another telling modulation, arouses
perhaps slightly less interest than it should. 50 Mention has already made of Wesley’s
manic tendencies (with the intense, if uneven productivity of these years), and the
possible influence of his 1787 accident on his mental stability. It is too much to
suggest that this piece came about merely as a consequence of Samuel Wesley falling
into a hole in the ground; but ‘manic’ is not a bad way to describe the extraordinary
creative energy with which he continues to generate new permutations of his material,
49 An anthology of musical criticism from the 15 th to the 20 th century, ed. N. Demuth (London: Eyre
& Spottiswoode, 1947), p.118.
50 Gordon Atkinson goes far as to dismiss it as ‘long, rambling and unsatisfactory Presto’ in his edition
of the Andante maestoso: Introduction, Short Pieces, p.7.
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