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

Throughout the nineteenth century this chord (flat VII) would serve as a
symbol for the ‘antique’; to find it here in 1799 is a remarkably prescient anticipation
of Romantic archaism. 66 Equally striking in a different way is the entry of the timpani
in b.279, and with the thunder of Mount Sinai (‘Sanctum et terribile nomen ejus’,
impressively—and uniquely—stated just once) the movement closes. What began as a
contrapuntal exercise ends in an apocalyptic vision.
Most commentators second Wesley’s verdict that the Confitebor was his
masterpiece. Olleson finds it ‘worthy companion to Haydn’s Creation and The
Seasons as an outstanding oratorio of the period’; 67 which leads us to ask: if its first
performances had been more propitious, might the Confitebor have taken its place
alongside the oratorios of Handel, Haydn, and Mendelssohn, performed and loved,
hackneyed and abused as fixtures of the choral repertory? Any doubt upon that score
arises from the text, rather than the music. Whatever the deficiencies of Haydn’s
libretti (third-hand Milton or Thompson), at even their most egregious they have a
vernacular immediacy that the Confitebor lacks. So too with Handel and
Mendelssohn. Although the Latin is always set appropriately and expressively, one
66 It was not, of course, unusual in the context of Wesley’s own oeuvre, for he often adopted this style
in his Catholic liturgical music. It was rare for it to appear on the concert stage, however. See
pp.363-5 below for another early example of Romantic archaism and further discussion on this point.
67 Olleson, Wesley, p.260.
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