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

published separately over the next two decades. 71 It is remarkable how little stylistic
change there is between the first and the last.
We have seen how stable a form the English voluntary had become in the
middle of the eighteenth century. Early in the nineteenth century a new generation of
organists—William Russell (1777-1813), Thomas Adams (1785-1858), and Samuel
Wesley himself—expanded the genre considerably. Three or four movements were
now common, and they tended to be longer and more elaborate in texture. Pedal parts
—absent in the eighteenth century—began to appear with greater frequency. Although
actual sonata- or symphony-like movements were rare, the melodic phraseology of
these voluntaries was more up to date; and we can find marches, airs, variations, and
even (in Russell’s First Set of 1804) a ‘Cornet a la Polacca’ alongside the older
movement types. 72 On the other hand, there was a resurgence in the popularity of
dotted, French ouverture-like opening movements and a noticeable increase in the
quantity of fugal writing. In Wesley’s op.6, for example, eleven out of the twelve
contain a substantial, extended fugue, usually as a finale.
Wesley’s counterpoint here is not quite as obsessive as in the works discussed
above; which is probably a good thing. Although it is seldom very interesting in and
of itself, all the fugues in the op.6 voluntaries are worth playing for one reason or
another. The subject of the fugue in the first voluntary for example has an
extraordinary melodic energy, ascending an octave and a third in the first two bars
(Ex.2.22). The climax of the fugue, though hardly elaborate counterpoint, is a fine
realisation of the subject’s potential (Ex.2.23). The subject of the fugue in the sixth
voluntary is highly original in its implied cross-rhythms (Ex.2.24), and the fugue itself
is leavened by recurrences of the attractively proto-Mendelssohnian air that introduced
71 Olleson’s partly conjectural publication dates (Wesley, pp.298-99) are as follows: no.1: 1802, nos.2-
4: 1803, no.5: 1804, no.6: 1805, nos.7-8: 1806, no.9: unknown, no.10: 1814, no.11: 1817 or earlier,
no.12: ?1823.
72 The ‘cornet’ was a solo stop, much used in eighteenth-century voluntaries.
164