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

When he chooses to depend upon the contrapuntal texture alone, as in the
antico fugues from voluntaries three and four, his fugal technique is well up to the job.
More fun, however, are the vigorous, spontaneous fugues like those of the first and
eighth voluntaries, where he is able to give his wayward imagination free reign.
Throughout the set there is a surprisingly large proportion of two-part writing, much of
the counterpoint is built up from easily transposable modules, and there are very few
entries in inner voices; but one notices these marks of the born improviser only in
retrospect, so to speak, as one examines the score. They do not thrust themselves upon
our attention; and when performing these voluntaries one is carried away (as were
those who heard him extemporise) by Wesley’s effortless volubility, and the fine,
rhetorical strokes he is able to produce time and time again.
It was during the publication of this set that Samuel Wesley first encountered of
the music of Johann Sebastian Bach (according to the chronology on p.164 it would
probably have occurred around the time he was publishing nos.7 and 8; certainly
before number 10). The question that immediately comes to mind is of course: how
did this cataclysmic event affect the style of these voluntaries? Rather surprisingly, the
answer appears to be: hardly at all. There is no stylistic chasm between (say) no.8 and
no.10. If we did not know that the set had been published over twenty years, we would
not have guessed.
There are occasional points in the later voluntaries where we might see traces
of Bach’s influence. If the passage in Ex.2.23—so strongly reminiscent of certain
kinds of Bachian orchestral texture—and the searching chromaticism of the third
voluntary cannot be so attributed (having been written too early), certain passages of
intricate two-part counterpoint in the first movement of number ten (Ex.2.27) do
remind one of some of the WTC preludes. 74
74 Peter Williams has cited the first movement of op.6/11 for the same reason: ‘J. S. Bach and English
organ music’, Music & Letters 44/2 (April 1963), 147.
167