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

consciously parodying his Methodist origins? Or was he in some highly post-modern
intermediate state, letting the language create the reality without too much concern
about what it all might ‘mean’?
Samuel Wesley’s ‘star’ convert was, of course, Charles Burney. 82 Burney had
been a family friend in Samuel’s youth, and around 1799 he renewed the acquaintance.
By the time Wesley became interested in J. S. Bach, Burney had effectively retired
from public musical life. The friendship had much to offer both. For Burney, Wesley
was a way of maintaining contact with London’s burgeoning musical life (and, if his
letters are any indication, Wesley must have been an engagingly forthright
companion). To Wesley, Burney represented the kind of cultivated, educated society
from which he was himself excluded for social, temperamental, and financial reasons.
When writing about Burney to others (not so much when writing to Burney
himself), Wesley continually interprets his new-found interest in J. S. Bach according
to this schema: ‘I have however much Satisfaction in being able to assure you from my
own personal Experience that his present judgement of our Demi-God is of a very
different Nature from that at the Time he imprudently, incautiously, and we may add,
ignorantly pronounced so rash & false a verdict.’ 83 ‘The Triumph of Burney over his
own Ignorance & Prejudice is such a glorious Event that surely we ought to make
some Sacrifice to enjoy it. . . . Think of what we shall have to announce to the Public;
that Dr Burney (who has heard almost all the Music of other Folks) should be listening
with Delight at almost 90 years old, to an Author whom he so unknowingly & rashly
had condemned!’ 84
In order to do this he had to distort two aspects of Burney’s attitude. First of
82 See S. J. Rogal, ‘For the love of Bach: The Charles Burney-Samuel Wesley correspondence’, Bach:
The journal of the Riemenschneider Bach Institute 23/1 (Spring-Summer 1992), 31-37, and P.
Olleson, ‘Dr. Burney, Samuel Wesley, and J. S. Bach’s “Goldberg variations”’ in The Rosaleen
Moldenhauer memorial: Music history from primary sources—A guide to the Moldenhauer
Archives (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 2000), 169-175; at
http://rs6.loc.gov/ammem/collections/moldenhauer/2428120.pdf (accessed 10 December 2006).
83 Letter to Jacob, 17 September 1808, Olleson, Letters, p.75.
84 Letter to ?Jacob, ?30 September 1809, ibid., p.124.
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