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

promising) departure from the prevailing contrapuntal style turns out to be nothing
more than a passing moment.
On the other hand, a similar minor/major shift fourteen bars later does have far-
reaching structural consequences; here the key-change is dignified with its own key
signature and ‘Maggiore’ indication. Although it begins with an entry (in the bass)
this is the least fugal section of the piece. It slackens in intensity for a brief Lentando
passage then builds up to a considerable pianistic climax. It is almost as if, unable to
produce a sufficient sense of culmination for his ambitious scheme by contrapuntal
means alone, Wesley decides to employ a quite different kind of texture, reserving the
contrapuntal climax for later. The largely sequential material in question is typical of a
sonata’s development section, thus giving the return of the subject when it arrives in
b.166 something of the rhetorical weight of a recapitulation.
Although the strong tonic major/minor polarity of the last two pages is rather
unusual for a fugue, it could be described as a rational structural principle.
Nevertheless, for all the energy of its conclusion, the piece leaves a slightly incoherent
impression. At times the unprepared stylistic shifts sound as if Wesley was working
from entry to entry—even chord to chord—without being fully aware of the potential
of his material. However, the fugue contains such interest, such a chaotic wealth of
material, that it is one of the most characteristic and original of his later pieces. The
effect is only heightened by its position in the sonata, between the impressive
introduction and the quiet, almost Schubertian finale. On the whole Samuel Wesley
was ambivalent, to say the least, about most musical trends of the early nineteenth
century. This sonata is one of the rare occasions when he sought to exploit these new
compositional resources and combine them with the influence of J. S. Bach, and it is
one of the few pieces by him that can reasonably be called ‘early-Romantic’.
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