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

Wilhelm Friedemann (see chapter 1). Both were great organists, both the sons of
illustrious and strong-minded fathers, both strongly under the influence of J. S. Bach.
Both were subject to inexplicable fits of accidie, both were temperamentally unstable.
Though extremely gifted neither could be said to have realised their full creative
potential; to the end, neither thought they had been given the opportunities they
deserved. There is one notable difference, nevertheless. W. F. Bach’s personality
seems to have stifled his compositional activity. Fine as many of them are, his works
amount to scarcely more than a handful. The fact that Wesley seldom had the capital
to publish his larger works and the chaotic state of his manuscripts meant that this was
once thought to be the case with him, too. In recent years however, scholars have
come to realise the full extent of his oeuvre—organ music, large-scale choral works,
Latin motets, orchestral music, glees, songs, chamber music, concertos, and piano
music of all kinds—and his significance is finally coming to be appreciated.
It has been suggested that Mendelssohn’s organ sonatas (intended for the
English market and originally entitled ‘Voluntaries’) show the influence of Samuel
Wesley. 123 This seems unlikely: it is hard to see why Mendelssohn would be
particularly interested in English organ music when there were plenty of good models
much closer to home. 124 Nevertheless, if he had come across some of the music
Samuel Wesley had written at the height of his powers it is likely that he would have
recognised a kindred spirit; not just through the influence of J. S. Bach, but because of
the determination with which they maintained high standards of craftsmanship and
inspiration at a time when there was little incentive or encouragement for either.
123 O. A. Mansfield, ‘Some characteristics and peculiarities of Mendelssohn’s organ sonatas’, Musical
Quarterly 3/4 (October 1917), 563, H. Diack Johnstone, review of S. Wesley, Six voluntaries and
fugues for organ, Fourteen short pieces, ed. R. Langley, Music & Letters 64/3/4 (July-October,
1983), 309.
124 Important German organists who may have influenced Mendelssohn include his teacher August
Wilhelm Bach (Berlin; no relation to Johann Sebastian), August Gottfried Ritter (Berlin), Michael
Gotthart Fischer (Erfurt), Christian Heinrich Rinck (Darmstadt), and Adolph Hesse (Breslau). If
somewhat in decline from the glories of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Germany was still
the home of organ music.
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