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

ut give it the greatest praise. For if a middle-aged man were to enter today in dress
worn fifty or sixty years ago, he would certainly expose himself to the risk of being
laughed at.’ 5 One wonders, however, what he would have had to say about the
systematic textural and harmonic primitivism of many of his pupils.
The early music of Haydn is likewise almost entirely innocent of contrapuntal
intrigue. At times it is quite elementary in texture; perhaps because he was (at least
initially) unable to manage anything more sophisticated, perhaps because, even at this
stage, he was beginning to realise the strength of this direct mode of utterance. So
little is known about the circumstances of these early works that is unwise to assume
too much about his intentions. All we know is that it was not long before Haydn
began to wrestle with contrapuntal problems in earnest.
HAYDN’S MUSICAL EDUCATION
It is not clear how and when Haydn first came across Fux’s Gradus ad
Parnassum. His early training at St Stephen’s had been of the sketchiest. Not
unnaturally, the main focus was on vocal instruction, along with a certain amount of
instrumental tuition; though he confessed himself to be ‘no wizard’ on any instrument,
he could play many of them at least adequately. As far as theory and composition
went, however, he had to make do with ‘only two such lessons from the worthy
Reutter’ (Griesinger). 6 Many of the sources retell a story in this connection: Haydn
had apparently written an ambitious composition variously described as ‘in sixteen
parts’ (Griesinger), ‘a Salve Regina in twelve parts’ (Dies), or ‘a mass for four voices
5 In clothes of the time before he was born, Fux most likely means: ‘Gradus ad Parnassum (1725):
concluding chapters’, tr. S. Wollenberg, Music analysis 11:2-3 (1992), 241.
6 H. C. Robbins Landon, Joseph Haydn, Chronicle and Works, 5 vols. (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1976-80), vol. I, p.38.
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