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

would be of interest to a budding composer—is contained in part two, and this did not
appear until 1762. Griesinger places Haydn’s study of Mattheson and Fux
immediately after his expulsion from the choir-school, at the same time he was
apparently grappling with C. P. E. Bach’s sonatas—he makes no mention of the
Versuch. Yet there is no trace of the influence of C. P. E. Bach on Haydn’s music
until the later 1760s. It would seem that the chronology of Haydn’s early musical
education has become confused almost beyond hope of recovery.
SYMPHONIC FUGUES
The first work of his to show any serious preoccupation with contrapuntal
problems is the Symphony no.3 in G. 11 As was to be the case with his op.20 string
quartets ten years later, a sudden interest in contrapuntal procedures is accompanied by
a significant step forward in stylistic maturity—moving back in order to advance, so to
speak. If it were were not for a manuscript in Göttweig Abbey dated 1762 it would be
tempting to put it later. Knowing as little as we do about Haydn’s student exercises
(none survive) it seems rash to say that they ‘are to be found to some extent in
movements of his symphonies and chamber works’, 12 as is demonstrably true of some
of Schumann’s piano works for example. 13 Nevertheless contrapuntal processes help
shape three out of the four movements. The opening theme of the first movement
suggests a Fuxian cantus firmus/third species texture (later joined by a voice in fourth
species, and still later with the positions of the voices inverted), the minuet is canonic,
11 Probably not actually the third in order of composition. Haydn may have numbered it ‘21’ at
Morzin; Landon places it eighteenth.
12 Denis Arnold, in ‘Haydn’s Counterpoint and Fux’s “Gradus”’, Monthly Musical Record 88 (March-
April 1957), 52.
13 The op.5 ‘Impromptus sur une romance de Clara Wieck’ concluded with a movement based upon
earlier fugal experiments, and the fugues and canons he later published emerged out of his and
Clara’s private contrapuntal studies.
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