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

wrestling with the problem of integrating wind instruments into the texture. The string
quartet is a relatively homogeneous ensemble, equally at home with Baroque
polyphony as with galant homophony. Not so the Classical orchestra with its highly
specialised components, which presents real problems for the would-be fugue writer.
Haydn could fall back on neither the fully independent part-writing of J. S. Bach nor
the ‘oboes with everything’ orchestration of Handel. Classical horns and trumpets
were much more limited in range and agility than the high trumpet parts of the late
Baroque, and Haydn seems at first to have had a very low opinion of the capabilities of
his oboists, confining them to a timid, slow-moving Harmonie role. And this is indeed
what the horns and then the oboes supply towards the end of the exposition. It isn’t
much, but it is a sign that Haydn is still thinking as a symphonist, and not just a
contrapuntist.
The exposition concludes in b.26 with a weak cadence on V, and the movement
continues with a pair of apparently unrelated ideas (Ex.3.2):
It would seem that Haydn is proceeding in the easy-going manner of Florian Leopold
Gassmann or Karl von Kohaut, dissolving his counterpoint into amiable homophony
before it has a chance to become tedious, and this would appear to be confirmed by the
definitively Classical cadential articulation in bb.34-38. The secondary theme which
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