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

By contrast, the fugue which closes his 70 th symphony (1779)—one of his very
few minor-key fugues—is disturbingly powerful. Even more than that of Symphony
no.3 the counterpoint is perfectly conventional, with the most minimal thematic
profile; indeed, the sinister power of this movement is out of all proportion to the
conventionality of its material. Perhaps this is the wrong way of looking at it,
however. Musical conventions become conventional precisely because they are
effective; and when the composer is, like Haydn, alert to the dramatic possibilities of
even the simplest material, they can retain their effectiveness after any amount of
hackneying.
Perhaps the most imaginative stroke in this movement is the way in which it
begins: five high Ds from the first violins answered by low chords from all the strings.
This is surely one of the most unusual openings to any symphonic movement of the
period. It is uncanny in the way the extreme contrasts of register and texture, the
ambiguity of pace (although entitled ‘Allegro con brio’ from the start the first 26 bars
really function like a slow introduction), and the absence of thematic content refuse to
explain themselves away and settle into a more typical texture. The first two subjects
of the fugue proper (‘a 3 Soggetti in Contrapunto doppio’) consist of little more than
an ascending then descending sequence of decorated 7-6 suspensions. The third
introduces a certain amount of contrary motion but, if anything, reinforces the
sequential nature of the subject. From this point until b.105 the subjects are almost
always presented together, as part of a single combination. There are no episodes to
speak of (the sequential tail of Haydn’s subject enables him to arrive at the key of his
next entry without introducing additional material). If the designation ‘in Contrapunto
doppio’ means anything (any normal fugal style is heavily dependent upon invertible
counterpoint) it probably refers to the way in which the main body of the fugue
depends so entirely on thematic permutation. This endless recycling of the same
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