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

him to leave Esterháza while his prince was alive (as we know, once prince Nicholas
died it was a different story); and with all the petty irritations and the overwork, he
seems to have been genuinely fond of his employer. Nevertheless, with his growing
fame as the composer of music admired all over Europe, did he never feel a pang of
regret for the music he was forced to lock away in the obscurity of his baryton trios,
and the precious time he had to spend writing them?
In general these trios are more conservative than the symphonies and string
quartets of the same period; mild and equable rather than brilliant and challenging.
Apart from the trios of the minuets, almost all of them are in major keys. Landon has
pointed out the higher concentration of old-fashioned sonata da chiesa structures here
than in any other group of works (by which he presumably means the fact that many
begin with a complete slow movement—the vast majority have only three
movements). Although an easy-going galant style predominates, a fair number of
fugues can also be found among these trios; again, more than in any other single
grouping of his works. In Fugue and fugato in Rococo and Classical chamber music,
Kirkendale distinguishes between fugue proper (through-composed) and what he calls
fugato: binary forms, with or without repeats, in which each section begins with a
fugal exposition. 24 All told there are three of the former and nine of the latter; so
nearly ten percent of the trios contain a fugal movement. All are finales, and all are in
an unmistakably Fuxian style. Susan Wollenberg has identified examples of his
influence in the trios; mostly, but not entirely, in the fugues. Such include long note
‘canti firmi’ (often scalar), recurring patterns of suspensions (fourth species),
counterpoint at the tenth, and of course fugal imitation. 25
For some reason a locus classicus for long-note scalar passages was in the trio
24 2nd ed. (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1979), pp.79-88. This differs from the usual rather
vague meaning of this term (it normally describes a passage which resembles a fugal exposition in
some way but is not sustained), but Kirkendale’s distinction is a useful one.
25 ‘Haydn’s baryton trios and the “Gradus”’, Music & Letters 54/2 (April 1973), 170-78.
219