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

Haydn may have been especially proud of the fugue in Trio no.101, dignifying
it as he does with the subtitle ‘Fuga a 3 soggetti in contrapunto doppio’. The subject
and first countersubject (Ex.3.10) show how far Fuxian counterpoint had been
divorced from its modal origins and locked into the tonal system, complete with
modulatory sequences and secondary dominants.
The answer is probably the most eccentric Haydn ever devised, converting the
descending sequence of the subject into an ascending one, perhaps in a misguided
attempt to generate a tonal answer. The only ‘correct’ answer is probably a real one
(Ex.3.11)—quite workable, as it happens—and certainly succeeding answers tend to
take this form. Not surprisingly, given the nature of the subject, the counterpoint is a
little more chromatic than the other baryton fugues, and entries occur in a greater
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