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

introducing fugal devices (stretto and inversion, appropriately docketed in Latin)
somewhat more consistently than was normally the case in actual Baroque fugal
writing.
Haydn’s Latinate superscriptions and the systematic working through ‘due
soggetti’, ‘tre soggetti’, and ‘IV soggetti’ remind one of some of J. S. Bach’s later
demonstrations of contrapuntal artifice: Die Kunst der Fuge, perhaps, or the ‘Von
Himmel hoch’ canonic variations. A parallel can indeed be drawn with Bach’s similar
determination to expand the scope of his style and demonstrate his mastery. Whether
at this stage Haydn knew anything of J. S. Bach or not (it seems very unlikely), there
can be little doubt that here he was demonstrating to any doubters that he could write a
rigorous, orthodox fugue as well as anyone. 33
The subject of the first fugue, in C major (finale, op.20/2) has a number of
points of interest. Its ornamental chromatic descent (G-F#-F-E) is one of the very few
recognisably classical fingerprints to be found in these fugues, sounding more like
Mozart than Bach or Fux. The answer is also worthy of note; at first it appears to be
heading in a subdominant direction, as those of Scheidemann and Buxtehude
sometimes did in the seventeenth century (not to mention BWV 565, discussed p.52-
8). Soon it veers toward the dominant, as an orthodox tonal answer—hardly
remarkable, perhaps, but in an age where composers were often content to repeat their
fugal subjects verbatim in the dominant Haydn’s mastery of answer technique is worth
mentioning. 34
The subject may be light-hearted, but Haydn is thoroughly in earnest when he
sets to work developing the material. His essential combination (the ‘IV soggetti’) are
as follows, although they never appear together in precisely this manner (Ex.3.12):
33 The direct influence of J. S. Bach upon Haydn’s op.20 has been advanced in A. Gürsching, ‘Johann
Sebastian Bach: 1747-1826—Anmerkungen zu Zeit, Stilwandel, Kompositionstechnik und
Wirkung’, Musica 50/1 (Jan-Feb 1996), 9-19; but the works of Bach Haydn possessed at his death
were all nineteenth-century editions.
34 Kirkendale, Fugue and fugato, pp.63-64.
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