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

Note the extent to which Haydn’s subjects are all of different lengths, and enter at
different points; this is essential to avoid a block-like uniformity of texture, and helps
integrate the subject with the surrounding counterpoint. It will be seen that this
combination conveniently incorporates a descending sequence—indeed, bb.2-3 are
little more than a decorated series of 2-3 suspensions—and this proves useful when it
comes to building episodes.
The op.20 fugues, indeed, Classical fugues in general, have been criticised on
account of a tendency for the voices to cadence together, rather than showing real
independence. Although this highly valued ‘independence of voices’ is in a sense an
illusion (cf pp.70-1 above; real independence of voices is a much more alarming
affair), it is perhaps reasonable to expect that this illusion be a convincing one—as
reasonable to expect the cadences of a fugue to be subtle and elided as it is to expect
those of a Classical sonata movement to be clear and well-articulated.
In his Guidelines for style analysis Jan LaRue identifies this as a defect in
many Classical fugues or fugue-like passages: ‘here the coordination of articulations
approximately every two or four bars undermines the contrapuntal effect: ... the most
striking reason that fugal finales in the Classic period do not sound like Baroque
fugues may be traced to the overly frequent use of coordinated rather than overlapping
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