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

At any rate, the effect of later eighteenth-century norms of phrasing and texture
are present here in only the most attenuated fashion. Haydn’s rather four-square
expositions probably result from a deliberate aesthetic choice to present his material in
the clearest manner possible; certainly the independent voice-leading and obscuring of
cadences as the fugues proceed is very difficult to distinguish from actual Baroque
practice. The one criticism that could be made concerns the way Haydn relies perhaps
excessively on descending sequences to build his episodes (partly a consequence of
sequential subjects in the cases of op.20/2 and 6). Nevertheless, both as effective,
integrated movements in their own right, and as solutions to Haydn’s ‘last movement’
problem, these fugues succeed admirably.
The problem comes when we try to situate them in the context of Haydn’s
oeuvre as a whole. Alan Walker was perhaps the first musical critic to openly admit
that the identity of the composer might legitimately affect our aesthetic response to a
given piece of music. 39 Just as the same utterance can have a different significance in
different contexts, our understanding of a given work is shaped not just by its own
internal relationships, but by its relation to the composer’s musical language and
stylistic development as a whole. What, then, is the significance of the string quartet
fugues in the story of Haydn’s musical growth? It is hard not to see these fugues as
‘foreign bodies’ in Haydn’s output. They are quite different in manner from all his
other chamber music, being if anything determinedly antithetical to his usual style.
Three of them are concentrated in a single opus—then after a further isolated example
in op.50 he seems not to have repeated the experiment.
There are three possible ways of approaching this enigma. The first, as
advanced by Kirkendale’s Fugue and Fugato in Rococo and Classical Chamber Music
(indeed, it almost seems to have been one of his primary motivations for writing the
book), is to deny that the existence of these works—given a sufficient understanding
39 An anatomy of musical criticism (London : Barrie and Rockliff, 1966).
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