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

intensity of the debate?
This is how Tovey put it: ‘With op.20 the historical development of Haydn’s
quartets reaches its goal; and further progress is not progress in any historical sense,
but simply the difference between one masterpiece and the next.’ 53 The essential point
here is not which particular opus is ‘the one’ (substitute ‘op.33’, or ‘op.50’, if you
prefer), but rather that, at a particular moment, Haydn’s oeuvre was hoisted out of
contingent musical history into a transcendent realm of permanent canonical relevance.
This is why the history of Haydn’s stylistic development (and the difficulty of
integrating the op.20 fugues) is such a crucial issue: the development of the string
quartet in Haydn’s hands serves as a synecdoche for the development of the Classical
style in toto.
Part of the problem here is that Haydn’s mature style is a specifically Classical
style. Its very existence as such depends upon the perfect integration and coordination
of all its constituent elements. The Baroque style developed by means of enrichment,
through both melodic elaboration and textural complexity. Bach was able to extend his
forms as long as he was able to generate sufficiently interesting permutations of his
material (indeed, one might say considerably beyond that point in a few of his earlier
works). As a consequence, Baroque forms are not ‘sensitive’ in the way that Classical
forms are. The addition of a few bars here and there—even quite a few bars—in an
existing movement (as Bach often did when revising his own and others’ music) will
not unbalance the structure. 54 The continuous, prose-like forms of Baroque music,
both fugal technique and Fortspinnung, tend to focus the listener’s attention upon the
richness or brilliance of the immediate present. By contrast, the transparent simplicity
53 ‘Haydn’s chamber music’, in Essays and lectures on music (London: Oxford University Press,
1949), p.49; originally the ‘Haydn’ article in Cobbett’s Cyclopedic Survey of Chamber Music
(London: Oxford, 1930). Where Landon reproduces this comment in his Chronicle and works, II,
p.325, the copy from which I have been working (in the Wellington Public Library) has this note
pencilled into the margin: ‘Quote! (and then prove wrong!)’ And so the debate continues...
54 See for example the little fughetta in F (BWV 901) that was later to become WTC II in A flat, or the
different versions of the Fantasia super Komm heiliger Geist BWV 651 and 651a (from the
‘Eighteen’).
244