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

fugues cannot be counted among the more successful numbers. The subjects are often
reasonably promising, but the texture is too unrelievedly thick, and the counterpoint
too unrelenting; they are mostly very difficult to play, and ultimately rather
unrewarding. 24 Nevertheless, they are examples of strict fugal writing that might have
served as models for Mozart.
Another possible model could be sought, much closer to home, in the nine
Toccate e fughe of Johann Ernst Eberlin (1702-1762). A contemporary of Leopold
Mozart in Salzburg, Kapellmeister to Count Sigismund Schrattenbach, his output
consisted chiefly of church music (seventy masses!), mostly in a very competent late-
Baroque style. It is no great surprise that a fugue of his should have once been
attributed to J. S. Bach (BWV Anh.208). 25 Several pieces once thought to have been
written by Mozart have turned out to be copies of Eberlin works; dozens of Eberlin
movements survive in Mozart’s handwriting. Some of Eberlin’s fugues show the
rather archaic bipartite arrangement that can also be seen in K.401/375e. Eberlin’s
regard for the integrity of his voices is nearly as strict as Mozart’s; and there is yet
another, more distinctive kinship between the two composers.
Mozart’s fugue differs from normal Baroque practice in one important respect:
in its tonal range. Entries can be found not just in the usual keys (i, v, iv, III, VI), but
also F minor (b.24), E minor (b.40), and A flat major (b.65)—unusual choices for a
fugue in G minor. Other keys touched upon include B flat minor (b.67) and A minor
(b.75). Mozart does not exploit these distant keys to disrupt the fugal texture, as
Samuel Wesley did in the ‘Salomon’ fugue discussed on pages 162-68, where frequent
sonata-like tonal juxtapositions occur. A closer parallel is Haydn’s F minor quartet
fugue, op.20/5 (pp.233-4) where a cycle of fifths takes him as far afield as A flat minor
24 To be sure, much of Bach’s fugal writing could hardly be said to lie naturally under the fingers; but
he had a much sounder instinct for variety in texture and tessitura than Martini.
25 The ninth fugue of his IX toccate e fughe (Augsburg, 1747), transposed from E minor to E flat
minor; see A. E. F. Dickinson, ‘A Bach Fugue’, Musical Times 95/1339 (Sept 1954), 489.
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