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

(b.7), alto in A (real answer starting upon E, incomplete) in b.9, bass likewise in A
(b.11), and so it continues. The body of the movement, however, is on the whole a
faithful and concentrated treatment of its subject matter. It would be too much to
expect such a long and diverse subject to maintain its integrity throughout (I count
only three more-or-less complete entries). But its constituent elements are worked in a
genuinely contrapuntal manner, such as one might find in the body of any respectable
fugue (more so than in many). This kind of imitation is very different from the
developmental reinterpretation cited in the Zauberflöte overture. Likewise, the
occasional unison or homophonic passages do not undermine the fugal character of the
whole in the way that Mozart’s do. Should it ‘count,’ then, as a fugue? It is at least a
border-line case in a way that the Zauberflöte overture probably is not. Whatever
conclusion one arrives at, the answer is perhaps less important than the question.
Cases such as these show that there is no self-evident boundary to the field; and it is
far from my intention to erect one.
At times this enquiry will tend to ‘leak’ into adjacent areas of interest. Most
obviously related is the canon, a texture of even greater antiquity and equal durability
—like fugue, it was to show a slight resurgence in the nineteenth century. On the
whole, canon gets very little attention in this study. The reason for this is that, for all
its apparent similarity, its function as a genre was usually quite different. Apart from
very occasional appearances in an instrumental context, the vast majority were catches
or vocal canons, a genre unto itself which I have no space to explore. The one
important exception to this occurs in Chapter 5, where the canons of Muzio Clementi
make an interesting comparison with Beethoven’s late contrapuntal writing.
Another area that invites digression is the Protestant chorale prelude and its
influence upon music outside that tradition. Fux’s treatment of cantus firmus
techniques (Gradus ad Parnassum, 1725) is completely grounded in the southern
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