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

there can be no doubt that Mozart, had he been spared to us, would have succeeded;
Joseph Haydn stands actually at the goal.’ 29 Without this understanding of the
interrelation between past and present, the musical canon as we know it could not have
come into existence. As Edward Olleson points out ‘One could scarcely quarrel with
his choice: of composers of the past, Sebastian Bach and Handel; and of those of his
own time, Gluck, Emanuel Bach, Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven.’ 30 The remarkable
selectivity of his patronage demonstrates an ability to ‘pick winners’ far in advance of
any other critic of the time.
There is no reason to suppose that Constanze and the Baron ever met.
Nevertheless, if Mozart’s account is to be believed, it would seem that she had as
much to do with the fugal works of this period as van Swieten:
My dear Constanze is really the cause of this fugue’s coming into the world. Baron van Swieten, to
whom I go every Sunday, gave me all the works of Handel and Sebastian Bach to take home with me
(after I had played them to him). When Constanze heard the fugues, she absolutely fell in love with
them. Now she will listen to nothing but fugues, and particularly (in this kind of composition) the
works of Handel and Bach. Well, as she had often heard me play fugues out of my head, she asked
me if I had ever written any down, and when I said I had not, she scolded me roundly for not
recording some of my compositions in this most artistic and beautiful of all musical forms, and never
ceased to entreat me until I wrote down a fugue for her. So this is its origin. ... In time, and when I
have a favourable opportunity, I intend to compose five more and then present them to Baron van
Swieten... 31
The fugue in question was the C major fugue (with fantasia), K.394/383a; its fellows
were never completed.
How much of a musician was Constanze? A musical year-book published in
29 Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung I, p.252, quoted in Jahn, Mozart, III, p.384.
30 Olleson, ‘Van Swieten’, 73.
31 Letter to his sister, 20 April 1782, The letters of Mozart and his family, tr. and ed. Emily Anderson,
3 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1938), vol. III, p.1194.
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