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

the voices. There is a single exposition—four entries—of this combination, a brief
continuation, and then a clear imperfect cadence on the dominant reminds us this is not
a fugue per se, but part of a larger structure. A ‘second subject’ follows in this key:
the opening ritornello ‘accompanied’ by the choir, homophonically this time, and thus
the first part of the movement concludes. There follows, not a development, but a
quite new ‘B’ section. Constanze (one imagines) takes centre stage with a meltingly
beautiful cantilena, to which the chorus replies in hushed tones. Thematically, tonally,
texturally, and stylistically, it has nothing whatsoever in common with the first part of
the movement. While the other movements tend to present one aspect of Mozart’s
liturgical style at a time, in the Kyrie he sets out to demonstrate the breadth of his
stylistic and expressive range all at once. The ‘Christe’ is tonally stable throughout,
with hardly a suggestion of modulation, and it duly cadences on E flat in b.71. At this
point the fugal texture recommences; a distinctively Baroque stylistic element is the
way that the thematic recapitulation and the return to the tonic do not occur together
(cf, for example, b.175 of the ‘St Anne’ prelude BWV 552). 68 The fugal exposition
then moves from E flat back to C minor in preparation for a return of the ‘second
subject’ in b.86 which, with its cadence slightly extended, brings the Kyrie to a close.
If the Kyrie is marked by unexpected concentration of fugal writing, the same
is true of the rest of the mass too. Far from restricting fugue to the close of the Gloria
and the Credo, Mozart introduces it on many other occasion: for ‘in excelsis’,
‘quoniam’, ‘cum Sancto Spiritu’ (all from the Gloria), and the ‘Osanna’ (Sanctus).
Non-fugal imitation can be found at the ‘et in terra’, ‘Domine Deus’ (Gloria), ‘et
invisibilium’, ‘ante omnia’, ‘per quem omnia’ (Credo), and the Benedictus. It should
68 This is not to deny the existence of ‘false’ or ‘premature’ recapitulations in contemporary practice;
but the expectation that tonal and thematic arrivals should coincide was such a basic formal
assumption that dissociation of the two has a ‘point’ and significance in the context of sonata style
that it lacks in Bach’s music and in the style Mozart has adopted here. Leon Plantinga has suggested
in relation to Muzio Clementi that this may have been a specifically Viennese attitude; see Clementi:
his life and music, (London: Oxford University Press, 1977), pp.77-78.
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