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

crisis [Lebenskrise] from which, in the end, only death could provide release?’
Gerhardt’s answer is bound up in Mozart’s ambivalent attitude towards fugue
and counterpoint: ‘Die Fuge—ein Trauma.’ We have already seen something of this,
perhaps, in the fragments of the early 1780s; Gerhardt traces it back further, to the
1770 visit to Bologna and Mozart’s application to join the Accademia Filarmonica.
This is the traditional account, as told by Eric Blom: ‘The Accademia then decided that
Wolfgang should be elected a member, and although that honour was by statute
reserved for composers over the age of twenty, it was agreed to make an exception in
the case of this boy of genius, provided that he took the usual very stiff examination
satisfactorily. ... He solved a task of the most hair-raising difficulty in a surprisingly
short time and was unanimously elected.’ 79 What Blom does not relate (and may not
have known) is that Martini critiqued Mozart’s attempt in the most devastating way
possible: by writing a greatly improved version of his own. 80 It has even been
suggested that this was the piece that was submitted for Mozart; did Martini help him
‘cheat’? Or was the first version accepted ‘with regard for the circumstances’ 81 and
Martini’s rewrite produced later for Mozart’s pedagogical benefit? In either case, it is
clear that Mozart’s apparently miraculous musical facility had for the first time met
with a significant check (was the G minor fugue K.401/375e a belated response to this
challenge?) Although Gerhardt may be overstating a little when he speaks of ‘these
traumatic experiences’, there may be a connection between Bologna in 1770 and both
his determination to come to grips with the style of Bach and Handel, and his curious
inability to finish the pieces conceived under their influence. In particular Gerhardt
sees the C minor mass as weighed down with an impossibly heavy load of
associations: ‘the marriage to Constanze without his father’s consent, a belated attempt
at reconciliation with his father, an unfulfilled promise, and finally the last visit to his
79 Blom, Mozart, p.55.
80 Discussed in Mann, Study of fugue, pp.264-68.
81 Gerhardt, ‘Nicht Gift’, 10.
306