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

Kurfürstensonaten (WoO 47); and in this case it is impossible to establish with
certainty which of these we are dealing with. The problem is analogous to that which
we met in our discussion of the Prelude and Fugue in F minor BWV 534 (pp.45-52),
where we saw how the fugue’s atypical form and the asperities of its counterpoint had
one meaning so long as the piece was assumed to be by J. S. Bach, quite another if it
was merely by an ambitious follower of his.
Even in Beethoven’s case, however, the desire to push the limits of musical
grammar was counterbalanced by an equally strong desire for a secure grounding in
orthodox counterpoint. He therefore travelled to Vienna in 1792 with the intention of
studying with Joseph Haydn. Hundreds of exercises survive from this course of
tuition, and yet it is still not quite clear what happened between the two. Three years
after Beethoven’s death Johann Schenk, a popular Viennese composer of Singspiel,
filled the gap with a convincing memoir of his own, speaking of Beethoven’s
dissatisfaction with Haydn as a teacher, and outlining a complicated ruse whereby
Schenk had supplemented Haydn’s tuition without making his involvement known. It
is all very plausible: Haydn was busy preparing for his second journey to London, and
he may well have been preoccupied—only a small proportion of these exercises have
been corrected. But it has recently been suggested that Schenk’s account was a
complete fabrication, or at least substantially inaccurate. 31 The surviving manuscripts
do not appear to bear out Schenk’s story.
Relations between Haydn and Beethoven appear to have been cordial at this
stage. Haydn was impressed with the progress of his student and in November 1793
wrote to the Elector in Bonn:
I am taking the liberty of sending to your Reverence . . . a few pieces of music—a quintet, an eight-
31 B. Cooper, Beethoven (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp.43-4. See also A. Mann,
‘Beethoven’s contrapuntal studies with Haydn’, Musical Quarterly 54/4 (October 1970), 711-26.
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