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

Perhaps a clue can be found in the movement excerpted in Ex.0.5. It, too, is a
fugue—accompanied, in that there are no entries in the bass part, but a fugue all the
same. In the treble voices we have five entries in total, on I, V, ii, IV, and I, separated
by episodes developing similar material, with a reasonable amount of (fairly
elementary) imitation. For all this, however, it still does not sound very much like a
fugue. The rather pretty, repetitive subject does not make sense only in the context of
its fugal exposition; it is a complete statement in itself—a tune with accompaniment,
in fact, and there is nothing about it to suggest that it needs to be answered at the
fifth. 38 When this answer does appear, it is with the air of doing so for the sake of
appearances, of urbanely maintaining a rather old-fashioned convention—not because
it is imperatively demanded by the musical context (as with the expositions quoted in
Exx.0.1-3). 39
Although he was four years older than J. S. Bach, a subtle change had taken
38 Unlike a typical fugue subject, it will also not function as a bass.
39 One is reminded of Johann Quantz’s injunction: ‘The opening subject ... must not be too long, since
it can easily become tedious when repeated at the fifth, fourth, or unison by the second part.’
Versuch einer Anweisung die Flöte traversiere zu spielen, tr. E. R. Reilly as On playing the flute
(London: Faber, 1966), p.327.
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