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

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Sometimes, it is just noise, in the obvious sense: one thinks of the ‘Schreckensfanfare’ at the start of the finale to his ninth symphony, or his obsession with sustained trills. There’s an irony here in that traditionally, in both Classical and Baroque styles, trills were used to emphasise tonal function by making the important cadences even more self-evident. Here, however, when the texture reaches a certain level of saturation, they become the harmonic equivalent of white noise (Ex.5.9)— notice how this point of maximum acoustic chaos is succeeded by a passage of absolute clarity. But not all this noise is ‘noisy’. Consider the following passage for example— apparently one of the purest and most straightforward in his entire oeuvre (Ex.5.10). But the voicing of the texture, with its wide separation of the hands and closely spaced chords near the bottom of the keyboard, is anything but Classical, introducing an element of resistance into this most pellucid of themes: At other times it is a sort of information overload which creates the noise. Ex.5.11 is, of course, from the movement which even his greatest admirers found hard to take. It is a fugue—exceptionally logical, considered from a linear point of view. But each line appears to be elbowing the other for space, as they cross and recross each 350
other, the subject enveloped by its much more assertive countersubject, the metre rendered ambiguous by the subject’s confinement to weak beats and the harmonic rhythm’s lack of clarity. This contrapuntal jostling is preserved literally in Beethoven’s piano duet version op.134—he rejected Anton Halm’s arrangement because it ‘divided the parts too much between prim and second’ 79 and made his own where the players’ hands follow the contrapuntal lines to their logical conclusion, at the cost of considerable physical inconvenience. 79 Thayer-Forbes, Beethoven, p.975. 351
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WRESTLING WITH THE GERMAN DEVIL: FI
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ABSTRACT ‘After’ can be taken b
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS There are many peo
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INTRODUCTION ‘Every hearer enjoys
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esponse was: ‘the fugue is no lon
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instrumental fugues of Joseph Haydn
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world of their own. The study concl
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facts and the ‘soft technology’
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DEFINING FUGUE But what are they? W
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elow). For how many voices or parts
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indeed a complete counter-expositio
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on two pitches throughout, tonic an
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already become the historicising na
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Catholic tradition, but Albrechtsbe
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the texture as a whole coincides in
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kind experimentalism of Samuel Wesl
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The clearest sign of things to come
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Perhaps a clue can be found in the
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CHAPTER 1 THE CIRCLE OF J. S. BACH
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FINE DISTINCTIONS (1): MISATTRIBUTE
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sounding object, nothing has change
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Mendelssohn, Schumann, Spitta, Wido
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pieces are known from a single copy
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very good; and the ends of both mov
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ever, could have written it?’ 23
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incorrectly prepared suspended four
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has a number of doubtful features.
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einforces them. Its texture is impo
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of thinking over long spans.’ 44
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W. F. Bach and Krebs have always en
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the equitable distribution of his e
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slender volumes, including many pie
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In style (there is no particular th
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and it is the least comfortable bit
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voices inverted, and serve the purp
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each line in a polyphonic texture a
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If its general type is old, however
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thematic material. The subject coul
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Karl Geiringer makes an almost emba
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prolix F minor fugue, the expressiv
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Kittel, and Krebs himself. 76 Inevi
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[that] a keyboard composer can and
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Ex.1.12b shows the start of a fugue
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Egypt) did not prevent him from bei
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The very slow harmonic rhythm, howe
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If not inimitably characteristic, t
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As we saw in the first part of this
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subject is also expansive; it too c
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to expand and elaborate the surface
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The significance of this sort of st
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By the time the halfway point is re
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‘originality’—of historical p
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to follow in his father’s footste
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CHAPTER 2 J. S. BACH IN LONDON: CON
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of the mark. 4 Handel’s influence
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that would perpetuate his oratorios
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—also remained strongly Handelian
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118
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in the Overture to Alcina (1735). A
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Root-movement is quite unpredictabl
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124
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Superficially they have much in com
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situations; but his influence outla
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130
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ounded too closely by early Methodi
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At first the real focus of attentio
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surprisingly grammatical, confirmin
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138
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the subject (where again he seems n
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in Bath) recommended that Charles
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have, to a head-injury sustained in
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146
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The ending is rather curious: he re
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hectic week, he could choose betwee
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152
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even have had an informal agreement
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Unlike Handel, however, there no tu
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Throughout the nineteenth century t
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Here, however (especially once the
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162
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published separately over the next
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166
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Likewise does the fugue subject of
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A little more Bach can be seen, per
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attitudes were representative, or e
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consciously parodying his Methodist
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his nature to be exclusive about an
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elieve) in German, the compleatly w
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no other way one could hear operas,
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a stretto treatment (at one minim
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have had a rich Treat in chewing th
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admirable Musick might be played in
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At this point one might have expect
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This is soon accompanied by quaver
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The C minor entry in b.50 destabili
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WESLEY’S LAST YEARS During this p
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Wilhelm Friedemann (see chapter 1).
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describes it well: ‘The concertan
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with sixteen-part orchestra’ (Car
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would be of interest to a budding c
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wrestling with the problem of integ
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Clearly, Haydn is letting fugal thi
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By contrast, the fugue which closes
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unknown in any other Haydn fugue (a
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around b.54, homophonic quaver figu
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very little to it, which is of cour
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When Haydn wrote string quartets, t
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place, socially and musically; and
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of the minuet, both here and in man
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The distinction that Kirkendale dre
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variety of keys as well: not just I
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detail. As far as the tastes of Pri
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constructed in an entirely new mann
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Note the extent to which Haydn’s
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A clear example of this can be seen
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Haydn would write only one more fug
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At any rate, the effect of later ei
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appears not wholly to satisfy Kirke
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Junker and others were neither part
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sentimental’ (c.1814?), Haydn’s
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intensity of the debate? This is ho
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is an almost perfect instrument for
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CHAPTER 4 MOZART, FINISHED AND UNFI
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as such—at times even creating th
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thought and practice until very rec
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sonata movement sets up certain exp
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organ music: from the death of J. S
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(to us) the direct influence of J.
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and back without a sign that anythi
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is not necessarily at variance with
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conclusion is not perfectly in acco
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there can be no doubt that Mozart,
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to enclose your letter to me?’ 35
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The Dean was in a state of great ex
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‘passive’ voices; Ex.4.5 shows
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274
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276
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against itself, augmented and inver
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Andante also found favour, but part
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enewed application to this task. Wh
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for a child of twelve. The subject
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These masses mark the two poles of
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After this exposition the cadential
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is a much less dramatic tale, of ca
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happened, on October 26 1783 at Ben
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the voices. There is a single expos
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ascending, descending (or both), st
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298
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Page 314 and 315: This ethical approach to music, so
Page 316 and 317: Like Mozart, Beethoven was a great
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Page 320 and 321: It is, in part, a question of autho
Page 322 and 323: voice ‘Parthie’, an oboe concer
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Page 326 and 327: which had such a similar subject (E
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Page 330 and 331: his early life is there a single re
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Page 334 and 335: On the other hand, whilst there is
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Page 338 and 339: To thus posit ‘lateness’ about
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Page 342 and 343: These critics were not necessarily
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Page 358 and 359: His opp.1bis, 5, and 6, however, (p
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Page 362 and 363: nineteenth century—the style of H
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Page 366 and 367: movement. There is no danger of irr
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Page 370 and 371: On the other hand, the tonal range
Page 372 and 373: It is with some surprise that we he
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Page 380 and 381: None of these, in any case, remotel
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Page 392 and 393: CONCLUSION ‘Like most other disci
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Page 396 and 397: were written for the organ. 7 While
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practice is less concerned with the
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Baroque, but did so subtly, without
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periodicity and its fluctuating ton
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eauty with ‘an excess of art.’
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(op.35/1) is a model of textural co
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410
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inhospitable to fugue.’ 30 To the
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W. F. Bach, Fugue in F minor BRA 88
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Exx.2.11-13 S. Wesley, ‘4 Fugues
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Chapter 4 Mozart, finished and unfi
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ed. Joseph Joachim and Andreas Mose
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BIBLIOGRAPHY [anon.] ‘The organ r
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Beethoven, Ludwig van, The letters
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Brown, Clive, ‘Perspectives on Be
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______ Beethoven (Oxford: Oxford Un
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zu Köln 1998, 315-321. ______ and
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Fisk, Josiah, ‘Classical music an
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______ ‘The “Grosse Fuge”: an
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1967). Horowitz, Joseph, ‘Mozart
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______ Fugue and fugato in Rococo a
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und ihrer frühen Rezeption’, Arc
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(1991). MacArdle, Donald W., ‘Bee
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contrappunto sopra il canto fermo (
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Nicolosi, Robert, T. S. Eliot and m
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______ Double counterpoint and cano
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Routh, Francis, Early English organ
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Schwarz, John I. jr, ‘Samuel and
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______ ‘Beethoven’s ninth symph
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Record, 90 (1960), 163-74. ______
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and Baroque’, Church, stage, and
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Winter, Robert S., ‘Of realizatio
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