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

His opp.1bis, 5, and 6, however, (published during his stay in Paris, 1780-81) between
them contain no fewer than seven emphatically Bachian fugues, and this influence can
be detected in a new harmonic intensity and involvement, seen even in some of the
accompanied sonatas (usually of the lightest and flimsiest nature). Is there a
possibility that Clementi first happened upon the WTC in Paris? This would seem to
be almost as unlikely as that of encountering it in rural Dorset. Most likely, perhaps,
he acquired the ‘London autograph’ in London, during the period after leaving
Beckford’s employment, perhaps in 1779 or 1780, on the eve of his departure for the
continent. At any rate it is hard to over-estimate the impression it made upon his
music at this time, causing him to load his Paris publications with what one assumes to
have been commercially indigestible fugal writing.
He would publish no more fugues until near the end of his career, but
continued increasingly to integrate contrapuntal writing into his music. The Sonata in
G minor op.34/2 (1795), for example, begins with a very striking fugato (Ex.5.12).
For the first five bars it is in fact a canon at the seventh below (‘tonal’ rather than
‘real’)—the harmonic richness suggest more than the two voices which are actually
present. The melodic outline of the first five bars of the introduction provide the
material for the first phrase of the Allegro. The theme then goes its own way, but this
is not the end of the introduction’s relevance to the movement as a whole. The
original, perhaps, of Beethoven’s ‘fate knocking at the door’ motif, 95 Clementi’s
assertive triple upbeat is present, implicitly or explicitly, in every phase of the
movement—this is monothematicism at its most concentrated.
95 See p.84. For what it’s worth, Beethoven’s C minor symphony dates from 1807; Clementi’s sonata
from 1795. Connections have also been made with the subject of the D major fugue from WTC II,
but this seems to me to be a less significant relationship as the defining feature of Bach’s subject is
its descent from I to IV, rather than V to I as here.
358