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

Clementi’s impressive control of the texture is shown in the perfectly graduated
crescendo of rhythmical activity and pianistic density between bb.122 and 147.
Canon and imitative writing had been a part of Clementi’s style for decades,
chiefly for technical reasons—parsimonious both in his life and in his music, he
naturally sought to get the most out of his thematic material. Here, however, Clementi
sees the poetic as well as the structural possibilities of counterpoint. The episode is
distanced from the rest of the movement; by the articulated cadence and pause at each
end, by the sudden change of texture, register, and rhythmic activity, and—equally
important—by the semitonal shift from the dominant of E minor to C major (it is an
interesting experiment in tonal relationships to try beginning the fugato in a variety of
different keys—there are only twelve possibilities, after all.) C major (VI) has the
coherence of a clear relation to the previous key, but also a sense of great emotional
distance. Published in 1802, this is perhaps one of the first examples to be found in
music of the poetry of archaism, a very early awareness of the Romantic possibilities
of the past.
Equally historicist in character is the slow movement of his Sonata in A,
op.50/1 (1822), perhaps the outstanding example of Clementi’s use of canon in a
sonata context. The movement has a ternary plan. In the outer sections, ‘Adagio
sostenuto e patetico’ Plantinga finds a foretaste of César Franck, 98 but there is also a
certain kinship with the Sarabande of the A minor ‘English’ suite, or perhaps that of
the D minor ‘French’ suite; Philip Radcliffe may equally be right in finding a
connection with the sarabande-like slow movement of Haydn’s D major sonata
Hob.XVI:37. 99 The canonic episode, in two slender voices, andante rather than adagio,
major rather than minor, forms a perfect foil to the weighty pathos of the rest of the
98 Plantinga, Clementi, p.262; even more ‘Franckian’ is the Introduzione to Gradus ad Parnassum
no.45.
99 New Oxford history of music, 10 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), vol. VIII: The Age
of Beethoven, 1790-1830, p.330.
365