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

musical interest. None of Clementi’s are as musically barren as most of Czerny’s, say,
and many are well worth playing for their own sake. The general style of these pieces
is heavily indebted to the preludes of the WTC: no.93 shows a distinct kinship with the
A flat major prelude from book II; no.96, with the C minor prelude from the same
book. This does not mean that style is in any way archaic; this texture is the most
forward-looking of the whole collection, but it would not have been possible without
the example of J. S. Bach.
A movement such as no.58 is therefore difficult to categorise. It is in sonata
form, and would have made a perfectly good finale to one of Clementi’s mature
sonatas. On the other hand its rhythm is more continuous than is normal in a sonata
movement, and it is clearly a technical study working out the possibilities of a
particular turn figure. Yet again, as an exercise in hand-crossing it must, almost
necessarily, be also an exercise in invertible counterpoint—and even apart from this
the concentration of imitation and canon is very high. In short, Clementi refuses to
segregate the musical from the technical (considered either in terms of manual or
contrapuntal dexterity). In this respect at least he is following the spirit of J. S. Bach.
There are eleven fugues or fugatos in the Gradus ad Parnassum, and eight
canons. This concentration of fugal writing in the Gradus gives a slightly misleading
impression of its significance in Clementi’s output as a whole. As we have already
noted—in contrast to Beethoven’s later practice—no independent fugues are to be
found in the sonatas. Clementi’s entire fugal output is contained in the Gradus, and of
these eleven, seven were already in existence by 1781—inspired, we have suggested,
by an awareness of J. S. Bach’s music which may have begun around this time. These
were published in that year, three each in opp.5 and 6 and one in op.1bis, and they
stand out sharply against his style at the time: ‘They are (so to speak) too Baroque. In
his zeal for polyphonic integrity, Clementi keeps all the voices going too much of the
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