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

It is with some surprise that we hear the texture suddenly resolve itself into a
clear Ic – V – I cadence such as one might find in any of his sonatas, all without any
loss of thematic relevance for even a moment. This cadence on the dominant is
answered by a similar one in the tonic later on; this and a strongly articulated dominant
seventh chord in b.57-60 create a welcome sense of structural orientation and prevent
us from feeling totally adrift upon a sea of continuous development. Much of the
figuration is dissonant even by Clementi’s standards—bb.123-39 especially—and the
persistent semitone ostinato near the end has an unnerving quality not unlike the
obsessive trills of late Beethoven. It may have been this structural and textural
originality which prevented Clementi from describing the piece as a fugue without
further qualification.
If his fugues have earned a certain amount of qualified esteem, Clementi’s
canons have had a much harder critical reception. To be sure, Nägeli spoke of ‘elegant
two-voice canons that pleasantly recall the period of the strict style,’ 103 but this appears
to have remained a minority opinion. They ‘elicit more admiration than pleasure’ 104
according to Nicholas Temperley; in Leon Plantinga’s view they ‘remained for
Clementi an Achilles heel. Throughout his late period he wrote them compulsively;
they always sound “academic”, and usually they are downright tiresome.’ 105 Plantinga
is admirably precise in analysing just why he finds Clementi’s canonic writing so
unsatisfactory: ‘A consistent problem with these pieces is their unfulfilled harmonic
ambitions; single voices effect or imply modulations that simply do not work out very
well in combination with the other voice(s). The result is an unclear harmonic syntax
—a kind of lurching and sliding from one indeterminate tonality to the next.’ 106
Presumably the sort of thing he is talking about can be seen in Ex.15.21. What,
103 Ibid., p.301
104 Temperley, Introduction, p.xvii
105 Plantinga, Clementi, p.274
106 Ibid., p.274
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