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

As a texture it is not, perhaps, entirely satisfactory for other reasons as well. In
confining the music to two mid-range contrapuntal lines, the composer deliberately
refuses to avail himself of most of the resources of the piano (later nineteenth-century
canons—those of Schumann, for example—got around this problem by swathing the
canonic lines in a rich accompaniment). Canonic writing likewise refuses to cater to
normal contemporary assumptions about the polarity between melody and
accompaniment. Nevertheless, there is something strangely impressive about
Clementi’s resolute self-abegnation. There is a sense in which the canon in the slow
movement of op.50/1 explains itself, by means of the contrast with its surrounding
material, and most of the other canons in the late sonatas are likewise integrated into
their surroundings. Those in the Gradus, however, have a curiously disembodied
existence, lacking a context against which to define themselves. Like much of the
later music of Beethoven, they too eschew obvious ‘effect’, at times to the point of
being almost deliberately ‘ineffective’. Is there any sense in which we could regard
their withdrawnness, their aloofness as aesthetic qualities in its own right? Can we not
recast these qualities in terms of Simmel/Goethe’s description of the late artist having
‘stripped himself of his subjectivity—the gradual withdrawal from appearances.’ 109
Given the way in which the music of both composers can be described in
similar terms, it would be quite possible at this point to argue that the later sonatas of
Clementi are unjustly neglected peers of Beethoven’s. One can indeed prove nearly
anything with the Fluellin method of comparative analysis, 110 although any mischief
done by this sort of critical sharp practice is largely neutralised by the fact that in the
long run no one pays any attention—Beethoven remains Beethoven; Clementi,
109 Barone, ‘Parsifal’, 46. A sustained defence of Clementi’s canonic writing can be found in R.
Stewart-Macdonald, ‘Canonic passages in the later piano sonatas of Muzio Clementi: their structural
and expressive roles’, Ad Parnassum 1/1 (April 2003), 51-107.
110 ‘I warrant you sall finde in the comparisons betweene Macedon & Monmouth, that the situations
looke you, is both alike. There is a Riuer in Macedon, & there is also moreouer a Riuer at
Monmouth, it is call’d Wye at Monmouth: but it is out of my praines, what is the name of the other
Riuer: but ’tis all one, tis alike as my fingers is to my fingers, and there is Salmons in both.’ (Henry
V, IV.viii.24-30)—a method all too common in Clementi/Beethoven comparisons.
375