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

BEETHOVEN AGAIN
In their sonatas the chief difference between Clementi’s and Beethoven’s use of
counterpoint is that, where Clementi employs canon, Beethoven tends to use fugue.
Nowhere in Clementi’s output do we find a fugue as part of a sonata—even fugatos are
rare (the fugues of the Gradus belong to loose, suite-like collections of movements,
while those in opp.5-6 have no connection with the sonatas they abut). The inclusion
of a fugue in a sonata seems to have been relatively rare throughout this period. Haydn
and Mozart completely eschewed fugal movements in their sonatas, although, in
Mozart especially, contrapuntal textures are not infrequent. Most English examples (J.
C. Bach’s op.5/6, Philip Cogan’s op.2/6) follow in the tradition of T. A. Arne and
James Nares, itself a reflection of Handel’s practice in his 1720 suites. Occasional
Italian and Viennese examples (Monn, Wagenseil, Galuppi, Rutini) are likewise
throwbacks to local contrapuntal traditions. Among later composers, the most
ambitious and imaginative contributions examples seem to have come from England.
Samuel Wesley’s ‘Sonata with a Fugue’ (pp.186-93 above) is a highly personal,
idiosyncratic response to the music of J. S. Bach. Frederick Pinto’s ‘Fantasia and
Sonata in C minor’ (completed by Wölfl, edited by Wesley) extends the
fantasia/sonata pairing of Mozart’s K.475 and 457 in a recognised direction,
concluding the fantasia with a well above average fugue. George Augustus
Kollmann’s Sonata in A flat, op.1/3 (1808) is a curious anticipation of Beethoven’s
later practice, grafting a fugal conclusion onto an exceptionally convincing imitation of
his ‘middle period’. 121 The fugue, however, although well enough executed, serves
merely to prolong the design rather than to bring it to a structural culmination.
121 Unexpectedly Kollmann’s impressive sonatas appear to have escaped William S. Newman’s
comprehensive net, receiving mention neither in The sonata in the Classic era nor The sonata since
Beethoven. The only information to be found occurs in the volume Samuel Wesley and
contemporaries of Nicholas Temperley’s series The London pianoforte school (New York: Garland,
1985), which includes this sonata and a set of variations by Kollmann.
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