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

grise, it nevertheless exerts considerable influence upon the texture as a whole. Like
the famous ‘B-A-C-H’ motif it has a strong orientation toward the supertonic, and thus
it creates a constant low level of harmonic instability whenever it is present. This
plays as much of a unifying role as any overt thematic significance that it might have
(although, to be fair, the way in which Beethoven isolates the theme and presents it in
its naked form several times during the course of the piece makes this as clear as is
reasonably possible). Even for listeners today, however, this movement is hard work.
Stravinsky spoke of it as ‘the most absolutely contemporary piece of music I know,
and contemporary forever’ 129 —its difficulty arises not from a contradiction between
the work and the musical expectations of a particular age, but from tensions that lie
within the work itself. The fact that it remains so challenging to follow gives us at
least one valuable opportunity. Almost alone among Beethoven’s works this
movement enables us to hear with our own ears the sorts of almost overwhelming
difficulties his music created for many of the listeners of his time.
Warren Kirkendale has argued plausibly that, for all its apparent modernity,
op.133 is a compendium of the fugal devices to be found in Albrechtsberger’s
Anweisung: augmentation, diminution, abbreviation, sycopation, stretto, and—unique
to Albrechtsberger—‘Unterbrechung’; placing rests between the notes of a subject (as
can be seen in the first part of the Grosse Fuge). 130 The ‘Heiliger Dankgesang eines
Genesenen an die Gottheit, in der lydischen Tonart’ from op.132 recalls a different
aspect of his study with Albrechtsberger: the fugues he wrote upon chorale themes.
Excerpts from one of Beethoven’s chorale fugues, with Albrechtsberger’s
alterations, can be found in Alfred Mann’s The study of fugue. 131 By this stage
Beethoven’s harmony and counterpoint was sufficiently grammatical to require little in
129 Kirkendale, Fugue and fugato, p.257.
130 Kirkendale, Fugue and fugato, pp.261-264. Another example of this rare device can be seen,
curiously enough, in Ex.5.20.
131 (New York: Norton, 1965), pp.213-20; a translation of the chapter on chorale fugue from
Albrechtsberger’s Gründliche Anweisung follows on pp.221-27.
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