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

century fugal writing more satisfactorily. Ex.5.24 shows how Albrechtsberger
achieves a greater sense of flow by regularising Beethoven’s rather haphazard melodic
and harmonic rhythm, and how he sharpens the tonal focus by giving the passage a
clear major/minor orientation, with firmly cadential secondary dominants.
It is curious, then, that the distinguishing features of Beethoven’s ‘Heiliger
Dankgesang’ should involve a radical reversal of precisely these principles. The
counterpoint which (especially in the final section) looks so much like Baroque
motivic-work, obstinately refuses to shape itself into the clearly directional sequences
which form the backbone of this style. The progression from chord to chord is
likewise hesitant and equivocal, irregular in harmonic rhythm and often obscured by
delayed or irregular resolutions—a long way from the predictable fifth-related
movement of Ex.5.24b. The tonal orientation of this movement is similarly elusive.
In one sense it is almost purely diatonic, with hardly a single accidental to disturb the
course of any of the three molto adagio sections. But Beethoven’s choice of the
Lydian mode renders all of this ambiguous. It is profoundly disconcerting, with one’s
sense of hearing so conditioned by major/minor tonality, to discover that the chord we
have taken to be the subdominant is actually the tonic after all.
Once more it comes back to a question of creative authority. In 1794
Albrechtsberger was unquestionably more experienced at the business of academic
counterpoint than his young student. In the context of these studies—as Beethoven
readily acknowledged—any departures from the practice of his teacher had no
independent stylistic legitimacy, being simply deficiencies in reproducing a particular
style. But in 1825, after a lifetime’s experience handling unusual and original textures,
Beethoven was able to create a profound and arresting idiom out of the material of
these ‘deficiencies’.
Other factors corroborate the distance between the op.132 string quartet and the
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