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

youthful exercise. Quite apart from the ‘Neue Kraft fühlend’ sections (which to my
ears also sound faintly archaic and neo-Baroque, with their descending bass-lines and
ornate melodic writing) one could point to several details: the careful dynamic
indications, the marks of expression and articulation, not to mention occasional double
stops. These, however, are much less significant than a number of factors which are
almost too fundamental to register in most analyses. Most obvious is the immense
slowness with which the movement proceeds—the sort of time scale we would tend to
associate with late Wagner, or even Messiaen. Also note Beethoven’s exploitation of
extremes of tessitura far beyond the vocal limits of his Albrechtsberger exercises; in
particular, the stratospheric pitch of the cantus firmus toward the end, as if it inhabits
another world altogether from the rest of the texture. A combination of these two
factors and the highly individuated sound of solo strings gives the timbre an intensity
and exaltation utterly different from any conceivable mental image Beethoven might
have had during his contrapuntal studies.
As much as the more obviously ‘adversarial’ fugues, this movement resists
easy comprehension. The reason these late movements challenged Beethoven’s
contemporaries was not that they were ‘ahead of their time’—their difficulty was not
simply the consequence of a contradiction between their chronological age and their
stylistic age. The paradox lies instead within the works themselves, and it will remain
as long as performers and listeners continue to wrestle with them. What Weber said of
J. S. Bach, whose works continue to astonish us three centuries after they were written,
is true equally of Beethoven:
‘This new art continues for many years to serve as a model without losing its
taste of novelty or its ability to shock contemporaries by its sheer power, while the
heroic originator becomes the bright focal point of his age and its taste.’ 132
132 Weber, Writings, p.297.
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