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

were written for the organ. 7 While (as in the case of Krebs) a certain admixture of
galant elements was not uncommon, the stylistic associations of the old genres
retained much of their authority for even the most ‘progressive’ organ composers—
Kittel, or Knecht, or Samuel Wesley. We have seen the continuing relevance of J. S.
Bach for Krebs and W. F. Bach, of Handel for Stanley and Wesley.
CLAVIER MUSIC
To a lesser extent, fugue maintained a tenuous existence in the hands of clavier
performers and composers. Fugal improvisation played a smaller role than it had in
the past—Mozart’s was renowned, Beethoven is supposed to have been able to
improvise fugally, and Hummel may have, but C. P. E. Bach, Clementi, Dussek, and
Wölfl apparently did not. During this period the touchstone for contrapuntal mastery
ceased to be the ability to extemporise fugues of one’s own, and became instead the
ability to perform J. S. Bach’s WTC; a situation which is still the case today. Partly
this was a consequence of the growing differentiation between the composer and the
performer, partly of the increasing distance between the present and early eighteenth-
century contrapuntal habits. 8
All the same, it was not uncommon for keyboard composers to spice their
publications with occasional fugal movements, as orthodox and old-fashioned as the
rest of their music was up-to-date. Into this category fall most of the important
keyboard composers of the time: Arne, W. F. Bach, C. P. E. Bach, J. C. Bach, Dussek,
Hummel, Weber, Kalkbrenner, Glinka, Czerny, and Moscheles.
What is curious is that four of the composers to whom we have paid the most
7 Even Mendelssohn’s op.65 sonatas avoided the question of integrating sonata structural principles
with traditional organ textures; it was Josef Rheinberger who first applied himself seriously to the
problem, with his series of twenty organ sonatas written between 1868 and 1901.
8 It seems likely to me that the decline of fugal improvisation may have had as much to do with the
decay of the art of continuo realisation, and thus of the habits of improvisation in general, as with the
specific ‘old-fashionedness’ of fugue.
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