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

attention do not fit this pattern at all. Haydn never published a single fugue for clavier;
nor did Mozart—all his remained in manuscript (and, as we have seen, mostly
unfinished). On the other hand, the substantial and long-standing engagement of
Beethoven and Clementi with strict counterpoint is of an entirely different order to the
brief dalliances typical of their contemporaries.
CHAMBER MUSIC
For different reasons, fugal writing showed remarkable persistence in chamber
music as well. Fugal textures do solve one of the basic problems of the chamber
composer, that of giving each performer something interesting to play. By the time
Haydn wrote his op.20 quartets, however, a different, more subtle solution was just
around the corner. The question of precisely when the point de perfection of this
mature Classical ‘string quartet’ counterpoint first emerged (or indeed if such a thing
can be said to exist at all) is far from settled, and the significance of these fugues in
relation to Haydn’s development remains ambiguous. 9
Textural habits derived from the Baroque trio sonata continued to influence
chamber music well into the second half of the century. 10 The sonata da camera
quietly adopted galant idioms and dissolved into a chaotic variety of mid-century
divertimento forms. We saw an early stage of this in the Telemann movement quoted
on p.35, and a much later phase in the variety of textures to be found in Haydn’s
baryton trios (pp.215-227).
On the other hand the sonata da chiesa (still often used, as its name suggests,
in church) retained its identity, although sometimes abbreviated to a single
9 See pp.243-7.
10 Tovey finds passages that betray the influence of the continuo as late as Haydn’s op.9, from 1769:
‘Even in his old age, Haydn’s pen is liable to small habitual slips, which, like all such lapses, should
reveal to the psychologist how far the mind has travelled, instead of suggesting dismal broodings on
squalid origins’; ‘Haydn’s chamber music’, Essays and lectures on music (London: Oxford
University Press, 1949), p.7.
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