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

Baroque, but did so subtly, without endangering fugal continuity. His fugue in F
(Gradus no.40; p.370) introduced something of the brilliant figuration his sonatas were
famous for, with no compromise of thematic integrity. Wesley went further in his
‘Salomon’ sonata (pp.186-93), introducing not just the expanded tonal resources of the
early nineteenth century but its sense of drama and rhetorical contrast, all within the
context of a fugue, never losing sight of his subject. But it was of course Beethoven
who had the most grandiose designs upon fugue, assembling a similar range of
textures and keys on an even larger scale in the ‘Hammerklavier’ fugue (pp.384-6): an
enormous design as clearly articulated as any sonata, but completely fugal in design;
pianistically dazzling, but in three strict voices for most of its length. Seven years later
he would surpass even this with the Grosse Fuge (pp.386-8), which could not even be
contained within the boundaries of a single metre. Made up of several interrelated
sections, all dependent upon the same subject, it resembles nothing so much as a
variation canzona of the seventeenth century executed on an infinitely greater scale.
With this movement the history of fugue could be said to have come full circle.
All of these can be fairly clearly identified as fugues rather than sonata
movements, even if they show other influences; equally interesting are the hybrid
structures which are difficult to classify as either. In Samuel Wesley’s Presto (pp.144-
9), for example, two quite separate modes of organisation—sonata movement, with
exposition (including a ‘second theme’ and strongly established secondary key),
development, and recapitulation; and fugue, with successive permutational entries—
coexist throughout. Haydn’s Symphony no.3 (pp.202-6) resists categorisation in a
slightly different way, teasing us by apparently forsaking then reaffirming its
contrapuntal intentions, suggesting but not quite completing a sonata design.
A more common, much simpler sort of hybridisation is represented by what
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