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

When a particular account of a canonical work fails to demonstrate these
qualities (complexity and coherence) we tend to assume that the analytical method is at
fault rather than the piece itself. This is quite a different kind of undertaking from
evaluative criticism, approaching an unfamiliar work from the outside, as it were, and
making at least a provisional judgement.
Occasions of uncertainty as to the appropriate mode of criticism are quite rare,
for the musicological community has tended to segregate them, or at least to use them
in different circumstances. Nevertheless, such occasions do occur. It happened above,
where we were forced to admit that a much loved piece by J. S. Bach was actually by
G. W. Stölzel, a fact which in turn encouraged us to evaluate it with a more critical
ear. A more complex situation occurs when questions of authorship, instead of being
resolved by documentary evidence, have to be determined on stylistic grounds alone.
Initially, the work forms part of our understanding of the composer’s style
(which is itself merely a set of inferences from this and other works). Discrepancy
between the style of the piece in question and the supposed composer’s typical style
places the hermeneutic circle under increasing pressure. As our grasp of this style
becomes more and more sophisticated, the work in question is increasingly isolated
from its fellows (as an ‘early’, or ‘uncharacteristic’ work, perhaps). Eventually,
however, the stylistic discrepancies prove too much to sustain. The hermeneutic circle
suddenly breaks, our attempts to make sense of its relationship to other works and to
find coherence within the work itself are abandoned, and it is ejected from the canon.
We are then both free and obliged to evaluate it independently from our understanding
of its putative composer. Two examples of this process will traced here.
J. S. Bach’s works for organ are particularly rich in misattributed or doubtful
compositions for a number of reasons. Bach never grouped his organ preludes and
fugues in sets as he did with most of the other works for clavier, and many important
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