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

we now understand of Bach’s stylistic development: C’est magnifique; mais ce n’est
pas Bach?
This discussion leaves open, then, the question of who did in fact compose
BWV 565 and BWV 534. In a response to Peter Williams’ article, David Humphreys
suggested Johann Peter Kellner (1705-72), an admirer rather than a student of Bach, as
a possible composer of the D minor toccata and fugue—reasonably enough, on the
evidence of his musical examples. 46
The identity of the composer of BWV 534 is a much tougher question. There
were very few composers of the time—even among Bach’s own pupils—capable of
writing such a convincing approximation of his style on this sort of scale. The
externals of Bach’s texture are immensely difficult to copy, much more so than those
of Handel, say. 47 Humphreys draws parallels between BWV 534 and the organ music
of J. C. Kittel, especially his 16 Grosse Präludien of c.1809, connections which are
plausible so far as the prelude is concerned; but his argument is hindered by the fact
that Kittel left not a single full-length fugue among his 300 or so organ works.
Whether in this case absence of evidence constitutes evidence of absence remains a
matter for conjecture. 48
More recently, two other names have been associated with BWV 534. In ‘Het
Auteurschap van Praeludium en Fuga in f-klein BWV 534’ Pieter Dirksen responds,
like Williams, to its pathos; but finds instead an echo of the legendary improvisations
of his eldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann. 49 For entirely different reasons, Peter van
Kranenburg has suggested Johann Ludwig Krebs, reaching his conclusion through the
computer analysis of statistical pattern-recognition algorithms. 50
46 ‘The D minor toccata BWV 565’, Early Music 10/2 (April 1982), 216-17.
47 Even Mozart seems to have had difficulty; see pp.273 and 330 below.
48 It should be pointed out that none of Kittel’s works show the structural ambition of BWV 534; even
the so-called ‘Grosse’ Präludien scarcely justify the adjective.
49 Het Orgel 96/5 (2000), 5-14.
50 ‘Composer attribution by quantifying compositional strategies’, Pattern Recognition Letters 26/3
(February 2005), 299-309.
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