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

voices inverted, and serve the purpose neither of entries nor episodes. Nevertheless, if
the exact function of these passages remains unclear, they fit well with the light,
somewhat nervous galant style of the rest.
The next fugue, in C minor, makes clear reference to a well-known work of J.
S. Bach, the two-part invention in D minor: one of the pieces Friedemann would have
first known in its incarnation as a ‘Preambulum’ in the Clavier-Büchlein his father
devised for him. Many of the features of the first fugue show themselves: consistent
three-part writing, occasional awkward progressions (bb.2, 11, 23, 58), and
considerable thematic integrity—the subject is inverted almost as often as it is present
in its original form. There are two distinct types of material in use, one being the
contrapuntal working around the entries (there is no regular countersubject, though
naturally certain procedures tend to recur), and the more homophonic material used in
the episodes.
This is one of the larger fugues and its tonal scheme is correspondingly more
clearly differentiated, with strong moves toward III after bar 25 and toward iv after bar
41, returning to i after bar 48. In fact the preparation for III, associated with such
emphatic homophonic writing as in bb.30-34, begins to suggest a sonata movement.
Do the important entries on III in bar 35 (the only stretto in the piece) constitute a
‘second subject’? Not really, for the texture is too continuous, and the music soon
veers toward iv. Nevertheless, W. F. Bach may be remembering the gestures toward
binary form that occur in (e.g.) both B flat fugues from the WTC.
The next two fugues, in D and D minor, return to the lightness and brevity of
the first. The D major fugue is perhaps the most immediately appealing of the set,
with its subject’s attractive vacillation between the major and the minor seventh (Percy
Scholes considered it sufficiently exemplary—and brief—to include it complete in his
Oxford companion to music). Again, episodic passages (though thematically related)
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