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

ut also in that of Buxtehude, Couperin, de Grigny, Fux, Caldara, Corelli, Veracini,
Zelenka, and too many others to list. The tradition of writing substantial, closely-
worked, monothematic fugues did not date from time immemorial, and was itself
largely a product of this period—a golden age of counterpoint, but, like most golden
ages, relatively short-lived. The musical development of the mid-eighteenth century
would continue along other lines altogether. Thus it is that in the output of most of the
important composers of the succeeding generations, fugue came to take a relatively
small place. Those for whom fugue retained its significance were, by and large,
composers of lesser stature. Bach and Handel, the great fugue-writers of the beginning
of the century, were succeeded by—shall we say?—less resonant names: Krebs and
Rinck, Gassmann and Albrechtsberger. What had once been part of the main stream
of musical style was now relegated to the relative backwaters of ecclesiastical music
and compositional pedagogy. Few genres have been stigmatised with mechanical,
formalistic dryness to the extent of post-Baroque fugue—‘the art of creating musical
skeletons,’ as Beethoven is supposed to have referred to it. 3
For these reasons the history of the development of fugal writing during this
period is almost no story at all. It is true that one can trace a very slight development,
chiefly a consequence of the gradual spread of Bachian ideals of contrapuntal integrity
and expressive intensity through much of Europe. But in comparison to the vast
evolution in style between the music of (say) Wagenseil and that of Beethoven over
the same period, the development of fugue is virtually negligible. When in 1800
Anton Reicha sought to renovate the genre, bringing it more into line with
contemporary styles (and with his own idiosyncratic sensibility), Beethoven’s curt
3 The reference is from a letter to Schott (22 Jan, 1825), embedded in a dense, almost Hoffmannesque
fantasy; so what exactly he meant and how serious he was is anyone’s guess. See R. Kramer,
‘Gradus ad Parnassum: Beethoven, Schubert, and the romance of counterpoint’, 19th-century Music,
11/2 (Fall 1987) 109-11.
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