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

craftsman’s art than the artist’s craft.’ 81 In 1737, Lincke (organist at Schneeberg) went
so far as to describe Krebs as ‘the creation of Bach.’ 82 If Lincke probably meant
nothing more than that he was one of Bach’s pupils, it is tempting for us to read more
into his comment, to see Bach, teacher and model, as the fons et origo of Krebs’s
oeuvre, with Krebs himself a mere demiurge.
The cultural valorisation of originality was accompanied by changes in
compositional practice. We can see this by comparing the difference in cultural
significance between two apparently similar thematic motives. In 1836, Robert
Schumann complained of a certain symphony where ‘the first and second movements
proceed throughout in a familiar rhythm set off by three quavers, to which many other
composers have fallen victim. When Beethoven manages this in the symphony in C
minor there is no reason why we should not fall at the composer’s feet. But here we
cannot, in all honesty, overlook the fact that the substance of the idea is so trivial that
it vanishes in vacuum and sand.’ 83 The theme quoted in Ex.1.12a was exclusively,
inescapably Beethoven’s personal property. Composers were taking an increasingly
proprietral attitude toward their thematic material, more so perhaps than of any other
aspect of their music. But this had not always been the case.
81 H. J. McLean, ‘Krebs’, Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online,
http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/15499pg2 (accessed August 2,
2008).
82 Spitta, Bach, vol. III, p.242. Lincke was, by the way, writing in praise of Krebs.
83 ‘Here’ is in the fifth (‘Preis-’) symphony of Franz Paul Lachner (1803-1890), which had won a
competition announced by the Vienna Concerts Spirituels: Pleasants, Schumann, p.101.
84