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

Ex.1.12b shows the start of a fugue subject by Johann Pachelbel (1653 – 1706).
In one sense the thematic material is his as much as Ex.1.12a is Beethoven’s—we can
be very nearly as certain that Pachelbel composed those notes as that Beethoven did
Ex.1.12a (the complete subject can be seen in Ex.1.13). In every other respect there is
no comparison between the two. The incipit of Ex.1.12b is a standard opening gambit
common to thousands upon thousands of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century fugues.
Derived from the sixteenth-century canzona, it was common property. Ex.1.13 lists
the occurrances to be found in Pachelbel’s organ music alone. 84 Further derivatives of
this subject can be found in this study: by Krebs himself (Ex.1.22, p.96), John Stanley
(Ex.2.8, p.126), Haydn (Exx.3.2, p.204, 3.9, p.223, and 3.15, p.234), Mozart (Ex.4.10,
p.284), Beethoven (Ex.5.4c, p.324), Birck (Ex.5.5, p.324), and Clementi (Ex.5.12,
p.360). Far from being the exclusive property of Pachelbel alone (or Marco Antonio
Cavazzoni, 85 or whoever ‘invented’ it), it was available to anyone who cared to make
use of it. The value of Pachelbel’s fugue depends not on the uniqueness or distinctive
character of its material, but on its perfect fitness for the treatment it receives, and on
subtle touches of imagination in the part-writing.
84 If we had included choral-based works as well the list would be even longer, including subjects such
as ‘Der Tag, der ist so freudenreich’ and ‘Durch Adams Fall’.
85 The author of the first published instrumental canzonas, in 1523.
85