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

Egypt) did not prevent him from being universally recognised as the greatest composer
in England—although disquiet was occasionally expressed even during his lifetime.
The work of Henry Aldridge, recomposing motets by Carissimi and Palestrina as
Anglican anthems for Christ Church, Oxford, was something of an extreme case, 87 at
times the subject of satirical comment; but the fact that such a practice was possible at
all suggests a somewhat different attitude to the authenticity of the text from that
prevalent today. 88
If the cultural aesthetic within which Krebs worked did not place upon him the
obligation to individuate his style, there are however two important aspects of Krebs’s
organ music which are not contained (and better realised) in that of his teacher. First is
his interest in combining the organ with other solo instruments: usually an oboe,
sometimes trumpet, flute, or horn. This was a resource that had not been exploited by
J. S. Bach. In most cases the solo instrument sustains a cantus firmus against
independent counterpoint (often a trio sonata texture) on the organ, but in five non
chorale-based ‘Fantasias’ a genuine chamber music interplay can be heard. These are
a real enrichment to the organ’s literature, adding to the very small number of
ensemble works for organ and another instrument. 89
It also happens that many of these works are among his most convincing, their
Bachian textural integrity leavened by subtle, smoothly integrated traces of the galant.
And this, of course, is the other main distinguishing feature of Krebs’s music. It is by
no means as pronounced as one might have expected from a contemporary of C. P. E.
Bach, Gluck, and Pergolesi, but what there is can be seen most clearly in the seventeen
trios he wrote for organ (Ex.1.14).
87 Although whole passages from Frescobaldi do turn up in voluntaries by John Blow; see J. R.
Shannon, Organ literature of the seventeenth century (Raleigh: Sunbury, 1978), pp.154-55.
88 R. Shay, ‘“Naturalizing” Palestrina and Carissimi in late seventeenth-century Oxford: Henry Aldrich
and his recompositions’, Music & Letters 77/3 (Augusst 1996), 368-400.
89 Other examples exist by Georg Friedrich Kauffmann, Gottfried August Homilius, and Johann
Christoph Kellner, all central German organists with a somewhat more progressive outlook than J. S.
Bach.
88