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

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sophisticated periodic construction. The ability to combine simple materials into<br />

complex structures by means of elision and carefully proportioned phrase-lengths—an<br />

ability so central to the achievement of Haydn and Mozart (or even Sammartini and<br />

Stamitz)—remained a closed book to Krebs. It may have been this relative ineptitude<br />

with the periodic forms of the Classical style that enabled Krebs to approach the style<br />

of J. S. Bach so closely.<br />

What with all the confusion around the edges of Bach’s oeuvre, and the close<br />

similarity between their styles, it is a little surprising that the number of works by<br />

Krebs misattributed to Bach is not larger than it is. A similarity between the opening<br />

bars of the Prelude and Fugue in D minor BWV 554 and that of prelude to the chorale<br />

Jesu meine Freude in Krebs’s Clavier Ubung Bestehend in verschiedenen Vorspielen<br />

und Veränderungen einiger Kirchen Gesaenge has led some to attribute this<br />

movement, and therefore all of the ‘eight short’ preludes and fugues (BWV 553-560—<br />

almost certainly not by Bach) to him. But the resemblance extends as far as the first<br />

two bars only, and is not outside the range of coincidence; apart from this the pieces<br />

have little in common with Krebs’s style (an alternative ascription, to his father Johann<br />

Tobias—also a student of Bach’s—has even less foundation.) It has also been argued<br />

that the conclusion of the Fantasia and Fugue in C minor BWV 537 was not just<br />

copied but composed by Krebs; 92 and it is possible that one or more versions of BWV<br />

740 (Wir glauben all’ an einen Gott) are by him. 93 The only work in Schmeider’s<br />

catalogue known for certain to be by Krebs, however, is a little Prelude in C, BWV<br />

567 (Ex.1.19).<br />

92 J. O’Donnell, ‘Mattheson, Bach, and the Fantasia and Fugue in C minor BWV 537’, The Organ<br />

Yearbook 20 (1989), 88-95.<br />

93 K. Tittel, ‘Welche unter J. S. Bachs Namen geführten Orgelwerke sind Johann Tobias bzw. Johann<br />

Ludwig Krebs zuzuschreiben? Ein Versuch zur Lösung von Autorschaftsproblemen’, Bach-<br />

Jahrbuch 52 (1966), 102-137, and H. Hoshino, ‘J. S. Bahha no orugan sakuhin no shingi ni kansuru<br />

ichikosatsu “Wir glauben all’ an einen Gott, Vater” (BWV 740) o megutte’ Orugan kenkyu 23<br />

(1995), 1-17.<br />

93

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