Handel and JS Bach
GF Handel
(Halle;
Febr 23, 1685 - Apr 13, 1759; London)
George
Frideric Handel can be described as a completely international composer. His
main output was opera/oratorio for international public. His music has
immediate appeal and more accessible than Bach's. He is a master of grandiose
effects and drama. Pictorial and effective musical symbolism is one of the main
features of Handel's choral writing (word-painting, descriptive music, use of
certain keys in certain contexts). Much of his happiest word setting occurs in
description of nature. He uses choral counterpoint to express a conflict of
dramatic principle. Double and inverted counterpoint is frequent. He has a
wonderful melodic gift. Expansive, tuneful, seemingly effortless music that
makes no demands from the listener is typical of Handel. Most tunes have a
serene lyricism (like Lascia ch'io pianga). He uses Romantic harmony (it is
said that between him and Bach, all tools of the so-called Romantic harmony had
already been used). Purcellian turns of melody and harmony, including false
relations at cadences and love of hemiola (not exclusively at cadences),
expressive play with words, broken unaccompanied cadences are frequent. Handel
and Purcell often elected to dwell in the same way on the same words and ideas (especially
death). Although his works during the Cannons period have some flaws, he set
the language with a subtlety few native composers have equaled. His melodic
simplicity points to the classical style. The dramatic charge in his simple
music is noteworthy (the Dead March in Saul). Beethoven most appreciated the
ability of Handel to create enormous effects through simplicity.
He
was a man of the theatre. Writing music for a paying audience was his business.
He had first left his hometown Halle to go to the only operatic center in
Germany, Hamburg, where he wrote his first two operas. His next journey was not
surprisingly to the European center of opera, Italy. According to Mainwaring,
his biographer, Handel's intention in traveling to Italy was to experience
Italian opera at first hand. Altogether he wrote almost fifty operas and half
as many oratorios, much of his other music is also occasional music (like Water
Music, Music for the Royal Fireworks). Even the organ concertos he wrote were
written for use in the theatre to be played between the acts of his oratorios.
Handel, therefore, is not interested in the academic side of his music, he doe
not care about the academic procedures in his fugues, ignores the pure
consecutive fifths (in Zadok) as long as the music has the theatrical
character. For Handel his music had to be appreciated at first hearing. He was
one of the first composers who responded the demands from the audience. For
example, he knew that English taste showed a predisposition towards the chorus
to which he replied promptly. His theatrical ambitions were so strong that even
after the failure of the Royal Academy of Music (1718-1728) and the huge
success of the Beggar's Opera (1728), he continued to produce operas. This time
he was not so successful. In 1732, he created a new genre: the Handelian
Oratorio. Esther was the first production with success. In those years, to be
able to compete with the rival company 'the Opera of the Nobility', he invented
the organ concertos to be played between the acts. Until 1741, he produced both
operas and oratorios after which there were only oratorios. An obvious reason
for abandoning the Italian opera serie was that the public was not as
enthusiastic as it had once been about Italian opera.
JS Bach (1685-1750)
A
brief biographical note on Johann Sebastian Bach's life:
1685
Born in Eisenach (March 21), a small town in Thuringia. His mother died
in 1694 and his father in 1695.
1695-1700
Together with his brother Jacob, moved to Ohrdurf to his brother Johann
Christoph III's house who had been a pupil of Pachelbel.
1700-1702/3
Moved to Luneburg (St Michael Church) to be a member of Matins choir. In
another church in Luneburg, G. Bohm was the organist. From Luneburg, he
traveled to Hamburg and Celle (French orchestra) to increase his musical
experience.
1703
Briefly in Weimar as a violinist in the court of Prince Ernst who
was fond of Italian music.
1703-1707
Organist in Arnstadt (the New Church). He traveled to Lubeck to listen to
Buxtehude and became aware of Kuhnau's programmatic music. Under his music's
influence, wrote the Capriccio (1704) for Jacob's departure.
1707-1708
Organist at St Blasius, Muhlhausen. Married Maria Barbara Bach. Early
cantatas (No. 4, 71, 131).
1708-1717
Court organist at Weimar (second Weimar period). Primarily wrote organ
music. WF Bach (1710) and CPE Bach (1714) were born.
1717-1723
Kapellmeister to Prince Leopold of Kothen. Concertos (the Brandenburgs,
solo and double string), two of the orchestral suites, instrumental works
(sonatas and partitas for violin, cello suites) and keyboard works (sonatas for
harpsichord and viola da gamba). Maria Barbara died at 1720 and he married Anna
Magdalena Wilcken.
1723-1750 St.
Thomas's Kantor in Leipzig as successor to Kuhnau. Cantatas, Passions,
Oratorios, Masses, Motets and Magnificats, Harpsichord Concertos, Well-tempered
Clavier, Goldberg Variations (Air with thirty variations), the Musical
Offering, the Art of the Fugue, etc. Director of the Collegium Musicum
in Leipzig (1729). JC Bach was born (1735).
1750
(July 28) Died in Leipzig
He
was a determined person to extract the best from every worthy source. His
stylistic development was determined by those whose music he came across. The
first composers he got to know were Froberger, Pachelbel and Kerll during his
stay in his brother Johann Christoph's house in Ohrdurf (1695-1700). The
composer Froberger had traveled a lot and integrated various national styles in
his keyboard suites whereas Kerll was a contrapuntist of distinction. In
Luneburg (1700-1702/3), he met G. Bohm who had a famous repertory of Italian
music. In the same period, he traveled to Hamburg (Reinken, Keiser and Lubeck)
and Celle. The Duke of Celle had been to the famous court of Louis XIV and
transferred French string players to Celle. Again, without traveling abroad,
Bach was able to come across the French Baroque music. In his short stay in
Weimar (1703), he was a violinist in the court of Prince Johann Ernst who was a
transcriber of Italian music. (When he later had a post in Weimar in 1713, the
Prince had acquired Vivaldi's [Op.3] concertos published in Amsterdam in 1711.)
During his Arnstadt years (1703-7), he traveled to Lubeck to hear Buxtehude.
Buxtehude had been a pupil of Italian Frescobaldi. At this period, his
predecessor in Leipzig Johann Kuhnau (1660-1722) published programmatic
multi-movement keyboard sonatas which used romantic harmony and the French style
brise. These sonatas exhibit elements of French, Italian and German styles.
These pieces may have inspired Bach to write the Capriccio for harpsichord
(BWV992) on the departure of his brother Jacob. At an unknown period in his
life, Bach came under the influence of JCF Fisher who had transferred the
French orchestral ballet suit idiom to the keyboard. In Weimar (1708-17), the
organist of the town church (who was also his cousin) had an interest in
arranging Italian organ music. The combined effects of these interactions were
the fusion of national styles of the late Baroque period in Bach's music. For
example, his unaccompanied solo violin sonatas are in Corelli's sonata da
chiesa type (slow-fast-slow-fast plan), the violin partitas and
unaccompanied cello suites are in the French suit model.
In
concertos, combination of French and Italian styles can easily be seen. Unlike
Handel, Bach absorbed foreign influences without traveling abroad. For example,
the Brandenburg concertos are in the Italianate-Vivaldian style with German
preference for several wind instruments together. The first one is French suit-based,
and the fifth one is almost an Harpsichord concerto (the favorite French
instrument of the time). Brandenburg concerto No. 4, on the other hand, is
considered to be a Violin concerto in Italian style. As early as 1715, he had
written an Italian style ritornello movement (Cantata No. 31; first movement)
and a French overture (Cantata 61; in 1714). Also plenty of organ music in
German style was written in Weimar years (1708-1717).
Bach
writes for human voices in instrumental idioms (for example, the jagged tenor
line in the Kyrie of Mass in B minor). He likes musical symbolism, symmetry and
mathematical relationships in his music, and is fond of modulating to the
subdominant. Bach's music is more expressive than abstract, and when he chooses
to tell a story (as in St. Matthew's Passion) the result is impressive. He is a
master of counterpoint. His work represents the climax of the later
contrapuntal style, of which the fugue was the most definite expression.
The ultimate expression of his contrapuntal genius is The Musical
Offering (1747). He wrote a lot of sacred vocal music but no opera. Some of his
cantatas (like the Peasant) strongly suggest that he could have written comique
operas if he had to. He wrote nothing for public entertainment, his instrumental
music is for private court entertainment. In his concertos, he follows the
Vivaldian structure leading to the three-movement classical concerto style. The
main difference from Vivaldi is that he emphasizes woodwind instruments as a
North German tradition. Also the texture of his concertos is fuller and more
contrapuntal than Vivaldi's. Even in his sonatas or suites for solo violin and
cello (with no accompanying part), one does not feel that the texture is thin.
He had a similar interest to various instruments like Vivaldi but he was more
interested in their combinations (as in the Brandenburgs). Compared to Handel
who followed the Corellian style in Baroque concerto, Bach makes use of the
ritornello structure more and uses wind instruments more. In chorales, he made
extensive use of chromaticism and dissonance to emphasize emotional
significance of words. A typical Bach melody in slow movements on a ground bass
is highly elaborate and rococo: frequent groups of demisemiquavers, a lot of
mordents, appoggiaturas, subservient to no metrical pattern, but pausing to
cadence only. From diverse stylistic elements of Baroque music, he created
an individual style. His style is the result of his technical competence,
intellectual concentration, musical imagination and emotional sensitivity.
Bach vs Handel
A
general comparison of Bach's with Handel's music can be summarized as intensive
melodies vs extensive melodies. Handel excels in broad and majestic
motives while Bach's melodies are intensive. Bach uses very dense contrapuntal
texture with complex and chromatic harmonies. Handel achieves expressiveness
through simple means. In their sensuous and immediate appeal, Handel's arias
are opposite of the abstract appeal of Bach's music. The extensive quality of Handel's
melodies explains why his music lends itself to amplification by massed
ensembles. The monumental effects of Handel's music gain strength by
reinforcement whereas it would ruin Bach's music because it would obscure the
transparency of the contrapuntal process.
Bach
writes complicated instrumental lines and different but still complicated vocal
line in his vocal music. In the vocal part, disjunct movements and awkward
intervals are common. Between instrumental and vocal lines, there is no sharing
of the material. The free-voiced choral polyphony of Handel and the strictly
linear, instrumentally conceived polyphony of Bach form the two poles of late
Baroque music. To Handel, who is always close to improvisation (cf. his
organ concertos), the flow of ideas is more important than their elaboration,
whereas to Bach elaboration is more important. Handel regards counterpoint only
as a means to a dramatic end, as can be seen in the quickly changing textures
in his choral writing. Bach takes it as an end in itself which must be
consistent. Because of its dramatic conception, Handel's counterpoint reaches
its greatest heights in the vocal medium. Even his keyboard fugues seem to call
for text and seem to acquire their final impetus in vocal form; it is for this
reason that Handel was so successful in transferring his ideas from the
instrumental to the vocal music. In his vocal-mindedness (which is quite
different from the instrumental-mindedness of Bach and Vivaldi), Handel appears
as a composer whose main concern was the human voice. Bach's self-borrowings
are between instrumental forms (many movements of the Brandenburg concertos
were used as preludes to his cantatas). Bach does not hesitate to submit his
choral polyphony to an instrumental standard. In the flexibility of his choral
idiom, Handel surpasses Bach in the same measure as Bach surpasses Handel in
contrapuntal consistency.
In
his instrumental music, Handel shares the Italian conservatism and hardly goes
beyond Corelli so far as form is concerned. The simplicity of his instrumental
melodies points towards innovations of the Classical period. Bach is
conservative in his adherence to polyphonic texture, but progressive in his
choice of modern forms, such as the concerto form of Vivaldi. Similarly, the organ
style of Handel is clearly influenced by the idiom of the harpsichord as the
opposite is true for Bach.
Their
psychological attitudes were also different. Bach was an introvert whereas Handel
was an extrovert. Handel assimilated the various national styles so that they
became his second nature. He mastered each one equally well. Bach assimilated
the various influences with his own personal style and arrived at a fusion of
national styles in which the single elements are inseparable. Handel's work
center around his operas, written from a worldwide perspective for an
international public. Bach's works center around his cantatas, written for the
local churches, and his passions, the monuments of his liturgical severity.
Handel always bent on success, passed through the international centers of
music; Bach, unconcerned about worldly success, began and ended his career
within the narrowness of central Germany.
It is interesting that the same text
was set to music by both composers. This is Eilt ihr angefocht'nen Seelen
in the Passion Oratorio (by Handel) and in the St. John Passion (by Bach). They
used the same key and the same pictorial representation of 'haste', and the
choral interjections at dramatic points are also common. According to Bukofzer,
however, Handel's music is inferior because it lacks the highly individual
stamp that distinguished Bach from all other composers.
References
*
Bukofzer MF. Music
in the Baroque Era. WW Norton & Company Inc. NY, 1974, pp. 345-9.
*
Sadie S & Latham A. The Cambridge Music Guide. Cambridge University Press.
Cambridge, 1996, pp. 184-217
*
Dean W. Handel's Dramatic Oratorios and Masques. Oxford University Press.
London, 1959
*
Hendrie G. Handel (From Baroque to Romantic, Units 5-7). The Open University
Press. Milton Keynes, 1996.
*
Hendrie G. Bach (From Baroque to Romantic, Units 8-10). The Open University
Press. Milton Keynes, 1996.
I thank Grant AB Gilman of Peabody Conservatory for pointing
out the lack of acknowledgement of the References used in this compilation
(April 2, 2002).
Compiled by M.Tevfik Dorak, BA (Hons)
Last updated on
April 2, 2002
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