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George Frideric Handel & Bach
Discussions - Part 4 |
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Continue from Part 3 |
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Bach and Handel: Synchronicity, Serendipity |
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William L. Hoffman wrote (March 8, 2020):
Call it coincidence, synchronicity, or serendipity. The lives and music of the two pillars of High Baroque music Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel (https://www.bach-cantatas.com/Lib/Handel.htm) overlapped yet were in congruity more than is documented or disputed. The two composers with close origins created contrasting works that show the best of Baroque music and that they composed similar genres often about the same time and yet hundreds of miles apart, with little awareness of each other. At the same time, they were subject to similar influences both musically and textually, although responding in different ways. Bach also had connections with Handel's birthplace in Halle, as did his son Friedemann, who met Handel at least once. Music scholars have explored Bach's performances of Handel's music and suggested possible borrowings. Their two vocal masterpieces, Bach's Mass in B Minor and Handel's Messiah, seem cut from the same dramatic Christological cloth. A comparison of the two first emerged in 1785 at the centennial of their birthdays.
A few Bach scholars, in particular the late Peter Williams and Ton Koopman, have suggested that the two young men could have met in Hamburg in December-January 1705-06. Bach was living in nearby Lübeck and attended Buxtehude's Abendmusiken at Lent on December 2-3 (NBR: 20). Handel was a violinist and harpsichordist at the Hamburg Opera (1703-1706) where his Almira and Nero (lost) were presented in early 1705 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handel%27s_lost_Hamburg_operas). During this time, Bach and Handel were composing organ and keyboard music such as fugues and dance music (https://www.bach-cantatas.com/NVD/Keyboard-Music-Intro.htm), as well as trio sonatas Subsequently, Handel in Italy and Bach in Arnstadt composed sacred music, in particular Handel's "Resurrection" Oratorio and Bach's Easter Cantata 4, "Christ lag in Todesbanden" (Dok 2: 19).
Bach Halle Connection
In 1712, Bach appears to have begun serving as a consultant in the enlargement of the organ at the Liebfrauenkirchke in Halle (https://www.bach-cantatas.com/Lib/Bach-Johann-Sebastian.htm: see paragraph beginning "On September 7, 1713") and was considered to replace organist Friedrich Wilhelm Zachow (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Wilhelm_Zachow), Handel's teacher, with a trial cantata on 3 or 10 December 1713 (NBR 46a). Zachow's replacement, Gottfried Kirchoff, was succeeded by Friedemann Bach (1746-64). Bach's probe piece is uncertain but Cantata 21, "Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis" (I had much affliction), was considered, "notable for its references to Handel's opera, Almira," says Percy M. Young.1 "If in fact it was performed in Halle, Bach found pleasure in associating Zachau's memory with it by its references to Zachau's greatest pupil," says Charles S. Terry;2 "the cantata contains positive indication of his familiarity with Handel's 'Almira', produced in Hamburg in 1705 and in 1713 famous throughout Germany."
The theory of Bach borrowings from Handel's first opera, Almira, was first found in P. Robinson's essay, "Handel and his Orbit," in the Musical Times of May 1907, according to W. Gillies Whittaker, who rejects them.3 Almira survives in a revised version by Telemann in Hamburg in February 1732. One aria from Almira, the bass solo "Gönne nach den Tränengüssen" (Now that those gushing tears) was adapted in the soprano aria (No. 5), "Laßt der Spötter Zungen schmähen" (Let the cynics' tongues utter abuse; Francis Browne trans., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JBsRc2VLmA), of Bach's Cantata 70, "Wachet! betet! betet! wachet!" (Watch! Pray! Pray! Watch!), for the 26th Sunday after Trinity 1723. "Here is a genuine case of adoption and adaptation, though Bach's treatment is wholly his own," says Whittaker (Ibid.: 129, 236). Cantata 70 does show Handelian influences, according to John Eliott Gardiner and others (https://www.bach-cantatas.com/BWV70-D4.htm, beginning section "Scholarly Commentary"). Handel also borrowed heavily from his first opera, most notably the third procession sarabande which became the popular aria "Lascia ch'io pianga" in Rinaldo (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKo_EmfEPWs, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lascia_ch%27io_pianga).4
Bach made two unsuccessful attempts to meet Handel when the latter was traveling on the continent seeking singers for his new opera ventures in London and visiting his mother in Halle, in 1719 and 1729. In the first, between May and July 1719, Bach failed to find Handel (Dok 3: 927), who had left. In the second, June 1729, Bach was ill and sent son Friedemann but was unable to get Handel to come visit in Leipzig. "Perhaps Handel's reluctance stemmed from a sense that the two men really had little in common," suggests Otto L. Bettmann.5 "Bach was a musician content with his small universe of the choir loft, the Collegium Musicum, and the concert room of small princely residents. In contrast, Handel was a citizen of the world who enjoyed life to the fullest, a man whose fame and influence were tremendous even in his lifetime."
Bach Performing Handel in 1730s
In the 1730s, it is documented that Bach performed arias of Handel at the Collegium musicum, as well as Handel's "Brockes Passion" in the 1740s (https://www.bach-cantatas.com/Other/Handel-Gen2.htm): <<Cantata Armida Abbandonata, HWV 105 (1707) - performed by J.S. Bach & Collegium Musicum in Leipzig c1731; Opera Alcina, HWV 34 (1735): arias: Mi lusinga il dolce affetto and Di, cor mio, quanto t'amai - performed by J.S. Bach & Collegium Musicum in Leipzig c1735; Brockes Passion, HWV 48 (Text: Barthold Heinrich Brockes), prepared for performance & performed by J.S. Bach in Leipzig: 1st performance on Good Friday c1746-1747; 2nd performance on Good Friday August 1748 - October 1749; Pasticcio Passion, based on Markus-Passion by Friedrich Nicolaus Brauns [previously attributed to Reinhard Keiser] with insertion of 7 arias from Brockes Passion, HWV 48 by G.F. Händel - prepared for performance & performed by J.S. Bach at Thomaskirche in Leipzig on Good Friday April 31, 1747 or April 12, 1748 (http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Vocal/BWV1088-Gen.htm: "FUGITIVE NOTES"; score, https://www.carus-verlag.com/en/choir/sacred-choral-music/frueher-zugeschrieben-reinhard-keiser-st-mark-passion.html?redirected=1). In the summer of 1750, Handel made his last trip to Halle and may have met Friedemann Bach, whose father was dying.
Besides the early keyboard, organ and trio sonatas, both composers observed Baroque conventions creating other, similar genres. Handel was first with his Passion setting, the oratorio known as the poetic harmony Brockes Passion in 1715/16 https://www.bach-cantatas.com/Other/Brockes-Passion-List.htm), which has received new recordings in recent years. Bach's first original Passion endeavor may be the so-called Weimar-Gotha Passion of 1717 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weimarer_Passion, although Bach scholars have accepted it into the BWV canon (https://www.bach-digital.de/receive/BachDigitalWork_work_00001533?lang=en). Two popular orchestral works followed when both composers were serving at courts, Handel with his three Water Musik Suites in 1717 in London (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_Music) and Bach with his six Brandenburg Concertos in 1721 in Cöthen (https://www.bach-cantatas.com/NVD/BWV1046-1051-Gen4.htm.
Competitive Genres
Bach beat Handel to composing keyboard concertos, with the former's 5th Brandenburg Concerto (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHjbRMIIhuM) while Handel's first was his organ concerto Op. 4, No. 6, in 1738 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDz2L0REKsM). Handel began to pursue his English biblical oratorios c.1730, while they followed the Italian style he had begun with the Resurrection, which with the Brockes Passion and Messiah are Handel's contributions to Christological accounts. Bach began with an Italian-style oratorio, for Easter in 1725 (https://www.bach-cantatas.com/Vocal/BWV249-Gen5.htm) and in its final version in 1738, meanwhile producing German-style oratorios with biblical narrative and chorales for Christmas in 1734-35, Ascension also in 1738, and possibly for Pentecost (lost) in 1739. These were in the more progressive style favored in Dresden while Handel had begun using in the Water Music with its festive, urban setting. Bach also composed three narrative oratorio Passions according to John (1724), Matthew (1727) and Mark (1731).
Handel's great sacred drama, Messiah, was premiered in 1742, about that same time that Bach began finishing his great sacred drama, the Mass in B Minor, completed in 1749. Extended sacred dramatic music can be traced back to the Bach and Handel encounters with Buxtehude's Abendmusiken, says Alfred Mann.6 He suggests that these early encounters influenced the settings of the John Passion by both Handel and Bach. Handel's setting of Christian Heinrich Postel's test of the St. John Passion has been disputed by various scholars while Postel's text influenced Bach use in five movements in his St. John Passion, BWV 245: Nos. 11a, 19a, 22, 30 and 39.7 The Handel setting was first described in Johann Mattheson's Critica Musica in 1724 and accepted by Handel biographer Friedrich Chrysander; others have attributed the setting to Georg Böhm or Christian Ritter or perhaps Reinhard Keiser, says Rainer Kleinertz.8
"There is undeniable logic in relating some of the striking parallels in the biographies of the two masters to the artistic phases that marked the road to their supreme choral masterpieces," Mann says (Ibid.: 173). In the 1720s, "their [sacred] choral styles reached monumentality," says Mann (Ibid.: 174), Handel with the Coronation Anthems and Bach with the St. Matthew Passion. "What followed in the decade of the 1730's was a crisis in both the artistic and purely professional careers of the two composers." Both turned to the sacred oratorio, Handel with a revival of Esther in 1732 as the opera seria rage in London subsided, and Bach with his Christmas Oratorio. Bach at this time also turned to the Lutheran Missa: Kyrie Gloria, based on contrafaction, a form of parody or new-text underlay from German to Latin. Handel meanwhile stayed with English-language settings of the Psalms and Te Deum texts while increasingly borrowing from both his previous music and other composers. Beginning with his A-Major Mass, BWV 234, about 1737, "his novel interpretation of the Mass text remains one of the most astounding facts in his choral oeuvre," says Mann (Ibid.: 177), possibly compelling him to resume completion of a musical Missa tota. Handel's Messiah also returns to the historia musical tradition, here a harmony of the three synoptic gospel accounts of Jesus life, death, and resurrection, alluded to and interpreted in the Latin Mass text and "we can discern a further parallel to Bach's deep probing of the dramatic interpretation of the sacred text," he says. The old Protestant church drama is found in three places: the Christmas story, the Passion and Resurrection "that are woven into the Old Testament prophecies," and the concluding "Story of Pentecost, the Drama of the Word, its divine issue, its rejection of the raging nations, and its final triumph," Mann observes (Ibid.: 178).
Bach, Handel, Telemann
|"Of the several assessments of German musicians that survive in books and periodicals before 1750, Bach, Handel, and Telemann are virtually aways on the list of the best," says Hans Lenneberg.9 Among those who knew both composers was Johann Mattheson, the music critic, composer, and theorist, who was the mentor for Handel when he came to Hamburg in 1703 and continued in correspondence for many years (https://www.bach-cantatas.com/Other/Mattheson-Gen1.htm). In 1719, Mattheson presented a pasticcio harmony account of the Brockes Passion settings of Telemann, Keiser, Handel, and himself to show their various styles and approaches to the same text. Earlier he had encouraged the other three to do these settings. Mattheson, who had encountered Bach at his 1719 Hamburg audition, had a healthy respect for Bach as a church musician, notably as an organist. The Leipzig professor and writer, Johann Christoph Gottsched (https://www.bach-cantatas.com/Lib/Gottsched.htm), who authored three librettos Bach set, "had no reservations concerning Bach's stature," says Young (Ibid.: 157). Gottsched "wrote with pride about the trinity of Telemann, Handel and Bach as early as 1728 in Der Biedermann," his weekly literary journal. Gottsched sought to reform the German galant-arcadian literary style. Handel's perspective on Bach, based on the 1719 aborted encounter, is that Handel "was a busy man, he probably reasoned," says Young's 1947 Handel biography, "and provincial organists had a habit of tedious severity in conversation unpalatable to the traveled and worldly-wise."10
Bach-Handel Perspectives
The first significant study of Bach and Handel was undertaken in 1784 at the centennial of Handel's birth by author Charles Burney, author of General History of Music, followed by a response from (probably) Emanuel Bach in 1788. Emanuel had presented the 1786 charity concert in Hamburg, featuring the music of the Credo from his father's Mass in B Minor and from Handel's Messiah the aria "I know that my redeemer liveth." "A Comparison of Bach and Handel" in The New Bach Reader11 begins with Christoph Wolff's updated introduction of Burney's "An account of the musical performances in Westminster Abbey and the Pantheon . . . in commemoration of Handel" with a life of Handel published in 1785 (https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc2.ark:/13960/t81j9pg94&view=1up&seq=1. That year a translation of the pamphlet by Friedrich Nicolai was published in Berlin and he received an anonymous reply comparison that he published in 1788. Internal evidence points to Emanuel who also furnished similar information to Johann Nicholaus Forkel, Bach's first biographer. Emanuel knew Burney, who thought highly of him, even outranking him with his father as a progressive composer. The writer points out that Burney, putting Handel above Bach in mastery of organ fugues, shows no trace of "any close acquaintance with the principal works of J. S. Bach for the organ" (NBR: 402), which are far superior. He acknowledges Handel's mastery of opera but concerning printed clavier pieces appearing in the 1720s, Handel imitates the French manner with little variety while Bach shows great originality and variety and Handin his fugues "often abandons a voice." The writer describes Bach's attempts to meet Handel and concludes: "All the more did it pain J. S. Bach not to have known Handel, that really great man whom he particularly respected.
Emanuel's 1788 concert showcased "the greatest musical accomplishments of the [18th] century," says Peter Wollny.12 The response to both major works was ecstatic, Bach's B-Minor Mass "Credo," adapted by Emanuel, is described as a "masterpiece of this greatest of all harmonists," and Handel's Messiah "had begun its triumphal march across Europe with widely noted performances in London (1784), Berlin (1786), and Leipzig (1786)." "Handel's Messiah forms a certain parallel to Bach's work; it is an idealized anthem, says Alfred Mann in another publication,13 examining the performance practices of both works. It "stands as the epitome of choral drama, yet as a work which, like the Mass, represents to dramatic action." Both are the "Drama of Redemption."
ENDNOTES
1 Percy M. Young, "Leipzig," in The Bachs: 1500-1850 (New York: Crowell Company, 1970: 94), Amazon.com.
2 Charles S. Terry, Bach: A Biography, 2nd & rev. ed. (London: Oxford University Press, 1933, 101).
3 W. Gillies Whittaker, "Weimar Choral Cantatas," in The Cantatas of Johann Sebastian Bach: Sacred and Secular, Vol. I (Oxford University Press, 1959: 110).
4 See Greta Moens-Haewnen, "George Frideric Handel Almira," liner notes, Eng. trans. Susan Marie Praeder, CPO 9992752, https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/products/7923293--handel-almira; new recording, https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/products/8712298--handel-almira.
5 Otto Bettmann, Johann Sebastian Bach: As His World Knew Him (New York: Carol Publishing, 1995: 92f; Amazon.com).
6 Alfred Mann, "Missa and Messiah: Culmination of the Sacred Drama" in A Bach Tribute: Essays in Honor of William H. Scheide (Kassel, Chapel Hill NC: Bärenreiter/Hinshaw, 1994: 173ff; Amazon.com); also see William L. Hoffman, "Northern Germany: Abendmusiken and Passion-Oratorio," in "Bachs Dramatic Music: Serenades, Drammi per Musica, Oratorios (Bach Cantatas Website Articles 2008), https://www.bach-cantatas.com/Articles/HoffmanBachDramaII.htm#P1);
7 William L. Hoffman, "Lyrical Movements" and "Postel St. John Passion" in "Literary Origins of Bachs St. John Passion: 1704-1717" (BCW Articles, 2010), https://www.bach-cantatas.com/Articles/SJP-Hoffman-1.htm#PostelPassion.
8 Rainer Kleinertz, "Handel's St John Passion: A Fresh Look at the Evidence from Mattheson's Critica Musica" in Academia (2005, https://www.academia.edu/6672178/Handels_St_John_Passion_A_Fresh_Look_at_the_Evidence_from_Matthesons_Critica_Musica)
9 Hans Lenneberg, "Bach, Handel, and Relative Success," Part I, in Bach, Journal of the Riemenschneider Bach Institute, Vol. 12, No. 4 (Berea OH, October 1981: 22-27).
10 Cited in Herbert Kupferberg, Basically Bach: a 300th birthday celebration (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1985: 50), Amazon.com.
11 The New Bach Reader: A Life of Johann Sebastian Bach in Letters and Documents, ed. Hans T. David and Arthur Mendel, rev. and enlarged Christoph Wolff (New York: Norton, 1998: 401ff; https://www.bach-cantatas.com/Books/Bach-Reader[Mendel].htm).
12 Peter Wollny, "Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach Charity Concert 1786," liner notes http://accentus.com/discs/320/).
13 Alfred Mann, "Conclusion: Missa and Messiah," in Bach and Handel: Choral Performance Practice (Chapel Hill NC: Hinshaw Music, 1992: 107f).
To Come: Bach and Handel: A comparative critique by Joseph P. Swain, etc. |
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Bach and Handel: Lives, Interests, Common Genres |
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William L. Hoffman wrote (March 13, 2020):
Actual history and succeeding reception history have treated Bach and Handel with a range of findings and perspectives, still being discovered or reexamined. Following an initial response of rivalry between their followers, downplaying each other, the two are now closely associated. In both cases, the Romantic revival of these two now-legends forged various myths in an interpretive history that sometimes may be considered a game that the living play on the dead (or verse visa?). Handel's reputation during his life followed after his death while Bach's stature began a half-century after his death in 1750. Although they followed different paths in different settings, they faced many of the challenges of composers in the High Baroque, transitioning from patronage to free-lance self-sufficiency while "public" audiences grew. They responded decisively while in later life pondered their legacies. In matters of musical style, they were cut from the same cloth but produced distinctive differences, all the while expressing their own unique voices which are captured in videos today. Handel triumphed in Italian opera and English Oratorio, while Bach created monumental, dramatic Passions and other large-scale sacred compositions. Both exhibited selective, positive personality traits and musically made wholesale borrowings, Bach throughout his later St. Mark Passion, Christmas Oratorio, and B-Minor Mass, Handel with themes of his and others in his operas and oratorios.
Initially, Handel, a veritable opportunist and entrepreneur with a glowing reputation, thrived, achieving his first biography, John Mainwarings Memoirs of the Life of the Late George Frederic Handel, a year after his death in 1759. Handel scholars, despite a wealth of documentation and first-hand accounts, still are trying to separate fact and fiction. A recent example is David Viker's study, The Mysteries, Myths, and Truths about Mr Handel (November 1, 2014; Grammophone https://www.gramophone.co.uk/features/article/the-mysteries-myths-and-truths-about-mr-handel). Bach had to wait a half century before beginning to achieve similar stature. In essence, Bach's musical vocation was the church milieu and Handel's the theatrical world where each succeeded, making profound, lasting impacts, as shown in Joseph P. Swain's recent and welcomed monograph on both.1
Their Lives, Musical Interests
In retrospect, both Bach and Handel thrived, often in the right places and at the right times, as the studied and practiced musical compass returned northward following centuries in Italy, led by opera. While each took different paths with contrasting outcomes, they capitalized on their unique gifts and special circumstances. While some of their motives are still pondered, their methods and opportunities are being increasingly examined and understood. Although some musicologists today still question or disparage their borrowings (Handel is legion) as pejorative "parody" or plagiarism, increasingly thoughtful exploration of their motives and processes suggest a multiplicity of views and practices rather than mere perfunctory convenience. Despite great differences in their personal lives, they pursued increasingly free-lance musical opportunities and with these they often exhibited similar personality traits. Neither suffered fools well but were willful exhibitors of their abilities, sometimes struggling with authority. They defended their hard-earned stations and intentionally exploited their callings, crafts and talents while surmounting setbacks with optional alternatives. Handel basked in his status as an impresario while Bach literally courted the title of capellmeister. Neither had a university degree, while they were skillful observers of the latest learned interests as well as prevailing political and social winds. They recognized musical talents, with Bach the true pedagogue and practicing musician. It is tempting to imagine a keyboard competition between the two, whether in Hamburg in 1705-06 or in 1719 at the Dresden Court. Where Bach won by default over Marchand in 1717 in Dresden, Handel had the edge over Domenico Scarlatti in 1709 in Rome.
In matters of musical style, both were thoroughly trained in baroque musicality and convention. Bach generally was a later-comer, adjusting to newer pursuits such as the galant and popular dances, but with a pragmatic motivation towards the progressive interests of his Leipzig Collegium musicum and the reigning Dresden court where he found music of Handel to present in the 1730s. Handel was obviously attuned to the latest musical theater interests but deftly changed from Italian opera to English oratorio. Bach seemed more intentional in his extra-musical activities, such as publication and teaching and the deficiencies of his performing forces. Both cultivated relationships within prescribed boundaries, based upon their interests and skills. Although Bach is usually considered above Handel as a musical genius, both men in the unconditional exercise of their talents took the full measure of their gifts. Each in his way in the decade of the 1740s pondered his musical legacies. Two areas that could be further explored from a contemporary perspective are each composer's sense of agency and privilege. In their leisure time or beyond their normal pursuits, Bach enjoyed home music making and savored tobacco, wine, beer, and coffee while Handel enjoyed good food and wine and the courting of people with status.2
Common Genres, Acclaim
Handel and Bach remained faithful to the composition of certain genres. From 1732 to the composition of Messiah in 1742, Handel alternated in his dramatic works between performances of opera and oratorio, Swain shows (Ibid.: 440f). Then Handel presented 15 oratorios through 1757 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_compositions_by_George_Frideric_Handel#Oratorios. "The history of his English-language works shows that he never really ceased experimenting quite broadly," he observes (Ibid.: 441). Bach in Leipzig presented almost annually Passion oratorios on Good Friday (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passions_(Bach) and the annual cantata for the installation of the town council in late August (http://www.bach-cantatas.com/BWV71-D4.htm: paragraph beginning "http://www.bach-cantatas.com/BWV71-D4.htm." A list of the town council installation dates (1723-1750), music where known, and preacher is found in the late Martin Petzoldt's Bach Kommentar, Vol. 3.3 The list of Passion performances (Ibid.: Wikipedia) shows that Bach presented versions of all four gospel settings (BWV 244-247) between 1728-31 and possibly again (1742-45) while presenting performances of poetic oratorio Passions of Stölzel, Telemann, and Handel, and pasticcio Passions of Graun and Keiser-Handel.
The Swain study of Bach and Handel asks why they as "cultural twins" "born less than one month and 125 kilometers apart" "could compose so differently from each other as well as their colleagues and yet both achieve universal acclaim as the greatest composers of the Baroque" (Ibid.: vii). Following Swain's introduction are Part I chapters on "A Marvelous Synchronicity" and "Recovering the Critical Ear" with illumination and explanation as well as "why it took so long to get the first substantial comparative critique of these two masters" because of 19th century myths and misunderstandings. These are overcome with a growing awareness of these composers in the contexts of the world around them and the listeners' receptive experience to their music, from novice to expert, "that their music makes its marvelous effects on modern listeners chiefly through the interaction of its sounds." Because of the immensity and variety of their repertories, Swain focuses on their principal genres which sometimes overlap with "the premises and perspectives that ground the criticism of their music in the rest of the book" (Ibid.: ixf), with an emphasis on the "quintessential Baroque aesthetic of music drama" explored in the next two chapters (Part II), "Gifts of the Seicento" (16th century). Swain also provides "a short list of representative and superb examples of their personal styles." In Part III, six essential concepts are analyzed: cantus firmus, dance, ostinato, cantilena, fugue, and ritornello. Part IV examines their "Music and Drama" with chapter's on Handel's Opera seria and English Oratorio, Bach's Passions, and their solo sonata and concerto works.
Part V, Conclusion," is Chapter 16, "Bach and Handel: Synchronicity and Freedom." Beyond the traditional two levels of comparative critique of their music" and "the Baroque style, unified by the aesthetic of music drama," is the third level, "the most abstract." Here "the book theorizes about the very nature of musical style by demonstrating how it comes about as the synthesis of a common musical language and the free imagination of composers," says Swain (Ibid.: x). In particular, Swain's "approach to Baroque rhythm is new," showing in the Bach oratorio Passion commentary ariosi of various characters, often paired with interpretive arias in the manner of opera seria, where there is "some kind of hypnotic motivic pattern that moves much faster than the most perceptible streams of harmonic rhythm," he says (Ibid.: 413). The narrative recitatives of the Evangelist at crucial places use embedded harmony for expression" (Ibid.: 404) in the "extension of harmonic structures through hierarchical organization." Other major facets of Bach's Passion gospel narrative are the use of highly dramatic turba crowd choruses (Ibid.: 405) and the accompagnato speeches of Jesus that range from his arietta-like words of institution at the Last Supper (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4o8Wlk3pkA) to his acknowledgement of his passion suffering in the Garden of Gethsemane, "Meine Seele ist betrübt bis an den Tod" (My soul is distressed even to death; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7PVoQpST4A: 9:53). Handel's poetic Brockes Passion oratorio, which Bach presented twice in the later 1740s, is "a sacred opera very close in character to Italian opera seria, and Handel has set it as such," says Swain (Ibid.: 435). "In Brockes, Jesus is just another human character."
"Marvelous Synchronicity"
In his first chapter, "The Marvelous Synchronicity," Swain (Ibid.: 2) offers the following commentary on Bach and Handel: "Both required time and experience to mature as composers"; "Neither had any idea of their position in the flow of music history, and neither had much influence on the history that immediately followed them." "The contrast in the two careers could not have been greater, and it is mostly responsible for the generic differences in their compositional ouvre," he says (Ibid.: 5). Yet, "Both men impressed with a certain generosity of heart" (Ibid.), Bach in his concern for his family and students; Handel with his annual Messiah charity concerts. Their personalities tell little about their music, says Swain, although as a generality Bach demanded and Handel could charm, characteristics found in their music. The 19th century Romantic elevation of music from craft to Art and "the new appreciation of the past fueled the recovery of Bach's and Handel's lost works," Swain says (Ibid.: 10), led by performances of both's major choral works and the publication of their complete works. Both pursued the craft of wholesale borrowing, Swain observes, in the face of the 19th century obsession with originality and creativity through pure inspiration but recognized in the 20th century as reworking that could take more time than new composition. Neither composer commented much on music or other interests although Bach's last works were not "attempts to achieve immortality," he says (Ibid.: 11) "but as scientific explorations, demonstrations of the possible in music. He and Handel created for their immediate circumstances, the demands of their church, their patrons, and their theater audience, and did not allow scruple to accommodate them as far as those high standards would allow."
Examining their "Unparalleled music," Swain offers a "more nuanced response" (Ibid.: 14), "that, perhaps because of their career paths, perhaps for other reasons, Bach and Handel viewed the whole art of composition in fundamentally different ways." Bach in his score notation, "Soli Deo Gloria" (to the glory of God alone), saw music as the "best means of glorifying God" which in turn is the main reason for man's life on earth. Handel had "a rather personal Christianity," says Swain (Ibid.: 6), "that sat very well among the educated of eighteenth-century England." Bach created music that reveals in collections "a rational musical universe" and seeks "to exhaust its possibilities of invention." Music as philosophy or science "fits quite well with a very-old stereotype of Bach's music: Bach is difficult, an acquired taste, complex," but this pays off in academia where "he has in modern times dominated conservatory education," he says (Ibid." 15), in sharp contrast to Handel-related studies. "If Bach is difficult, Handel is patently accessible, sometimes, it seems, to the point of banality." Handel's melodies have beauty and his choruses are breath-taking, given the unauthorized publication of his songs and the later English tradition of choir festivals.
Comparisons, Contrasts
Meanwhile, there is a monumentality in both composers' major choral works, while Handel's can stand beside Bach but with a different monumentality. Bach's is more complex while Handel's is more immediate and accessible. Still, Handel was thoroughly trained in counterpoint and the last pages of the "Amen" chorus in Messiah show "the greatest technical sophistication when he wished," says Swain (Ibid.: 17). A sharp comparison of Handel's and Bach's settings is found in the pastoral symphonies in Messiah and the Christmas Oratorio, both in 12/8 compound dance meter. Handel is succinct and spare in 11 measures with da-capo repeat, using strings in three-voice textures (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4d9Qnn25EK4). Bach takes the pastoral elements seriously and literally. The shepherds in the field are accompanied by a quartet of pastoral oboes and hunting oboes in dialogue and echo with strings and flutes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1bfAmz05Do), lasting 63 measures. "Bach's is one of the most beautifully lyrical pieces of instrumental counterpoint that he ever composed," says Swain (Ibid.: 19). Instrumental genres common to both show a "marvelous synchronicity," particularly Bach's concertos and Handel's suites, music with no overt religious connections (exception, Michael Marissen's The Social and Religious Designs of J.S. Bach's Brandenburg Concertos, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1869429.The_Social_and_Religious_Designs_of_J_S_Bach_s_Brandenburg_Concertos) but found in both venues of church and non-church "in various guises," Swain writes (Ibid.: 20). Bach "knew how to write a popular tune," notably "Air on a G String" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMkmQlfOJDk) and "Sleeper's Awake" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQM5ybyiC5c) while Bach's Passions are quite dramatic, he says (Ibid.: 21). Beside music with passages of monumentality are the moment-to-moment events in both composers' works, a paradox about the synchronicity of Bach and Handel, "music that is both different and great" (Ibid.: 22).
ENDNOTES
1 Joseph P. Swain, Listening to Bach and Handel: A Comparative Study (Hillsdale NY: Pendragon Press, 2018), Amazon.com).
2 Two videos are enactments of Handel's life, with musical examples: Tony Palmer's God Rot Turnbridge Wells (https://www.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/4ce2b71f89add), and Barokstar: George Frideric Handel (Amazon.com).
For a variety of Bach movies see https://www.bach-cantatas.com/Movie/Movies.htm. A classic is The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach (1968, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062804/). The Lutheran Church in America has produced three videos: Glory to God Alone: The Life of J. S. Bach (2010, http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Movie/Movies.htm), as well as two one-hour videos, In Search of Bach (1997, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOhj38FnEBc), and The Joy of Bach (1978, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R365zD9Rgto) with book, Robert E. A. Lee's The Joy of Bach (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1979; Amazon.com).
Other Bach movies include Mein Name ist Bach about his 1747 Berlin visit (2004, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulJGdZ-1BTU), and The Silence of Bach (2007, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1079450/).
3 Martin Petzoldt, Bach Kommentar, Vol. 3, Fest- und Kasualkantaten, Passionen, ed. Norbert Bolin (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2018, 175f).
To Come: Bach and Handel, further explorations of Baroque music language, six essential concepts, and music and drama. |
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Bach & Handel: Critical Ear, Musical Language |
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William L. Hoffman wrote (March 20, 2020):
Essential to a contemporary understanding of Bach and Handel is the concept of "Recovering the Critical Ear," Chapter 2 of the Part I, Introduction, in Joseph P. Swain's study of the two leading composers of the High Baroque.1 Beginning in the1960s, "the prerequisites for a sustained comparison of Bach and Handel" was undertaken, he observes (Ibid.: 24), and he suggests various governing musicological principles. The "ascertaining of facts was only the first stage of a process whose second stage was the discovery of laws," he says (Ibid: 25). One such principle is the compositional process, which entails a rigorous examination of the manuscripts as well as a still lacking "reliable knowledge about the cognitive process," he observes (Ibid.: 26). "Music, unlike writing, must suffer the mediation of ," he cautions (Ibid.: 27). "But if we cannot know the precise cognition of musical creation, can we at least know what composers intended by it," says Swain.
One factor is reception history which helps to understand the composer's motive, method, and opportunity. Still, there is a temporal gap between the composition and the later response, particularly in the music of Bach's Passions, where new sources are being discovered and definitive versions seem lacking. Swain uses linguistics to define musical characteristics as well as rhetorical devices such as symmetry, contrast, and repetition in the Baroque musical structure and individual movements. He urges critical listening of the music and its contexts and related, non-musical ingredients and conditions, as well as developing new perspectives on the same music. Using linguistic language, he advocated close attention to the phonology of musical timbres, the syntactical structure or construct, and semantical meanings in the contemporary listening experience. He described four main elements of Baroque syntax in the fusion of musical language and style as displayed in Bach and Handel's common practice of dramatic music: tonality and functional harmony, chromaticism and harmonic tension and resolution, counterpoint and variations in the exploitation of poetry and music in the theory of affections, especially word painting, and the contrast between "absolute" music and the extra-musical. The various generic traditions nurtured in the Baroque were transformed by the development of rhythm which Bach and Handel's fully exploited.
Temporal Gulf: Composition, Today
Knowing "Bach and Handel's intentions, taken in its most general sense, certainly has practical value," Swain says (Ibid.: 28), particularly in the "revival of historical instruments and 'authentic' performance practices." Turning to the concept of reception history, the response in various periods to the music helps inform an understanding at that time. The challenge remains continually to bridge the temporal gulf between the actual composition and the contemporary response, to come a little closer to the composer, his music and their meanings. Essential to this discussion is Daniel Melamed's study of Bach's Passions, BWV 244-247, first published in 2005, says Swain (Ibid.: 29).2 Recently, Melamed has turned to studies of Bach's two major works that are virtual parodies, the Mass in B-Minor (http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Vocal/BWV232-Gen19.htm: "B-Minor Mass: Contemporary Perspective"), and the Christmas Oratorio (http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Books/B0219.htm: "Reception History Essays").3 Beyond the differences in perception are "the commonalities of perception pervading Western civilization of the last three centuries and the ability of music lovers to learn the subtleties of Bach and Handel's musical language through direct experience with it," says Swain (Ibid.: 30). Now important are "the constraints conditioning the syntax and semantics of their musical language that we learn through experience with it," he says (Ibid.: 31).
Comparative Critique
To begin a comparative critique of Bach and Handel's music is the concept of motivic and thematic analysis which alone is "an ill-fitting theory," says Swain (Ibid.: 32). "A more recent theory of unity tailored to the Baroque, to the music of Bach in particular, points to generic and textual symmetry of the movements of large works, the so-called chiastic [cross-like] structures," he says (Ibid.: 34). In particular, Swain cites the final version of the "Credo" central section of the B-Minor Mass, the chorale cantatas with two choruses framing the recitative-aria pairings, and the entire St. Matthew Passion. This symmetrical, mirror-like structure can best be described as a palindrome with the concept of symmetry being one of the principles of rhetoric, both speech and music. Others essential rhetorical concepts are contrast and repetition. The Mass Ordinary textual sections also are a palindrome construct with the central creed statement balancing the opening and closing sorrowful Kyrie and Agnus Dei and the flanking, joyous Gloria and Sanctus-Benedictus-Osanna. On a smaller level, Baroque music "has a fine repertory of formal organizations" of individual movements, he says (Ibid: 36), such as binary dance forms in suites and variations, the ritornello or return, and the da-capo (ABA) aria. "But while these are all indispensable to the appreciation of Baroque music, only occasionally do they reward analysis of form per se." Instead, Swain turns to 20th century Schenkerian analysis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenkerian_analysis) "that emphasized two features essential to any understanding of baroque music: compound melody and embedded keys."
Musical structure offers various elements. The first is the melody in binary, contrasting relation. Repetition provides a sense "of a pattern boundary: metric patterns, antecedent-consequent phrase patterns, and on the high level of structure the da-capo aria," says Swain (Ibid.: 39). The structure as "organization" is described as a "set of elements related and unified by a common purpose." The limits of cognition that constrain music involve two fundamentals: the number of items and the duration of time, he says (Ibid.: 41). The number of well-crafted variations in Bach's Goldberg Variations with canonic segments and the various dance movements in Handel's Water Music constitute satisfying entities. A singular musical entity such as a fugue with its unity and integrity is limited by time constraint. "The longest continuous tight structures of Bach range from seven to nine minutes," he says (Ibid.: 43): the opening fugal dance chorus in the St. Matthew Passion (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eU6QEklM4SA) and the da capo aria "Erbarme dich" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPAiH9XhTHc), and the Ricercar from the Musical Offering (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3i6MorFy3YE). In contrast, "Handel rarely exceeds six minutes, mostly because he cannot avail himself of one of Bach's most powerful structure, the Lutheran chorale as cantus firmus, although he can write da capo arias as long as ten minutes." One such is "Priva son d'ogni conforto" from Guilo Cesare in Egitto" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWxcI6uYK00). "Time is for the composer what space is for the architect," says Swain (Ibid: 44). "Bigger and longer is not necessarily better, of course, but for certain effects great dimensions are indispensable." The long and tight opening of the St. Matthew Passion display "the techniques of high Baroque integration stretched to their utmost."
"The Critical Listener"
"The Critical Listener Illumination," is Swain's subtitle of a section of "Recovering the Critical Ear" (Ibid.: 45). Today, the "listening experience" involves two essential components: conscious awareness of the present with subconscious cognitions and long-term memory. The experience of hearing Bach's "Credo" involves "an intrinsically private component" such as the totality of past hearings, the context of the movements that precede it, related music known by the listener, and related non-musical experiences such as liturgies. "Indeed, redirecting one's attention in repeated encounters may be counted as a prime pleasure of listening," he says (Ibid.: 49). "When we recognize the combination of subjects of the 'Confiteor' [Bach's last composition c.1749, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwda71H3VE4] and appreciate the contrapuntal technique that brings it off, we are impressed with the achievement," he says (Ibid.: 50). Two rarities in Bach elicit a "brilliant effect on experiencedlisteners" in the transition from the "Confiteor" to the "Et expecto," a rare bridge in Bach to a rare stock-in-trade gesture in the fanfares (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDEYs7zSq9I).
Part II, The Baroque Musical Language, begins with Chapter 3, "Phonology, Syntax, and Semantics," an intense musicological-linguistic study of the musically-related terms involving the distinctive sounds (timbres) of fundamental components, the structure or order of the music, and the meanings and contexts of the contemporary listening experience. To come to grips with these three concepts as they apply to Bach and Handel's music, Swain begins with the synonymy of Charles Rosen's The Classical Style: Haydn. Mozart, Beethoven (New York: W. W. Norton, 1972), which is a fusion of musical language and musical style. This distinction of language and style "obtains for the Baroque just as well, and any thorough comparison of Bach and Handel's music must begin with it," he says (Ibid: 57) A musical language involves "a set of discreet pitches and durations further limited by characteristic timbres a phonology that combine according to rules of syntax to create the hierarchical organization of tones that we call music, and these often are endowed with semantic properties appropriate for specific contexts or uses," he says (Ibid.: 57f). Most of the chapter is devoted to musical-linguistic language with little consideration of Baroque musical style since that era of the tonal system from modes to keys which was known as the Common Practice Period (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_practice_period) leading to the Classical Period.
Baroque Syntax in Four Acts
Swain focuses on the "Baroque syntax," dividing it dramatically into four acts. The first involves the movement toward tonality and functional harmony with examples from the opening subjects of Bach's The Art of Fugue and Handel's "He trusted in God" from Messiah, as well as the interplay of major and parallel minor keys in Handel's chorus, "He was despised" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CP4JSVMBdZg) and Bach's "Fugue No. 23 in B major" from the Well-Tempered Clavier II (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llG7QfZurPg), with "a longer, more chromaticized version of the same technique," says Swain (Ibid.: 64). Handel uses this same technique in the chorus "They loathe to drink of the river" from Israel in Egypt (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gr3yrrU9Rik. The syntax of Baroque chromaticism that controls tonal clarity involves three types, the first is the infilling of a melodic interval bounded by two diatonic pitches, found in the harpsichord cadence in the Fifth Brandenburg Concerto (Ibid.: 67; m. 200, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vx4Sc_SMsQ: 8:40). "Another survivor from the high Renaissance sacred tradition is the so-called 'Picardie third,' says Swain (Ibid.), where at the last chord the third step of the minor mode is raised a half step to end in the major mode. Handel avoids it while Bach uses it, for example, to close the opening chorus of the St. Matthew Passion (Ibid.: 6:42). Completely new in the Baroque era is functional chromaticism where a chromatic pitch is used to start the process of modulation. This functional harmony (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Function_(music)) "is a syntax that orders the chords arising from the simultaneous melodies," he says (Ibid.: 70f), most notably in the alternation of tonic and dominant functions. The opening phrases of numerous Baroque works establish this procedure as found in the Brandenburg Concertos, most of the dances in the Water Music, the "Gloria" from the B-Minor Mass, the chorus "Lift up ye heads," and "numberless dance movements of Bach and Handel" (Ibid.: 71). Most notably in the Baroque harmonic lexicon "that would benefit immeasurably the music of Bach and Handel," he says (Ibid.: 72) are the expanded triad chords of the dominant seventh (V7), with "so many new advantages to harmonic syntax" (Ibid.: 73), and the diminished seventh (V09) for modulation. This is quite effective in the "Hallelujah" chorus of Messiah (m. 66, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YaGwI7GjlA: 2:33) and Bach's Partita No. 3 for Solo Violin, BWV 1006 (m. 114, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tjl07RmEQg: 3:00). The Baroque "brought four essential syntactic evolutions," says Swain (Ibid.: 75): tonal center of pitches in action, winnowing of scale form to just major and minor, "enrichment in the function and meaning of chromaticism," and functional harmony. In "Baroque Syntax, Act Two," Swain discusses the use of musical syntax to create tension and resolution, such as Handel's "Amen," from Messiah (Ibid.: 80; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnM-ULNxDus): 3:35).
In "Baroque Syntax, Act Three," Swain praises Bach's overt compositional prowess in counterpoint, variations, and organ chorale preludes while noting that "the meaning of these techniques and of a great deal of Handel's music, remain under-appreciated and unexplained" (Ibid.: 82). The "single-minded appreciation of Bach," he says, was attacked in Theodore Adorno's famous 1950s essay, Bach Defended Against His Devotees" (New Bach Studies: Evangelists of the Modern, https://www.bach-cantatas.com/Books/Book-Gen3.htm). During the Baroque era, as the form and function of music was established, the debate over the meaning of music and the human response began in earnest. Baroque semantics produced the traditional pole of referentialism, "the idea that the sounds of music refer and point to things beyond themselves, out there in the world," says Swain (Ibid.: 84), in contrast to the opposite pole of musical semantics: absolutism, sometimes called "pure" music. Bach's final learned collections of The Art of Fugue, The Musical Offering, and The Well-Tempered Clavier II, were originally considered absolute music. Baroque treatises studied musical rhetoric, passions, and meaning, "all of which take this intimate relation [poetry and music] for granted. Thus "extra-musical reference is an essential part of the musical experience. The familiar Affektenlehre ('theory of affections') and techniques of word painting stand at the head of the list of referential systems." The fusion of poetry and music was first found in Monteverdi madrigals c.1600, leading to melody and meaning and the flowering of dramatic musical techniques such as word painting which is still called a madrigalism and where Bach's poetic vocal movements (arias and choruses) are called "madrigalian" (https://www.thefreedictionary.com/madrigalian). Handel's settings of the words "mountains," "low," "crooked" and "straight" from the aria "Ev're valley" in Messiah "are easy examples," says Swain (Ibid: 85; mm. 24-28, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvUBF3kU7qk: :54). Another is Bach's St. Johan Passion narrative setting of Peter warming himself (wärmete sich; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ygzbDk8WgM). This musical meaning engenders iconic symbols as found in the writings of Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914).4
Affections, Parody, Inheritance
Handel treasured the doctrine of affections in his opera seria with the conventions of arias showing rage, jealousy, betrayal, loss, love, or redemption, such as father Manoa's aria, "How willing my paternal love," in the dramatic English language oratorio, Samson (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tm0MLAwolqk). "But the death blow to the Affekten is parody [new text underlay], recycling of old music for new purposes, practices widely by both Bach and Handel," says Swain (Ibid.: 89). He gives two examples: the lover's tiff duet "No, di voi non vo' fidarmi" from Handel's Italian cantata (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DR7X4z5ujdE) which becomes the joyful chorus, "For unto us a Child is born" in Messiah (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owcn6fgYwpw), and Bach's double chorus in congratulatory Cantata 215, Preise deine Glücke, gesegnetes Sachen (Praise your good fortune, blessed Saxony), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-Ea5TxZvjg, becomes the "Osanna" in his B-Minor Mass (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ii-ltNvbvnQ). Swain later suggests (Ibid: 93) that the semantic range enabled Bach to "honor the elector of Saxony" as well as to honor God, just as Handel was able to expand the range from an amorous cantata to the birth of Jesus. "The relationship between semantic range and context is mutually circular, a feedback relationship." In summary, he says: "The interactive dynamism of the composer's music, the musical communities that hear it, and the ever-changing context explains the freshness of meaning that comes with every hearing, and explains the broad and even unexpected semantics of what might be considered fixed 'vocabulary'."
Finally, in "Baroque Syntax, Act Four," Swain affirms that "the coordination of compositional technique" became "the first correspondence of syntax and semantics" (Ibid.: 94). "In linguistics, language structure and language meaning are separate fields of study, but few pretend that in actual workings of language they are completely independent. On the contrary, it seems impossible to move one variable while leaving the other unchanged." "And so the most important semantics of music, by far, arise from the effects of its syntax. This is true of almost all instrumental music, which of course lacks the focusing semantics if words, but also of vocal music where the match between the semantic range of the music and the sung text need not be particularly strong," he says (Ibid.: 95). "Bach and Handel inherited some of the most cherished generic traditions from the sixteenth century: the imitative genres of canon and fugue, the improvisational genres of toccata, fantasia, and prelude, and the dance suite," he concludes (Ibid.: 97). Yet, "by the time Bach and Handel came to know them they had been utterly transformed by the most distinctive aspect of all Baroque syntax: its rhythm. A new rhythm had arisen out of the new, quintessential Baroque genre: music drama."
ENDNOTES
1 Joseph P. Swain, Listening to Bach and Handel: A Comparative Study (Hillsdale NY: Pendragon Press, 2018: 23ff), Amazon.com).
2 Daniel Melamed, Hearing Bach's Passions, updated ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), with a new "Preface to the 2016 edition" (http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Books/B0214.htm) which describes recent discoveries of three libretto books of the definitive version of the St. Mark Passion, BWV 247, in 1744 at the St. Thomas Church; the 1725 expanded version of the St. John Passion, suggesting that Bach student Christoph Birkmann was the author of the added movements, BWV 245a-c; and the 1734 performance of Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel's 1720 poetic Passion Oratorio, "Ein Lämmlein geht und trägt die Schuld."
3 Daniel R. Melamed, Listening to Bach: The Mass in B Minor and The Christmas Oratorio (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018).
4 Charles Pierce writings, see Mark Reybrouck, "Musical sense-making between experience and conceptualisation: the legacy of Peirce, Dewey and James" (University of Leuven, 2014; https://pressto.amu.edu.pl/index.php/ism/article/view/15370/15140).
To Come: Bach & Handel: Music, Instrumental Drama |
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Continue on Part 5 |
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