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George Frideric Handel & Bach
Discussions - Part 7 |
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Continue from Part 6 |
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Bach-Handel: Synchronicity, Lives, Interests, Common Genres |
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William L. Hoffman wrote (May 6, 2021):
(Editor's Note: To begin the discussion of the Bach-Handel synchronicity, select excerpts from two previous Bach Mailing List (BML) discussion of Bach and Handel are presented, "Bach and Handel: Synchronicity, Serendipity" and "Bach and Handel: Lives, Interests, Common Genres"; see BCW.)
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 (BCW)— overlapped yet were in congruity more than is documented or considered. The two composers with close origin history created contrasting works that show the best of Baroque music while their similar genres developed often about the same time and yet hundreds of miles apart, with little awareness of each other's spheres of influence. At the same time, Bach and Handel were subject to similar influences both musically and textually, although responding in different ways. Their two vocal masterpieces, Bach's Mass in B Minor and Handel's Messiah, seem cut from the same liturgical, Christological cloth. Their reception history has been a wavering affair. Initially, Handel was a public figure and national treasure in England at his centennial birthday as national observance 1785, although only Messiah was widely celebrated and prospered into the 19th century, observes Harry White.1 Bach's same centennial date stirred Charles Burney's slanted comparison and Bach son Emanuel's response. Meanwhile, the groundwork for the Bach tradition was being forged through Bach circles in Germany and Austria. Both composers' fame prospered in the 19th century Romantic revival, particularly Bach's on the continent with many composers/performers championing his music. With the growth of the Baroque music revival and recording industry beginning in the 20th century, Bach's fame grew exponentially while Handel's music was revived, both operas and oratorios. Both composers distinctions and commonalities are now being explored from a variety of perspectives, blurring the divide between the two and broadening their understanding.
Bach-Handel Perspectives
The first significant study of Bach and Handel was undertaken in 1784 at the centennial of Handel's birth by 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 Reader2 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 (Hathi Trust Digital Library: scroll down). 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 over his father as a progressive composer. The anonymous 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 while Handle in 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.3 The contemporary 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 a comparative essay,4 examining performance practices in 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."
Bach-Handel Artistic Phases
Handel's great sacred drama, Messiah, was premiered in 1742, about that same time that Bach began to complete his great sacred drama, the Mass in B Minor, finished in 1749. Extended sacred dramatic music can be traced back to the Bach and Handel encounters with Buxtehude's Abendmusiken, says Alfred Mann in another comparative essay.5 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 text 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 39.6 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.7 "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," he says (Ibid.: 174), Handel with the Coronation Anthems (Wikipedia) and Bach with the St. Matthew Passion (Wikipedia). "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, while Bach presented his Christmas Oratorio in 1734/5. Bach in 1733 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. Later, Bach 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, while "we can discern a further parallel to Bach's deep probing of the dramatic interpretation of the sacred text," Mann 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" in Messiah, Mann observes (Ibid.: 178). Initially, Handel, a veritaopportunist and entrepreneur with a glowing reputation, thrived, achieving his first biography, John Mainwaring’s 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 Gramophone). 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.8
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. As 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 commissions and free-lance musical opportunities, and with these they often exhibited similar personality traits. Neither suffered fools well but were willful exhibitors of their abilities while sometimes struggling with authority. They defended their hard-earned stations and intentionally exploited their callings, crafts and talents while surmounting setbacks with select 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, social, and cultural 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 Louis 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 while he deftly transitioned 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 rewarding 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 genius and 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.9
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 (Wikipedia. "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 (Wikipedia and the annual cantata for the installation of the town council in late August (BCW: paragraph beginning "BCW." 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. 3.10 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 Preface (vii-xi) are Part I Introduction, Chapters 1: "A Marvelous Synchronicity" (1-22) and 2: "Recovering the Critical Ear" (23-56) 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 Part II, The Baroque Musical Language), Chapter 4: "Gifts of the Seicento: the Aesthetic of Music Drama" (16th century: 99-136) and Chapter 5: Gifts of the Seicento: Instrumental Drama" (137-172). Swain also provides "a short list of representative and superb examples of their personal styles." In Part III, six essential concepts are analyzed in chapters 6-11 (173-368): cantus firmus, dance, ostinato, cantilena, fugue, and ritornello. Part IV, examines their "Music and Drama" with chapters 12-15 (369-510) on Handel's Opera seria and English Oratorio, Bach's Passions, and their solo sonata and concerto works.
Part V, Conclusion," is Chapter 16 (511-560), "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 (YouTube) 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; YouTube: 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."
ENDNOTES
1 Harry White, The Musical Discourse of Servitude: Authority, Autonomy and the Work-Concept in Fux, Bach, and Handel (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020: 158-62); Amazon.com: "Look inside"; and BML commentary, BCW: "1784 Handel Apotheosis, Critical Neglect," "Messiah Eclipse."
2 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; BCW).
3 Peter Wollny, "Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach — Charity Concert 1786," liner notes Accentus).
4 Alfred Mann, "Conclusion: Missa and Messiah," in Bach and Handel: Choral Performance Practice (Chapel Hill NC: Hinshaw Music, 1992: 107f).
5 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 "Bach’s Dramatic Music: Serenades, Drammi per Musica, Oratorios (Bach Cantatas Website Articles 2008), BCW).
6 William L. Hoffman, "Lyrical Movements" and "Postel St. John Passion" in "Literary Origins of Bach’s St. John Passion: 1704-1717" (BCW Articles, 2010), BCW.
7 Rainer Kleinertz, "Handel's St John Passion: A Fresh Look at the Evidence from Mattheson's Critica Musica" in Academia (2005, Academia.edu).
8 Joseph P. Swain, Listening to Bach and Handel: A Comparative Study (Hillsdale NY: Pendragon Press, 2018), Amazon.com).
9 Two videos are enactments of Handel's life, with musical examples: Tony Palmer's God Rot Turnbridge Wells (BFI), and Barokstar: George Frideric Handel (Amazon.com). For a variety of Bach movies see BCW. A classic is The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach (1968, IMDB). The Lutheran Church in America has produced three videos: Glory to God Alone: The Life of J. S. Bach (2010, BCW), as well as two one-hour videos, In Search of Bach (1997, YouTube), and The Joy of Bach (1978, YouTube) 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, YouTube), and The Silence of Bach (2007, IMDB).
10 Martin Petzoldt, Bach Kommentar, Vol. 3, Fest- und Kasualkantaten, Passionen, ed. Norbert Bolin (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2018, 175f); recent information on lost council election cantatas is found at Wikipedia.
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To come: salient features of Joseph Swain's Listening to Bach and Handel, from BML order of discussion, March 20 to May 7, 2020 (http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Order-2020.htm). |
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Swain: Understanding Bach, Handel: Music Drama |
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William L. Hoffman wrote (May 10, 2021):
There is still much to explore and understand in the music of Bach and Handel, particularly from the perspectives of their similarities/differences and realization of the Baroque, as revealed in Joseph P. Swain's Listening to Bach and Handel: A Comparative Study (Hillsdale NY: Pendragon Press, 2018, Amazon.com). In 16 chapters, Swain provides a comprehensive examination (summary, Pendrago Press) involving the following: their "marvelous synchronicity" from the perspective of the critical ear through the architectural metaphor for musical structure; the Baroque musical language of phonology, syntax, and semantics as related to the 17th century aesthetic of vocal and instrumental drama; six essential Bach/Handel shared Baroque concepts of cantus firmus, dance, ostinato, cantilena, fugue, and ritornello that underlie their music; the specific music drama in Handel's opera seria and English Oratorio, Bach's Passions, as well as their solo sonata and concerto works; and, finally, the summary of their unique synchronicity "while restoring the freedom of composers to fashion the infinite possibilities of their native musical language into utterly distinct and individual new creations" (Pendragon Press: "Chapter 16"). This unique study of Bach and Handel agency and privilege found in Swain's 2018 study is a worthy companion to Harry White's 2020 study, The Musical Discourse of Servitude.1 The first five Chapters are described below.
Chapter 1, "Marvelous Synchronicity"
In his first chapter,2 "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 personalittell 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 composers 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.
Chapter 2, "Recovery of Critical Ear"
In Chapter 2, "The Recovery of the Critical Ear,"3 for "a sustained comparison of Bach and Handel," Swain suggests using 20th century governing musicological principles: the ascertaining of facts and the discovery of laws in primary musical sources. Reception history enables the understanding of the composer's motive, method, and opportunity with an acknowledged temporal gap between composition and succeeding responses involving new sources and perspectives, particularly in Bach's Passions. Swain uses linguistics to define musical characteristics as well as other 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, Swain advocates close attention to the phonology of musical timbres, the syntactical structure or construct, and semantical meanings in the contemporary listening experience. He describes 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 and conventions nurtured in the Baroque were transformed by the development of rhythm which Bach and Handel's fully exploited.
Temporal Gulf, Comparative Critique
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. 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). To begin a comparative critique of Bach's 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 in Bach's works the final version of the "Credo" central section of the B-Minor Mass (BMB), the chorale cantatas with two choruses framing the recitative-aria pairings, and the entire St. Matthew Passion. The symmetrical, mirror-like structures 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. 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 (Wikipedia) of the essential structure (Ursatz) "that emphasized two features essential to any understanding of baroque music: compound melody and embedded keys."
Musical Structure, Critical Listener
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), such as the opening fugal dance chorus in the St. Matthew Passion (YouTube), its da capo aria "Erbarme dich" (YouTube), and the Ricercar from the Musical Offering (YouTube). 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 aria is "Priva son d'ogni conforto" (I am deprived of all comfort) from Handel's Guilo Cesare in Egitto (YouTube). "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 displays "the techniques of high Baroque integration stretched to their utmost." "The Critical Listener — Illumination," is the last section of Swain's Chapter 2 (Ibid.: 45). Today, the "listening experience" involves two essential components: conscious awareness of the present with subconscious cognitions and long-term memory. The complete 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' [BMB, Bach's last composition c.1749, YouTube] 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 experienced listeners" 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 (YouTube).
Chapter 3, "Phonology, Syntax, Semantics"
Swain's Part II, The Baroque Musical Language, begins with Chapter 3, "Phonology, Syntax, and Semantics,"4 an intense musicological-linguistic study of the musically-related concepts 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). Baroque syntax Swain describes (Ibid.; 60) in four dramatic phases: 1. the movement toward tonality and functional harmony5 with examples from the opening subjects of Bach's The Art of Fugue (YouTube) and Handel's "He trusted in God" from Messiah (YouTube); 2. "the syntax that describes how the pitches and rhythms of the Barque combine in orderly fashion" (Ibid.: 76), "to create the compositions"; 3. techniques such as Bach's overt compositional prowess in counterpoint, variations, and organ chorale preludes while "the meaning of these techniques and of a great deal of Handel's music, remain under-appreciated and unexplained" (Ibid.: 82);6 and 4. Swain affirms that "the coordination of compositional technique" became "the first correspondence of syntax and semantics" (Ibid.: 94); "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."
Chapter 4, 17th Century Aesthetic of Music Drama
Swain's Chapter 4, "Gifts of the Seicento: the Aesthetic of Music Drama" (Ibid.: 99ff),7 reveals a key element in the development of Baroque music, beginning in the 1600s in the concept of musical drama as found in opera, oratorio, and other vocal genres such as madrigals and art songs. Swain begins with the element of stile antico church motive heritage as found in the music of Bach and Handel. He proceeds into the weeds — or flowerbeds — of music theory, showing that the instrumental sonatas and concertos of both composers greatly advanced the earlier settings with new rhythm providing a more distinctive, dramatic shape. The monody or recitative at the beginning of the Baroque established the vocal rhythmic pattern and meter with its strength and quality defining the difference among the developing genres of aria, recitative, accompagnato, arioso, etc. The greater musical hierarchy of rhythm and harmony is explored in Bach's Brandenburg Concertos with their distinguishing feature of motor rhythm eminently found in Bach's music. Built-in silence became another striking feature in both composers' music. Swain then examines the drama without words in the instrumental music, finding its own standing during the Baroque, with the accompanying development of music instruments and their virtuoso composer-performers. Arcangelo Corelli in his sonatas and concerti grossi developed the principle of embedded harmony which Handel used extensively in Messiah. While building their reputations as improvisors on the keyboard, both composers perfected the musical hierarchy of rhythmic harmony, Handel in Messiah and Bach in the Well-Tempered Clavier, as they expanded Corelli's harmonic pedal point into broader harmonic sequences, "creating the coherence of a continuous Baroque composition," says Swain (Ibid.).
Instrumental Drama Without Words
Swain then devotes the succeeding Chapter, 5, "Gifts of the Seicento: Drama Without Words" (Ibid.: 137ff),8 to singular, dramatic Baroque instrumental music of Corelli and Vivaldi a century later and perfected in Bach and Handel as stand-alone works, and sharing the limelight with vocal music, displaying agile, voice-like features as well supporting extended works such as cantatas, oratorios, and operas. String instruments became the primary vehicle of sonatas for the venues of the church and household chamber, with distinct tempi and the challenges of "taxonomy, whether a single movement is a preludium type, a slow tripla, a fugue, or just imitative," he says (ibid.: 138). Advanced instrumental techniques had been developed, as well as advances in instrumental construction with families of string instruments, notably the da gamba followed by the violin. Composers became instrumental virtuosos, sharing the spotlight with singers, notably divas and castrati. "Clearly, a sea change had occurred," he observes (Ibid.: 139). Further, "The semantics of an opera libretto" "provided essential structure for the music of the new aesthetic, too." Instruments found their own voices. Keyboard music also flourished. "The youthful reputations of both Bach and Handel were in large part founded on their powers of improvisation, and both continued to use those powers throughout their careers to create preludes upon a hymn tune for the Lutheran liturgy or to entertain theater-goers during intermissions" with organ concertos says Swain (Ibid.: 140). "Thus in keyboard music, the sequence of toccata and fugue appears in logical contrast, a progression from disorder to order, from emotion to rationality, from fooling around on the instrument to real music." "The preference for rhythmically integrated music could hardly be clearer," he says (Ibid.: 141). Bach and Handel exploited embedded harmony within harmony, beginning with pedal point to compound melody in various voices to the High Baroque harmonic sequence.
ENDNOTES
1 Harry White, The Musical Discourse of Servitude: Authority, Autonomy and the Work-Concept in Fux, Bach, and Handel (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020: 158-62); Amazon.com: "Look inside").
2 Chapter 1source materials discussion: BCW: "Marvelous Synchronicity," "Comparisons, Contrasts."
3 Chapter 2 source materials discussion: BCW: "Bach & Handel: Critical Ear, Musical Language."
4 Chapter 3 source materials discussion: BCW: paragraph beginning "Part II, The Baroque Musical Language . . . ."); "phonology" definition, see Merriam-Webster.
5 Baroque chromaticism that controls tonal clarity involves three types: infilling of a melodic interval bounded by two diatonic pitches, the "Picardy Third" final chord raising the defining minor third tone a half step to major (St. Matthew Passion opening chorus closing chord, YouTube), and functional chromaticism where a chromatic pitch is used to start the process of modulation ie opening phrases of numerous Baroque works establish this procedure.
6 Musical semantics such as the familiar Affektenlehre ('theory of affections') and techniques of word painting stand at the head of the of referential systems" (Ibid.: 84); Handel treasured the doctrine of affections in his opera seria with the conventions of arias showing rage, jealousy, betrayal, loss, love, or redemption; and recycling of old music for new purposes, practices widely by both Bach and Handel," says Swain (Ibid.: 89), so that "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'."
7 Chapter 4 source materials discussion: BCW: "Bach, Handel Drama: Fulfillment of Baroque Principles."
8 Source materials discussion: BCW: "Bach, Handel Drama: Fulfillment of Baroque Principles," section beginning "Drama Without Words: Instrumental Music."
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To come: Bach, Handel Culmination of an Era: "Commonality, Connections," seven "Essential Concepts," "Comparative Vocal Genres." |
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Bach, Handel Culmination of an Era |
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William L. Hoffman wrote (May 14, 2021):
recent Bach-Handel study of Joseph P. Swain.2 Bach and Handel in their common cultural heritage in Germany and the Baroque era involved conditions that shaped their work, particularly music that shows a dramatic element. Most obvious are Bach's vocal works for the church and court and Handel's non-liturgical English oratorios, mostly from the Old Testament, for the theater. Both shared certain genres involving music of sorrow and joy, most notably funeral music, and the joyous "Gloria from Bach's B-Minor Mass and Handel's Canticle of Moses from Israel in Egypt. Two baroque forces are at work: cultural determinism and the individuality of Bach and Handel’s music. "The culture is given its rightful due while restoring the freedom of composers to fashion the infinite possibilities of their native musical language into utterly distinct and individual new creations," says the Chapter 16 summary of Swain's book (Pendago Press). Much lesser known dramatically are the instrumental works with implied drama using elements of contrast in style, dynamics, tempi, and ritornello, as well as tension and release, and dance. Meanwhile, Christoph Wolff's new study of Bach's major works finds two important connections between Bach and Handel: an ostinato figure found in a Handel harpsichord variation and Bach's Goldberg Variations aria and "A Grand Liturgical Messiah Cycle: Three Passions and a Trilogy of Oratorios" of Christoph Wolff.3
Common Interests: Music of Sorrow, Joy.
In the subchapter, "Slaves to Church and Theater?,"of his final Chapter 16, "Bach and Handel: Synchronicity and Freedom,"4 Swain says that the "two must have inherited the same musical language and cultural instincts" (Ibid.: 513), and yet their music sounds different, not only from one another but also from their fellow composers of the Baroque." Handel in 1737 had written a funeral anthem for Queen Caroline, The Ways of Zion Do Mourn (YouTube), which became the first part of the oratorio Israel in Egypt (1739). Other Handel music of mourning includes the Dead March from Saul (1739) and Samson (1743), YouTube) and the original Dead March from Samson (YouTube), as well as the aria/chorus "Ye sons of Israel, now lament" (YouTube). Over a much longer period, Bach composed music of mourning as vocal concertos, motets, and funeral cantatas, some associated with parody, honoring royalty: Weimar Prince Johann Ernst, BWV 1142 (1716, BCW: "Weimar Funeral Cantata BC 19"), Saxon Queen Christiane Eberhardine, BWV 198 (1727, BCW), and Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Köthen, BWV 1143 (YouTube).
Music of joy permeates many works of Bach and Handel, most notably the former's "Gloria" from the Mass in B-Minor (YouTube) and Handel's Canticle of Moses from Israel in Egypt (YouTube). "Most obvious is that they both produce a good sound," says Swain (Ibid.: 512). Yet, they "sound so different from one another, so much like Bach and Handel, because they have different purposes and different cultural contexts," he says (Ibid.: 514), Bach for the church liturgy main service and Handel for theater entertainment. One difference is the composers' use of borrowed material. Handel as master of a great variety of self-borrowing and from others, often used simple motives such as three from the Allesandro Stradella serenata, Qual prodigio è ch'io miri? (YouTube) for the chorus "He gave them hailstone for rain" (YouTube). This "Handel perhaps in a playful test of his own ingenuity, turns into one of his most sonically explosive and rhythmically stirring choruses," says Swain (Ibid.: 540). "In considering instead those movements which Handel adapts more or less wholesale, transcriptions or near-transcriptions, it appears that in such borrowings Handel either preserves or increases the textural and timbral articulations that work best on the higher level of structure." One of the best known Handel self-borrowings is the lover's tiff duet "No, di voi non vo' fidarmi" from Handel's Italian cantata (YouTube) which becomes the joyful chorus, "For unto us a Child is born" in Messiah (YouTube). Bach in his music of joy does wholesale transcriptions, most notably from annual occasional music for the Leipzig Town to contrafactions in the B-Minor Mass, in Cantatas 29, 120, and 193 (YouTube) as well as congratulatory drammi per musica (BCW).
Essential Compositional Principles
Swain at the Introduction of Part III (Ibid.; 173ff) explores "Bach, Handel. and Six Essential Concepts": cantus firmus, dance, ostinato, cantilena, fugue, and ritornello. The "understanding of their mastery is indispensable for any deep appreciation of their art," he says (Ibid.: 173). While the instrumental ritornello was fully developed during the Baroque, the others predate that era. The two composers "invented none of them but transformed all of them" as part of the later common practice period (Wikipedia). The six are essential to musical organization in the Gestalt concept of similarity through repetition, although "the cantus firmus and cantilena need not repeat themselves," he says (Ibid.: 174). Each contributes to a more substantial, recognizable individual movement through its narrative or unfolding. Four "may by themselves suffice to stand alone as independent movements: fugue, ostinato movement (which may also be named chaconne, passacaglia, or ground), a dance movement, and a cantilena." The "six concepts are not mutually exclusive. Some of the most interesting Baroque movements are combinations of them." The great opening chorus of the St. Matthew Passion, "Kommt, ihr Töchter" (YouTube), combines a cantus firmus chorale trope within a ritornello structure of a fugue, set in a pastorale dance style. All these ingredients, used imaginatively and extensively in the music of Bach and Handel, "contribute to a movement's organization, its scheme for meeting the perceptual and cognrequirements of its intended audience," Swain in his Chapter 6, "Cantus Firmus," says (Ibid.: 175), "along with the more fundamental components of the musical language" such as melody, harmony, and rhythm.
Cantus Firmus
The cantus firmus (Wikipedia) beginning in Latin Church music as a pre-existing melody, was pervasively used by Bach, particularly in its later manifestation as a Lutheran chorale melody sung in vernacular German first translated by Martin Luther. His settings of sacred songs as strophic poetry "often adapted from Biblical sources, ignited an explosion," says Swain (Ibid.: 189). Bach responded with many settings as plain chorales, chorale choruses and tropes in his vocal music as well as chorale preludes in his organ music. Bach's first vocal chorale setting, the chorale Cantata 4, "Christ lag in Todesbanden" (Christ lay in death's bonds, YouTube), possibly used as early as Easter Sunday, 4 April 1706, in Arnstadt, composed Luther's chorale in eight varied settings as an instrumental sinfonia, two chorale choruses, four chorale arrangements for soloists (including a trope in ostinato and a trio sonata), and a plain, four-part chorale (BCW). Handel uses cantus firmus as anticipation says Swain (Ibid.: 192). In the chorus from Israel in Egypt, "And the children of Israel sigh'd" (YouTube) the melody of "Christ lag" "seems to sound in the sustained melodies," he says (Ibid.: 192f). Two chorale melodies, "Herr Jesu Christ, du höchtes Gut" and "Du Friedefürst, Herr Jesu Christ," are quoted in the Funeral Anthem for Queen Caroline (YouTube). Handel "exploited it in every kind of music he wrote: opera arias, dances, concerto ritornellos, and certainly the grand choruses." The closing chorus, "Give glory of his awful name" from Athalia (YouTube: mm. 9-13) is "an authentic cantus firmus" that "adumbrates Bach's handling of 'Wachet Auf" in Cantata 140 very well" (YouTube), he says (Ibid.: 197).
Dance: Bach, Handel Forte
"No devotee of Bach and Handel's music can escape the dance," says Swain in Chapter 7, "Dance" (Ibid.: 203). Besides "sacred music, all the world's musical traditions owe much of their origins and substance to dancing, but even so, dance infects Baroque music more than any other period of the Western tradition." "Not infrequently, dance rhythms animated the most fashionable church music." Bach's instrumental collections of dance music — the French and English Suites and the Partitas — are legion, "not only for keyboard practice but as superior models of composition." Handel's suites for harpsichord date from about the same period (1703-20) while his "most famous dance music comes from suites for orchestra:" the Water Music from 1717 (YouTube) and the Music for the Royal Fireworks of 1749 (YouTube). Bach's Four Suites for Orchestra, BWV 1066-69 (YouTube) also are known as overtures while Handel's extended opera and oratorio overtures use various dance styles (YouTube). "They wrote hundreds more dance movements in the form of arias and concerto movements that are not so named but bear every characteristic," such as the gigue in the finale of the Fifth Brandenburg Concerto (YouTube) and the siciliana in Handel's aria, "He shall feed His flock" from Messiah (YouTube). Bach closes all three of his Passion oratorios with the so-called great "rest in the grave" choruses which are all dances set to texts of sorrow in variant da capo form: John, "Ruht wohl, ihr heiligen Gebeine" (Rest well, ye holy limbs) which is a 3/4 minuet (YouTube); Matthew, "Wir setzen uns mit Tränen nieder" (We sit ourselves down in tears), a 3/4 sarabande (YouTube); and Mark, "Bei deinem Grab und Leichenstein" (By thy rock grave and great tombstone), a 12/8 gigue (YouTube). Handel's 1724 Giulio Cesare in Egitto (YouTube) is a compendium of dance music in 14 of its three dozen mostly da capo arias, including "two bourrées, two gigues, two passepieds, two polonaises, a siciliana, a corrente, and allemande, and no less than three minuets," he says (Ibid.: 218). "Handel's choices of dance rhythms in Giulio Cesare correspond with and deepen the expressions of the characters."
Ostinato in Bach, Handel: Interplay, Springboard
The simple ostinato bass motive or pattern is the melodic springboard or wellspring for some of the finest music of Bach and Handel, observes Swain in his Chapter 8, "Ostinato." Originating in Spanish dance traditions of the late 16th century, it is known by other names as a passacaglia in Italian, chaconne in French (Wikipedia), and ground bass in English. The ostinato sparked an interplay between Bach and Handel dating to the 1730s and '40s, based on a figure in a Handel harpsichord variation and Bach's Goldberg Variations aria (BCW: "Bach-Handel Ostinato, BWV 988/1, HWV 442/62). In Bach, the aria ostinato is the seed of a set of motives, alternating with a set of canons throughout the Goldberg Variations.5 With a single harmonic plan, Bach composed an "encyclopedia of Baroque instrumental music," he says (Ibid.: 231). In the early Baroque, before the development of embedded harmony, the da capo aria, and the ritornello, the ostinato (Wikipedia) was the initial building block, exploiting the principle of similarity, to create a large-scale compositional structure to give substance to the music, an architecture that became the sonata form (Wikipedia) in the Classical era of thematic introduction, exposition, development, recapitulation, and coda. Handel shaped a chaconne figure to create the "Air and variations," known as the "The Harmonious Blacksmith,"6 the last movement of his keyboard Suite No. 5 in E Major, HWV 430 (YouTube). In both composers, the ostinato is the germ for sets of variations. Bach fully exploits the chaconne and passacaglia in two iconic instrumental works with variations: the "Chaconne" (YouTube) conclusion of the "Partita No. 2 for Unaccompanied Violin in D minor," BWV 1004, and the "Organ Passacaglia in C minor," BWV 582 (YouTube).
ENDNOTES
1 Karl and Irene Geiringer, Johann Sebastian Bach: Culmination of an Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966); Googgle Books.
2 Joseph P. Swain, concluding Chapter 16, "Bach and Handel: Synchronicity and Freedom," in Listening to Bach and Handel: A Comparative Study (Hillsdale NY: Pendragon Press, 2018), Amazon.com).
3 Christoph Wolff, Chapter 6, in Bach's Musical Universe: The Composer and His Work (New York: W. W. Norton, 2020), Amazon.com.
4 Source materials discussion: BCW: "Bach, Handel: Commonality, Connections."
5 Goldberg Variations: description, Wikipedia; YouTube; music, YouTube; score, YouTube).
6 The Harmonious Blacksmith: description, Wikipedia, music and score, YouTube.
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To come: Bach-Handel concepts (cantalena, fugue, ritornello), music and drama (opera seria, Passion, English oratorio, solo sonata and concerto), and conclusion, "Bach and Handel: Synchronicity and Freedom." |
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Bach-Handel: Common compositional Concepts, Vocal Drama, Sonatas, Concertos |
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William L. Hoffman wrote (May 18, 2021):
The full picture of Bach and Handel in the comparative critique of Joseph Swain1 shows the two Baroque masters in full command of the six essential concepts which enabled them through their music, often with strong correspondences, shared and pervasive synchronicity, and dramatic human qualities, to achieve supreme mastery and create a lasting impact on successive music. The Baroque essential concepts of cantilena, fugue, and ritornello in their music,2 in comparison with cantus firmus, dance, and ostinato, seem more limited in substance and application, yet each convention plays distinctive roles in their works: the melody of the seemingly simplistic cantilena in key instrumental and vocal slow movements seemed almost a show-stopper, the fugue as the calling card for Bach was a pervasive influence while in Handel a less strict but dramatically intrinsic element, and the ritornello passages in the pulsating instrumental and vocal music of both reveals supreme and profound creativity and enterprise. Together the six concepts enabled both composers to fashion dramatic vocal music3 without parallel, most notably in Handel opera seria, Bach oratorio Passion as extended cantata, Handel English oratorio and both in the solo sonata and concerto. Swain's choices of Bach and Handel's music in the context of musical analysis and criticism is revealing and thought-provoking yet extensive, dealing with their salient features, while this invites further exploration of the cultural and historical contexts in which the music was composed and the wider and deeper sweep of their legacies, especially from a comparative perspective. Certain related facets of their output invite further consideration and comparison, to explore the diverse and breath-taking sweep of Bach and Handel forests beyond the immediate, intrinsic minutiae of trees, branches, leaves or needles, stems, and buds or seeds.
Essential Concepts: Cantilena, Fugue, Ritorenello
Considering the cantilena, fugue, and ritornello as musical building blocks, the cantilena with its substance and subtlety plays a major role in Bach's concerto slow middle movements, with it singing melody and strong harmonic rhythm, in contrast to the complex, driving, concerted outer movements with extended ritornello architecture. Less profound but more ubiquitous are Handel's cantilenas throughout his instrumental music and selectively in his vocal works. Bach and Handel in their fugues explored dramatic pictorialism particularly in their staple vocal works, while both composers influenced thematic fugal works in the 19th century. Bach as the ultimate creator-performer of fugues takes pride of place throughout his music while Handel, thoroughly trained in counterpoint by Friedrich Wilhelm Zachow, revels in the French overture prelude and fugue form and certain show-stopping or concluding choruses in his oratorios. The instrumental ritornello opening and episodes, the formative hallmark of Baroque music but replaced by the sonata form in classical music, acquires new understanding today when studied in the music of Bach and Handel from the perspective of the "super ritornello" or seeming concerto within a concerto. In Bach, the super ritornello is a growing architectural shape that comes to dominate his Brandenburg Concertos (YouTube) while later it is part of expansive choruses that embrace other essential Baroque concepts such as cantus firmus, fugue and dance, most notably in the chorale cantata opening choruses and the St. Matthew Passion. For Handel, the super ritornello is a more selective discreet, economical convention.
Cantilena: Substance, Subtlety
While the cantilena is only now taking its rightful place in current discussions of music, it has long been recognized (Free Music Dictionary) as central to musical expression, understanding, and acceptance. The cantilena became manifest in the Baroque with its emphasis on singular melodic appeal, which became more pronounced as supportive harmony and rhythm became more distinguished and was fully exploited in the Classical era. Here is a summary of Joseph P. Swain's Chapter 9, "Cantilena," in his recent study of Bach and Handel (Ibid.: 269f): "The apparent simplicity of a long-breathed, single melody, such as those heard in the [Largo/Arioso] slow movement of Bach’s F minor harpsichord concerto (BCW) and Handel’s “O sleep," from Semele (BCW), depends upon a handling of harmony and harmonic rhythm every bit as subtle as found in their most complex counterpoint" (Pendragon Press). Bach's "Arioso," is a classic example of the use of a melody transcribed for various instruments in which the idiomatic environment is recast as, for example, for oboe (Cantata 156 opening sinfonia (YouTube), violin (YouTube), or transcribed for orchestra (YouTube). In each case the relaxed melody is expanded through varied phrasing and ornamentation to enhance the instrument while the orchestration is shaped to provide natural support. In Bach the motion and harmony "is very much part of his cantilena conception," says Swain (Ibid.: 273).
Fugue: Dramatic Pictorialism.
Fugue study had reached its peak in the Late Baroque while the actual use in compositions was already in decline. Bach became the master of the imitative fugue and canon in his last works (Wikipedia) while Handel specialized in certain types of fugues such as the French overtures in "more than four dozen fugues for orchestra, the concerti grosso, or above all choral fugues in anthems and oratorios," says Swain (Ibid.: 238). Bach was instrumental in the establishment of the legacy of selective fugal use applied in the 19th century. While use of the fugue declined dramatically in works of the Classical era, "in nineteenth century musical conservatories and academies, the fugue had become the centerpiece of compositional training," Swain says (Ibid.: 285). Here is Swain's summary of Chapter 10, "Fugue" in his Bach-Handel Study: "Bach and Handel arrive on the world stage at a moment when the academic prestige of fugue writing nears its peak while the actual use of fugues in music for the stage, the keyboard, and even the church is in severe decline. Examples from the Well-Tempered Clavier (WTC), the St. Matthew Passion, Messiah, and Saul demonstrate how to hear the great fugues of Bach and Handel as fluid variation sets on one hand [Bach keyboard works], as dramatic shapes on the other." The fugue is a staple in Bach's church music and Handel's oratorios. "The orchestral fugues in the French overtures and fsections of choruses of both Bach and Handel are familiar to any lover of Baroque music. An imitative texture may characterize a ritornello of a concerto, and sometimes even a dance. The fugal gigue is a staple of the Bach keyboard suite," says Swain (Ibid.: 289). Aspects of the fugue, such as fugal variations, the rhythms of fugues, the uses of fugues, and strict vs. apparent fugues are explored at length in Swain's chapter on fugues, showing how Bach explored all its facets in the WTC and the Musical Offering, as well as the form of prelude and fugue, most notably in the "Quoniam tu solus sanctus" (YouTube) and "Cum sancto spiritu" (YouTube) movements of the B-Minor Mass. "The fugues in Messiah offer a fine sampling of its dramatic uses:4 No. 7, "And he shall purify"; No. 25, "And with His stripes we are healed"; No. 28, "He trusted in God"; No 41, "Let us break their bonds asunder"; No. 44 (within "Hallelujah"): "For the Lord God" and "And He shall reign for ever and ever"; and No. 53, "Amen." Only one follows the strict Bachian model, "And with his stripes" (YouTube), with all four voices entering in stages and all continuing without a break to the final cadence.
Idiosyncratic "Super Ritornello"
How is this most Baroque of compositional strategies [the ritornello] distinguished in the hands of Bach and Handel?," asks Swain in his summary of Chapter 11, "Ritornello" (Ibid., Pendragon Press). "A new understanding of 'ritornello form,' the relation of a ritornello with other music in a movement, the ability of Bach and Handel to make something special of its final playing, and their entirely idiosyncratic “super ritornellos” (a new category) find illustration in Vivaldi’s “Spring” Concerto, Bach’s Second and Fourth Brandenburg Concertos, and Handel’s Israel in Egypt." The ritornello (Wikipedia) as an instrumental introduction with interludes in repeat occurrences, is the hallmark of the six essential Baroque concepts, essential to that period, born at the beginning (1600) and virtually gone at its conclusion (1750), involving the increasingly complex and growing concerted style while fundamental to the form of the vocal da-capo aria (ABA) and fast-slow fast movements in the instrumental concerto and chamber sonata. The ritornello maturation in the late 17th century "marks the beginning of the 'high Baroque'" of Bach and Handel, observes Swain (Ibid. 325). "Composers found ways to marry the ritornello with the imitative textures of the fugue and the long notes of the cantus firmus," and "longer movements using dance forms depended on it." A good example is the opening chorus of Bach's St. Matthew Passion, " "Kommt, ihr Töchter" (YouTube), which combines a cantus firmus within a ritornello structure of a fugue set in a pastorale dance. The "super ritornello" is an extended ritornello that in the opening of Bach's Fourth Brandenburg concerto seems like "Sort of a concerto within a concerto."5 It has its foundation in the concertos of Vivaldi, most notably the "Spring" Violin Concerto of the Four Seasons, Op. 8, No. 1 (YouTube) with its antecedent-consequent phrase of three measures each in thematic relationship in 13 measures, followed by pictorial descriptive episodes of birds, rivers, and storm interspersed with the phrase. Bach's Second Brandenburg Concerto begins in the same fashion with symmetrically balanced antecedent-consequent phrases of four measures YouTube, like a call and refrain which blend material, followed by the first episode of the solo violin (mm. 8-10). Handel "adopts Vivaldi's opening gambit in his ritornello to the aria "Thou shalt bring them in" from Israel in Egypt (YouTube) with a pulsating three-eights balanced phrase and consequent three-sixteenths unbalanced phrases, together called the Vordersatz (front structure) followed by the Foretspinnung (spinning forth) developmental progressions and the tonic cadence of the Epilog, these traits also prominent in Bach's ritornello movements, particularly opening choruses.
Bach-Handel: Comparative Vocal Genres
Bach and Handel brought new, revealing perspectives to certain genres in the high Baroque, displaying both shared synchronicity and human qualities particularly in their vocal music,6 says Joseph P. Swain in his recent Bach and Handel comparative critique. He selectively studies in four successive chapters (12-15) Handel's opera seria, with which the composer gained renown in England; Bach's extant Passion oratorios as masterpieces; Handel's English oratorios, the hallmark of his later fame; and the solo sonatas and concertos of both composers. He revisits the impact of the culture and environment in which Bach and Handel created their lasting and unique works and which influenced a sense of freedom to explore their inherent musical language involving highly individual creations. The 1733 composition of Bach's Missa: Kyrie Gloria and Handel's funeral anthem, The Ways of Zion do mourn, was a memorable synchronicity, the former becoming part of Bach's 1749 Missa tota, Mass in B-Minor, the latter becoming the first part of Israel in Egypt. Common to both works are two different movements as prelude and fugue. Bach in 1733 composed the "Gloria in excelsis Deo," followed by the fugal "Et in terra pax" (YouTube), and Handel in his 1739 revision as the final Part III of Israel in Egypt, the choruses "Moses and the Children of Israel" (YouTube) and the fugal "I will sing unto the Lord." Bach, "as a child of his time and an inheritor of the Baroque aesthetic of dramma per musica," wished his two choruses "to have dramatic shapes, building towards their ends, and so they do" in a church work, he says (Ibid.: 526), while Handel wished to create "a sacred semantic range" with a church tune in his theater work. "In short, church and theater cannot explain such moments, and many there are, when Bach and Handel seem to borrow the affects of each other's métier" (Ibid.). In "those occasions when Bach and Handel work outside their home bases, Bach in the Collegium musicum or secular cantata, Handel writing coronation anthems," "their musical characters remain largely intact," for example Bach concerto music reused in his third sacred cantata cycle and Handel anthems containing "moments just as thrilling as many in his theater pieces."
Opera Seria, Dramma per Musica.
The discussion of Swain's Part IV, Music and Drama, begins with Chapter 12, "Opera Seria" (Ibid.: 369), the dominant opera form in the later Baroque (Wikipedia) for which Handel composed 42 Italian language operas (Wikipedia), including pasticcios, variant versions, and transcriptions. The most notable element is the da capo arias (ABA), the form which Bach composed in the hundreds in his vocal music. The opera seria also was known as a dramma per musica for its libretto. While the opera seria dominated Handel opera compositions, beginning in 1705, the signature da capo aria had drawbacks, most notably its predicable repeat of the A section and the stock-in-trade simplistic affection, ranging from love to jealousy or rage with "love interests conflicted by moral dilemma," says Swain (Ibid.: 371). Character development is primary, narrative secondary. "As a synthesis, dramma per musica is a contextual compromise, a tug of war, a trade off of values, as is common in complex arts," he says (Ibid.: 387). Handel'Giulio Cesare in Egitto is probably his finest opera (Wikipedia). Cleopatra's Act III aria, "Piangerò la sorte mia" (I shall weep for my fate, YouTube), is a lament with ostinato and a contrasting, agitated B section. In the late 1730s, Handel ceased composing Italian opera and turned to English language "sacred" oratorios with choruses and focusing in the 1740s, also presented in theaters (Amazon.com). Ironically, some of these virtual closet dramas have considerable drama: Athalia (1733), Saul (1739), Samson (1743), and Jeptha (1752). Most notable is Samson, which was staged in 1958 at Covent Garden and the Met, at the 1985 tercentenary, and in 2008 (Independent).7 Beginning in 1725, Bach appropriated the term dramma per musica to describe his extended profane congratulatory cantatas (all with German texts) for the Dresden Court and its supporters in Leipzig. Here are 15 works with variants Bach titled dramma per musica (BCW): BWV Anh. 9 (BC G 14), BWV 193a (G 15), BWV Anh. 11 (G 16), BWV 213 (G 18), BWV 214 (G 19), BWV 205a (G 20), BWV 215 (G 21), BWV 206 version 1 (G 23), BWV 206 version 2a (G 26), BWV 249b (G 28), BWV 30a (G 31), BWV 205 (G 36), BWV 207 (G 37), BWV 201 (G 46) and BWV 211 (G 48), says Alberto Basso.8 Only the text survives for several (Anh. 9=1156, Anh. 11=1157, 193a, 205a, 249b), while movements were parodied in other works.9
Bach, Handel Instrumental Music
Bach and Handel share several important features in their instrumental works, particularly their common genre of sonatas and concertos.10 This music developed from the trio sonata form (Wikipedia) perfected by Archangelo Corelli, whom Handel knew in Rome. The "sonatas and concertos of Corelli, Vivaldi, Albinoni, Telemann and of course Bach and Handel were by far the most accessible and visible products of the first age of music drama," says Joseph P. Swain in his recent study of the two composers (Ibid.: Chapter 15, "Solo Sonata and Concerto," 381ff). "Any conception of the baroque solo sonata and solo concerto oriented towards music and drama must obviously be a metaphorical one," he says (Ibid.). "The concertos and sonatas of both Bach and Handel continue and perfect the course set for them by the early seventeenth century," says Swain (Ibid.: 103f; source BCW: "Bach, Handel, Sonatas, Concertos"), "the featured instrument is an abstract character in an abstract drama, the argument of which is the motivic material traded between the solo instrument and the bass." "Only the dance movements and imitative genres that survive into the Baroque lack this explicit yet abstract dramatization, but in the hands of Bach and Handel even these, through their transformation by the new Baroque rhythm, attain a dramatic shape that their ancestors never knew," he says (Ibid.: 104). Using the trio sonata form dominant in instrumental music from the mid-17th century onward, Bach composed chamber music sonatas for violin, flute and viola da gamba.11 The versions and datings of some of these works are still disputed, as are some of Handel's sonatas.12 Handel in some of his operas in successive performances created overtures from dance-style music as miniature suites taken from previous operas, most notably in the opera Il Pastor Fido,13 with the cantilena Adagio (YouTube).
Bach beat Handel to composing keyboard concertos, with the former's 5th Brandenburg Concerto (YouTube) while Handel's first was his organ concerto Op. 4, No. 6, in 1738 (YouTube). Handel at that time began performing organ concertos during the intermissions of his oratorios (Wikipedia). Of particular interest in the use of keyboard instruments in obligato roles is the initial, coincidental use of the organ in vocal compositions of Handel and Bach in 1707/8, the former in Rome and the latter in Mühlhausen, says John Butt in his essay on the genealogy of the keyboard concerto.14 Handel in the spring of 1707 in his first oratorio, Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno, uses in the instrumental sonata (No. 19) the organ as a solo with strings and oboe, followed by another obbligato role in the ensuing Pleasure aria, observes Butt. A year later, on Easter Sunday, Handel's second oratorio, La Resurrezione (YouTube), also used the harpsichord as part of a massive ensemble of more than 40 instruments. Earlier, on 4 February 1708, Bach premiered his Town Council Cantata 71, "Gott is mein König," with a solo part for organ (no 2), Ich bin nun achtzig Jahr (YouTube: SHOW MORE, 2:00). In both cases the young composers had an opportunity to demonstrate their abilities as keyboard performers. The concerto form (Wikipedia) developed at the beginning of the Baroque era as works of conflict or reconciliation, "the stuff of drama," says Swain (Ibid.: 482). "Concerto" by the early 17th century described vocal concerto genres, especially the sacred concerto, which is a description found in Bach family cantata-like works (Presto Music) and their German counterparts (Amazon.com). These works "owed their origins to textures and techniques of music drama at the dawn of opera [c/1600], which only reinforced the analogy." The sonata (Wikipedia) was described "in more equivocal and varied ways," he says (Ibid.), while in Bach and Handel's time sonatas began to reflect the four temperaments of personality traits (Wikipedia).
By the 1700s, both the concerto and sonata had developed into contrasting slow-fast, multi-movement works also found in opera seria. In both instrumental sonata and concerto forms, the soloist emerged "as a kind of outstanding character," he says (Ibid.: 483), and in Bach and Handel, the solo music was transformed from routine to exceptional. More complex in their instrumental works is the presence of more than one melodic character as, for example, in the two upper-voices of a trio sonata with figured bass, in Bach's Sonata for Violin and Harpsichord in E Major, BWV 1016 (YouTube), in sonata da chiesa form (slow-fast-slow-fast). The music progresses in opposition as a synthesis, "another kind of dramatic metaphor," says Swain (Ibid.: 494). The finale of the sonata [Allegro: 12:20] shows Bach's demanding trademarks, with a "brilliant virtuosity from its opening measure and then sound more and more intense as it proceeds, an effect that owes almost everything to Bach's subliminal counterpoint," he says (Ibid.: 496).15 In contrast is the solo sonata of Handel, for Violin and Continuo in D Major, BWV 371 (YouTube). Within this simpler texture of solo and accompaniment without opposition, Handel establishes a puzzle to be worked out. Overall in the late Baroque, "with its syntaxof harmonic and rhythmic integration, unwritten but far more subtle . . . 'invention' become much more abstract," he says (Ibid.: 500).16 Both composers observed the tradition of Opus numbers: Bach's five keyboard studies (Clavierübung, Op. 1 BCW), and Handel: sonatas, Op. 1; trio sonatas, Op. 2, 5; concerto grossi, Op. 3, 6; and concertos, Op. 4, 7.
ENDNOTES
1 Joseph P. Swain, Listening to Bach and Handel: A Comparative Study (Hillsdale NY: Pendragon Press, 2018), Amazon.com).
2 Source materials discussion, "Cantilena, Fugue, Ritornello Concepts in Bach, Handel," BCW.
3 Source materials discussion, "Bach, Handel Comparative Vocal Genres," BCW.
4 For a detailed study of Messiah, see Noël Bisson, "Baroque Music and the Main Musical Features of Handel's Messiah," in LAB 51, Harvard First Nights (2006), Listening Guide for Part II of Handel's Messiah).
5 See Michael Marissen, "The Brandenburg Concertos," in J. S. Bach, Oxford Composer Companions, ed. Malcolm Boyd (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999: 70), and Marissen, The Social and Religious Designs of J. S. Bach's Brandenburg Concertos (Princeton University Press, 1999: 12f), Amazon.com.
6 Source materials discussion, "Bach, Handel Comparative Vocal Genres," BCW; for further information, see sections "Bach, Handel Connections: Dramatic, Sacred Music" and "Bach, Handel Oratorios," as well as "Bach, Handel Comparative Vocal Genres: Serenades."
7 A synopsis of Samson is found in Arthur Jacobs, Chapter 8, "England in the Age of Handel," in Choral Music: A Symposium, ed. Arthur Jacobs (Baltimore MD: Penguin Books, 1963: 153-9).
8 See Alberto Basso, "Opera and the Dramma per Musica," summary translation Thomas Braatz, in Die Welt der Bach Kantaten, Vol. 2 Johann Sebastian Bachs weltliche Kantaten, eds, Christoph Wolff, Ton Koopman (Stuttgart: Metzler/Bärenreiter, 1997: 48-63), BCW ; also Bach's secular cantatas, see Wikipedia.
9 See William L. Hoffman: "Bach’s Drammi per Musica," in Bach’s Dramatic Music: Serenades, Drammi per Musica, Oratorios (Bach Cantatas Website, 2008, BCW).
10 Source materials discussion: "Bach, Handel Instrumental Music," BCW.
11 See Bach Chamber Music, BCW: Nov 23, 2019: "Chamber Music for Flute"; Nov 27, 2019: "Chamber Music: Violin Sonatas with Harpsichord, Continuo"; and Dec 1, 2019: "Chamber Music: Viola da Gamba Sonatas."
12 See Handel Sonatas, Johan van Veen, musica Dei dominum, Musica Dei Dominum.
13 Handel's Il Pastor Fido: description, Wikipedia, Overture, YouTube.
14 John Butt, Chapter 5, "Towards a genealogy of the keyboard concerto," in The Keyboard in Baroque Europe, ed. Christopher Hogwood (Cambridge University Press, 2003: 93), Google Books.
15 Bach's solo instrumental sonatas and concertos are discussed in the Bach Mailing List, Bach Chamber Music and Bach Orchestral Music, BCW.
16 The best survey of this idea is Lawrence Dreyfus, Bach and the Patterns of Invention (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1996; Amazon.com), says Swain (Ibid.: 500).
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To come: Harry White's The Musical Discourse of Servitude, Chapter 5, "Steps to Parnassus: Fux, Caldara and Bach," and "Conclusion: Well, Well, Well: Fux, Bach and Handel." |
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