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George Frideric Handel & Bach
Discussions - Part 6 |
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Continue from Part 5 |
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Cantilena, Fugue, Ritornello Concepts in Bach, Handel |
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William L. Hoffman wrote (April 21, 2020):
The Baroque essential concepts of cantilena, fugue, and ritornello in the music of Bach and Handel, in comparison with the cantus firmus, dance, and ostinato, seem more limited in their substance and application, while each convention plays distinctive roles in their works: the melody of the seemingly simplistic cantilena in key instrumental and dramatic 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 faster instrumental and vocal music of both shows creativity and enterprise. All six conventions flourished during the Baroque, giving greater substance and identity to the music while all had a lasting impact on successive music. All had pronounced impact, particularly when used together, with the cantus firmus found in chorale-like statements, the fugue in the masterworks of Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven, and the ostinato pulse still impacts popular music, as does dance. The cantilena, often in Largo (broadly) tempo is found in Mozart's slow movement of the Piano Concerto No. 21 in C Major, K 467, known as Elvira Madigan as a movie theme song (YouTube), as well as in Beethoven Romances for violin and orchestra (YouTube). The ritornello as the opening statement in music, which often in the late Baroque embraced other essential concepts, is still important.
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 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 (https://musicterms.artopium.com/c/Cantilena.htm) 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:1 "The apparent simplicity of a long-breathed, single melody, such as those heard in the slow movement of Bach’s F minor harpsichord concerto and Handel’s “O sleep," from Semele, depends upon a handling of harmony and harmonic rhythm every bit as subtle as found in their most complex counterpoint" (http://www.pendragonpress.com/media/toc_760.pdf).
Cantilena in Bach's Concerto Slow Movements
The cantilena is particularly apparent in the central slow movements of Bach's three-movement instrumental concertos, with the fast framing music showing pronounced, contrasting, driving motor rhythm. Bach in Weimar studied and transcribed the concertos of Antonio Vivaldi, perfecting and expanding the movement architecture through the ritornello or return passage, most notably in his later harpsichord concertos (Wikipedia). "A great many Italian slow movements are composed in the manner of such instrumental songs, and so the generic title 'cantilena' has often been attached to such pieces," says Swain (Ibid.: 272). "Sometimes they present the melody quite unabashedly," as in Bach's "Largo" ("Arioso") in the Harpsichord Concerto No. 5 in F minor, BWV 1056 (YouTube), and Vivaldi's "Largo" middle movement from the Winter concerto in the "Four Seasons," RV 297 (Op. 8, no. 4, YouTube) and his Guitar Concerto in D major, RV 93 (YouTube).
Bach's so-called "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 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). The cantilena "comes of a delicate balance between ordered, predictable pattern and free [improvised] invention," he says. In contrast, the string orchestra accompaniment in a concerto slow movement cantilena "begins with a harmonic pattern set into a motor rhythm that may then underlie the soloist's musings in a manner reminiscent of ostinato [repeated bass figure], but without its strict prohibitions of variation or modulation," says Swain (Ibid.). Here the introductory material returns, like a ritornello, at the close, although it sounds only twice instead of many times in a true ritornello movement. Examples are the slow movements of Vivaldi's Violin Concerto, Opus 3, no. 9 (RV 230), Larghetto (YouTube: 02:00), and Bach's Harpsichord Concerto No. 3 in D Major, BWV 1054, Adagio (YouTube).
Handel Slow Movement Cantilenas
Handel's slow movements in instrumental concertos, sonatas, and opera overtures "often feature cantilenas," Swain says (Ibid.: 275), such as the Concerto Grosso in B minor, Op. 6, No. 12, "Larghetto, e piano-Variatio" (YouTube). In his operas, Handel sometimes "forgoes the dimensions of the da capo aria [ABA] for the simpler expression of a cantilena," he says (Ibid.: 276). In the English-language opera Semele (1742), the goddess Juno sings "O sleep, why dost thou leave me" (YouTube) in a continuo aria. The most ubiquitous Handel piece is his "Largo,"2 the aria "Ombra mai fu" (Never was a shade) from Xerxes, which, like Bach's arioso, fits all manner of transcription into new environs for violin (YouTube) or organ (YouTube). 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,3 with the cantilena Adagio (YouTube). Beginning in the late 1730s, Handel also performed organ concertos during the intermissions of his oratorios (Wikipedia). "Cantilenas remind us that, though they pass through our consciousness so quickly and with bewildering richness, each one with a form and character almost sui generis, the short and simple can speak with as much eloquence as the great," he concludes (Ibid.: 282). Meanwhile, the generic concept of the "chorale" also flourished in Romantic and post-Romantic music, notably of Gustav Mahler. In this same sense, the slow-moving, often melodic theme could be compared to the cantilena, which also prospered in the Classical Era.4
Fugue: Dramatic Pictorialism
Fugue study had reached its peak in the Late Baroque while the actual use in compositions was 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 establishments 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, 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 severe tightness of structure limits the temporal range of the fugue," says Swain (Ibid.: 288), given the selective use of thematic episodes (Wikipedia). However, Bach was able to introduce new subjects into fugues, notably in the Well-Tempered Clavier (WTC) II (Wikipedia). "The possibilities of such loosening make the fugue adaptable to other generic environments," he shows (Ibid.: (289). "The orchestral fugues in the French overtures and fugal sections 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's keyboard suites. 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.
Fugue as Staple in Bach Church Music, Handel Oratorios
While vocal fugues were not common in the opera house in the Baroque, due to their multi-voiced writing most appropriate in the rare choruses of opera seria (Wikipedia), they were a staple of Bach's church music and Handel's oratorios in the theater. Here, "the chorus is right at home, full-blown vocal fugues are not only possible, but sometimes the best means of expressing what needs to be expressed in the dramatic action," says Swain (Ibid.: 308). "The fugues in Messiah offer a fine sampling of its dramatic uses:5 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. Handel does not follow strict rules but composes music that makes "generic sense in the oratorio framework as a whole," he says (Ibid.: 309), but the movements must have dramatic shape." In "And he shall purify" (YouTube), Handel composes "a dynamic acceleration, a rhythm over his motor rhythm," he says (Ibid.: 310), leading to a harmonic trajectory toward a cadence at the words "that they may offer," "one of Handel's patented homophonies (m.52)," followed by a blend of fugal and homophonic music in a restatement of the first phrase leading to the chordal conclusion on the second subject — patented Handel!
While both composers create dramatic pictorialism in their fugues, Bach follows a different path, in his oratorios, preferring to compose crowd choruses of strict miniature fugues, such as "Let him be crucified" in the St. Matthew Passion (YouTube), to embody this mob psychology," he says (Ibid.: 312). Bach usually sets the antagonist crowd choruses as fugues in both the Matthew and John Passions while the protagonist disciple choruses are often set homophonically. In two rare convergences, Handel sets the same scene in Messiah, the fugal chorus "He trusted in God," setting the text from Psalm 22: 7-8, "Let him deliver him" (YouTube: 1:05, mm. 33-35) in fugal conflict in Handel's musically exegetical style of unpredictability eventually resolved in a homophonic cadence — patented Handel again! "The other Psalm exegesis that paints the angry crowd in Messiah, is the fugal chorus "Let us break their bonds asunder" (Psalm 2:3) with a second subject, "and cast away their yokes (never together) in the stile of a stile antico motet (YouTube) which alternately create a growing sense of fury." "Again it is a sign of mayhem, not just a passion but an inability to control the passions," he says (Ibid. 312). "The moralizing chorus is the one kind of fugue that Messiah lacks," Swain observes (Ibid.: 315), while this entire, singular work is itself a moralizing meditation.
Moralizing is found in Handel's other oratorios, notably in Saul (1739), also to a text by Charles Jennens, their first of four successive collaborations (Wikipedia). Notably are two choruses, the opening "Envy, eldest born of Hell," which is an ostinato, another antique technique (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlxKXYo_Knc), and the fugal closing chorus, "O fatal consequence of rage" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrWh436mu5M). To fortify his dramatic fugues, Handel adds to his semantic references to text and plot, with contrasts of vocal and instrumental timbre. Handel's last oratorio, Jeptha (1752) ends with a fine, strict fugue, "Ye house of Gilead" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnK9pa4YTGc). "In the face of radical simplifications of operatic texture and the general decline in the interest of fugue on the Continent, Handel never lost faith in this particular power," he says (Ibid.: 323). Perhaps it was a final tip of the hat from one curmudgeon to another, since Handel composed nothing more in the final six years of his life, content to attend Messiah benefits, while Bach composed on his death bed in 1750, still shaping fugues and chorales, including the unfinished "Great 18 Chorales" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Eighteen_Chorale_Preludes).
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., http://www.pendragonpress.com/media/toc_760.pdf). "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 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ritornello) 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" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnkSFKJ4rC0), which combines a cantus firmus within a ritonello 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."6 It has its foundation in the concertos of Vivaldi, most notably the "Spring" Violin Concerto of the Four Seasons, Op. 8, No. 1 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPaUtnJTMn8) 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haRanlw9eSg, 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 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jn64XdRkVTA) 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. The ritornello procedure is a model "heard time and again in the music of Bach and Handel, no matter what particular role the ritornello may have in the work at hand," says Swain (Ibid.: 339). "The motivic material of Bach's concerto is an economical as Vivaldi's is varied," he emphasizes (Ibid.: 342). The textural rhythm of the Second Brandenburg arises from Bach's use of his two-bar segments as building blocks for larger shapes, Handel already had larger shapes in the opening of 'Thou shalt bring them in.' He manipulates the pace of the ritornello rhythm in the opposite way, by cutting elements of the ritornellos to make shorter events," Swain says (Ibid: 348).
The opening movement of the Fifth Brandenburg concerto, the last of the six to be completed, runs twice as long as the first movement of the Second Brandenburg Concerto, "a substantial expansion of the ritornello form," says Swain (Ibid.: 349) in which Bach "imagines the intervening episodes in an entirely different way," changing the structural game (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vx4Sc_SMsQ). The "episodes feature the soloists more as an opposing ensemble, and their material is expansive," he notes (Ibid.: 350). The "integration of ritornello material with the episodes is so intense that it confounds the distinction of ritornello and episode." This process leads to the composition of a giant ritornello in the Fourth Brandenburg Concerto lasting 83 measures, about four times the usual (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHyzQf38F6w), with the motor rhythm taking over at measure 13 with thematic development as the soli main theme reappears between five tutti sequences, each governed by gestures (earmarks) that forecast structural features, he notes (Ibid.: 353). These earmarks "extend the high-level potential of the ritornello by creating a cadence of cadences, an organization that supervenes a simple succession of tonal centers," he says (Ibid.: 354). A "grandeur of statement is perhaps what Handel wanted in two of his most expansive [bass] arias, "The lord is a man of war" in the last part of Israel in Egypt, text also probably by Jennens, and "The trumpet shall sound" from Messiah, says Swain (Ibid.: 359). Their texts "certainly warrant something extraordinary, emphasizing military might and the power of the name of the Lord. The last movement of Bach's Fifth Brandenburg Concerto (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbKkTpD2joA) "has a super-ritornello of seventh-eight measures based on a fugue," he shows (Ibid.: 365). Like the Fourth Brandenburg Concerto "Bach grants it [the ritornello] a substantial portion of the concerto and then copies it literally at the movement's end," like the aria da capo reprise (ABA). "The massive proportions of the A sections in classical da capo arias from the late seventeenth century through the works of Bach and Handel arose more from poetic and dramatic traditions rather than from any strictly musical necessity," he concludes (Ibid.: 366).
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
1 Joseph P. Swain, Listening to Bach and Handel: A Comparative Study, Monographs in Musicology No.18 (Hillsdale NY: Pendragon Press, 2018: 269f); descriptions, Amazon.com, http://www.pendragonpress.com/media/toc_760.pdf).
2 Handel's "Largo" from Xerxes: description, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ombra_mai_fu; music, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7XH-58eB8c; score, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72adT_JbRRs.
3 Handel's Il Pastor Fido: description, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Il_pastor_fido_(Handel), music, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZNa8wqxbtQ.
4 See Eileen M. Watabe, Chorale Topic from Haydn to Brahms: Chorale in Secular Contexts of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (diss; Greeley CO: University of Northern Colorado, 2015), https://digscholarship.unco.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1058&context=dissertations, a topic which is part of a continuing discussion of Bach's influence.
5 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), http://people.fas.harvard.edu/~lab51/messiah/listening_guide2.html).
6 See Michael Marissen, "The Brandenburg Concertos," in J. S. Bach, Oxford Composer Companions, ed. Malcolm Boyd (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999: 70)
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To Come: Bach and Handel comparative genres: opera seria and drammi per musica, Passion, oratorio, and instrumental sonata and concerto. |
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Bach, Handel Comparative Vocal Genres |
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William L. Hoffman wrote (April 29, 2020):
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, says Joseph P. Swain in his recent Bach and Handel comparative critique. He selectively studies in four successive chapters 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. Swain provides no introduction to Part IV, Music and Drama, as he does in previous discussions, Part I, A Marvelous Synchronicity, and Part III, Six Essential Concepts. However, Swain here 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.
As the synopsis of this final Part V, Conclusion, Chapter 16, "Synchronicity and Freedom," Swain summarizes: "Illustrated with their contrastive settings of similar textual songs of praise, 'Gloria in excelsis Deo' from the Mass in B Minor and 'I will sing to the Lord,' from Israel in Egypt, and armed with the perspectives won from the intervening chapters, the epilogue revisits the problem of cultural determinism and the individuality of Bach and Handel’s music that opened the book. 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" (http://www.pendragonpress.com/media/toc_760.pdf). Swain's choices of Bach and Handel's music in the context of musical analysis and criticism is impressive and thought-provoking yet exhaustive, dealing with their salient features, while this invites further exploration of the historical context in which the music was composed and the wider and deeper sweep of their legacies, especially from a comparative perspective which he has so commendably establishes. Certain facets of their output invite further consideration and comparison, to explore the diverse and breath-taking Bach and Handel forests beyond Swain's trees, branches, leaves, and seeds.
Musical Synchronicity, Calling
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 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" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeqbA4MTzoQ), and Handel in his 1739 revision as the final Part III of Israel in Egypt, the choruses "Moses and the Children of Israel" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJjn2RNLrgg) 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."
At the same time, both "stubbornly resist the simplifications of musical textures that pervade their times, and the music of many of their colleagues," Swain says (Ibid.: 526). In the 1740s, "the music of both men retained all of its superlative qualities and, if anything, grew more aloof from the musical trends in Europe," he observes (Ibid.: 527). This determination to remain steadfast shows "essential human qualities of free will, supreme talent, and heroic dedication to one's vocation," Bach in his Lutheran calling (https://els.org/about/ls/lutheran-sentinel-2012/luther-vocation-as-gods-calling/) of 1708 to create "a well-regulated church music to the Glory of God," Handel in 1712 to serve royalty and the theatre-going public permanently in London (https://www.classicfm.com/composers/handel/guides/handel-facts-composer/london-skyline/). Their conception and treatment of motor rhythm (https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780199579037.001.0001/acref-9780199579037-e-4558) often differs, Bach favoring "the fundamental pulse front and center," he says (Ibid.: 531), Handel offering "variety a plenty in a very short time" — different means to achieve the same ends! In their harmonic rhythm (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonic_rhythm), they also use "control and coordination of those streams," also stand out while differing in their practice. Harmonic rhythm "crests and troughs and eddies in the constant stream of Bach; it unifies what sounds so different in. Handel," he says (Ibid.: 538).
"The freedom of a highly regulated musical language makes possible such divergences in forging one's personal style," Swain observes (Ibid.: 554). In common is their melodies, which have a "natural clarity of articulation combined with a remarkable flexibility of phrase rhythm" he says (Ibid.: 555). The creative Augustinian paradox is found in their music: "only the strictest control of fundamental compositional technique can yield the greatest freedom to realize in music the goals beyond its composition" (Ibid: 556). Both are musical conservative in "the sense of rejecting what they viewed as easy techniques yielding poor quality, and in the best sense of preserving what they knew to be good," he says (Ibid.: 559). Swain concludes (Ibid.: 559f: "The fact that the sound of their music is so individual, so distinct from each other and from their contemporaries, is a sure sign of their intrinsic originality. Bach and Handel were the most originalcomposers of their generation, certainly two of the most original minds in the Western tradition, never because they undermined the compositional principles of the high Baroque, always because they understood and practiced them more deeply than anyone. That practice made possible their originality and freedom as artists, made possible the joys of listening to Bach and Handel."
Opera Seria, Dramma per Musica
The discussion of Swain's Part IV, Music and Drama, begins with Chapter 12, "Opera Seria," the dominant opera form in the later Baroque (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera_seria) for which Handel composed 42 Italian language operas (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_compositions_by_George_Frideric_Handel#Operas), 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's Giulio Cesare in Egitto is probably his finest opera (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giulio_Cesare). Cleopatra's Act III aria, "Piangerò la sorte mia" (I shall weep for my fate, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWK_CGf57sk), is a lament with ostinato and a contrasting, agitated B section, "Ma poi morta d'ogn' intorno il tirano e note e giorno" (But then the tyrant, notes and day died of everything). Handel's opera seria "is the linear drama of one aria showing a character in exquisite detail and then giving way to the next aria," he comments (Ibid.: 396f) and is an "acquired taste perhaps not to be expected of all opera goers."
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 (https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/handels-samson-blinded-by-the-fight-853422.html).2 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: 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.3 Only the text survives for several (Anh. 9=1156, Anh. 11=1157, 193a, 205a, 249b), while movements were parodied in other works.4
Bach, Handel Connections: Dramatic, Sacred Music
There are several connections between Bach and Handel dramatic and sacred music. Bach attended the Gänsemarkt Opera House in Hamburg in 1700-01, says Basso (Ibid.: 49) and possibly 1705-6, while Handel performed and composed there (1703-06). Bach possibly also experienced opera in Weimar (1703, 1708-9), at Weißenfels (1713, 1725), Leipzig (1717), and Dresden (1717). Handel learned opera seria in Italy (1706-10) and composed and presented these in London beginning in 1711. Bach's first dramatic works at Weißenfels were the pastoral Hunting Cantata 208 in 1713 and Shepherds Cantata 249a in 1725, as Tafelmusik (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tafelmusik), probably staged with costumes, says Alexander Grychtolik.5 Handel and Bach presented static coronation works for monarchs, Handel with the sacred Four Coronation Anthems for King George II and Queen Caroline in 1727,6 and Bach with the dramma per musica, coronation Cantata 205a, "Blast Lermen, ihr Feinde!" (Blow uproar, opponents!, trans. Z. Philip Ambrose), for Polish King and Saxon Prince Augustus III in 1734.7 It is Bach's only composition for trumpets and horns.
Also during the 1730s, Bach began presenting music of Handel by the Leipzig Collegium musicum: Cantata Armida Abbandonata, HWV 105 (1707, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2aotqJpGu0) - performed by J.S. Bach & Collegium Musicum in Leipzig c1731; and the Opera Alcina, HWV 34 (1735): arias: "Mi lusinga il dolce affetto" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtbFdLlvKnc) and "Di, cor mio, quanto t'amai" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCoN8uB7GLg) - performed by J.S. Bach & Collegium Musicum in Leipzig c1735 (source, https://www.bach-cantatas.com/Other/Handel-Gen2.htm). It is possible that Anna Magdalena sang the arias and that the musical source may have been the Saxon court library in Dresden or Carl Gotthelf Gerlach (https://www.bach-cantatas.com/Lib/Gerlach-Carl-Gotthelf.htm).
Although lesser known, Handel composed sacred settings, primarily involving psalms in English language anthems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_compositions_by_George_Frideric_Handel#Anthems), notably Chandos8 and Coronation Anthems, and Latin church music (psalms, motets, antiphons) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_compositions_by_George_Frideric_Handel#Latin_church_music), and the recently-discovered "Gloria" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloria_(Handel), composed in Italy. Handel's settings of Te Deums, using the English language Ambrosian Hymn, are listed under Canticles (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_compositions_by_George_Frideric_Handel#Canticles), most notably the early Utrecht (1714, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LB-xV6d4jJA) and Dettingen (1743, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4wLtoQ2APU; German version, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KX4bPeG0dWc). Handel's psalmic anthem settings are mostly joyous although Psalm 51 is penitential (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaqC01tLYD0), and Bach also set it as "Erbarm dich mein, o Herre Gott" (O God, be mercyfull to me, https://www.bach-cantatas.com/Texts/Chorale305-Eng3.htm) as well as "Tilge, Höchester, meine Sünden" (Blot out, Highest, My Sins), BWV 1083, setting of Pergolesi's Stabat Mater http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Vocal/BWV1083-Gen2.htm, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukxAM-spo8M). A joyous communion hymn is Psalm 42 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psalm_42) as set by Handel (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_Pants_the_Hart_(Handel), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xi-AFYOoRdw) and Bach, the hymn "Freu dich sehr, o meine Seele" (Rejoice greatly, o my soul, trans. Frances Browne; http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Texts/Chorale030-Eng3.htm, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szwKRmrR94k).9 Bach and Handel each set one ode, Bach using Johann Christoph Gottsched's Funeral Ode, Cantata 198, “Laß, Fürstin, laß noch einen Strahl” (Let, Princess, let one more ray, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgv3e61QyWo, http://www.bach-cantatas.com/BWV198-D6.htm), and Handel setting John Dryden's "Ode for St. Cecilia's Day (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrI7a3qHV9U, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ode_for_St._Cecilia%27s_Day_(Handel)).
Bach, Handel Oratorios
Bach and Handel composed a great range of vocal music under the rubric of "oratorio" while there is little commonality in the music they composed for this "genre." Bach wrote German Christological, historical oratorios on the Passion (John, Matthew, Mark) and major feast days (Christmas, Easter, Ascension, possibly Pentecost), while Handel composed an early German poetic Brockes Passion Oratorio and the 25 "sacred" English oratorios on mostly Old Testament themes. There is some early synchronicity between Bach and Handel. On Easter Sunday, 8 April 1708, Handel in Rome premiered his poetic oratorio, La resurrezione (HWV 47, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_resurrezione, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_dqQuUQLkM), while Bach may have presented his chorale Cantata 4, Christ lag in Todesbanden (Christ lies in death's bondage) in Mühlhausen, set to Luther's hymn (https://www.bach-cantatas.com/Texts/Chorale012-Eng3.htm, trans. Browne). Handel composed his Brockes Passion for Hamburg (1719 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brockes_Passion_(Handel) , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rxw1DJVUPQo). It is a "sacred opera very close in character to Italian opera seria," says Swain in his Chapter 13, "Passion," with the "only vestige of liturgy is the chorales" (Ibid.: 435). Meanwhile Bach may have composed an oratorio-Passion in Weimar for the Gotha court (1717, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weimarer_Passion). Still disputed is a Handel setting of Postel's St. John Passion in Hamburg (1704, https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_mrxoYouEKpzBau1oVAoFGJHlaPY0xuTAs), which, like Handel's Brockes Passion, also shares common poetic texts with Bach's St. John Passion of 1724 (https://www.bach-cantatas.com/Articles/SJP-Hoffman-1.htm). A year later in 1725, Bach composed an Easter Oratorio which is Italian in form, lacking biblical narrative and chorales, which is a parody of his Shepherd Cantata, BWV 249a (http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Vocal/BWV249-Gen5.htm, https://www.bach-cantatas.com/BWV249a.htm), with a new recorded reconstruction by Grychtolik. Choruses lacking in Handel's opera seria are found in abundance in his English-language oratorios, composed between 1732 and 1752 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_compositions_by_George_Frideric_Handel#Oratorios).
Handel's own personal drama was "his never-ending search for a solution to the problem of music drama in England that culminated in his invention [evolution] of the English Oratorio," says Swain in his Chapter 14, "English Oratorio" (Ibid.: 439), and his "liberation from the constraining conventions of Italian opera seria" (Ibid.: 442). Using the Old Testament, Handel avoided the classical unities (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_unities) and embraced a great variety of characters described in wordbooks at the London theaters. Handel found other dramatic sources such as translations of Jean Racine's Esther and Athalie, John Milton's Samson Agonistes and William Congreve's Semele. Lacking drama are Messiah and Israel in Egypt, which Swain considers "meditations" (Ibid.: 476-7), and the Triumph of Time and Truth. The most dramatic are Samson and Saul. "In Handel's contemplative oratorios, then, ideas and passions are fused. But what makes that fusion so impressive is the monumentality that only the choral medium can provide," he concludes (Ibid.: 480).
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
1 Joseph P. Swain, Part IV, Music and Drama, in Listening to Bach and Handel: A Comparative Study, Monographs in Musicology No.18 (Hillsdale NY: Pendragon Press, 2018: 369ff); descriptions, Amazon.com, http://www.pendragonpress.com/media/toc_760.pdf).
2 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)
3 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), https://www.bach-cantatas.com/Articles/Opera-Drama[Braatz].htm; Bach's secular cantatas, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_secular_cantatas_by_Johann_Sebastian_Bach.
4 See William L. Hoffman: "Bach’s Drammi per Musica," in Bach’s Dramatic Music: Serenades, Drammi per Musica, Oratorios (Bach Cantatas Website, 2008, https://www.bach-cantatas.com/Articles/HoffmanBachDramaII.htm#P6).
5 Alexander Grychtolik, "Two Celebration Cantatas From Bach's Tine in Leipzig," liner notes, English trans. Lee Holt, Cantatas 249a, 205a (reconstructions), https://www.bach-cantatas.com/Performers/Grychtolik-A.htm#C4.
6 Handel Coronation Anthems, HWV (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronation_anthem#Handel.27s_coronation_anthems); sheet music (https://imslp.org/wiki/Coronation_Anthems%2C_HWV_258-261_(Handel%2C_George_Frideric); recording (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_m7lB0gDLbSWuxydtUP-fK2cGCqEXQwnP8).
7 Bach Cantata 205a: summary, https://www.bach-cantatas.com/BWV205-D4.htm; text, http://www.uvm.edu/~classics/faculty/bach/BWV205a.html; music BWV 205, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wH2kqTyqjw; and festive music for Leipzig University ceremonies, https://unichor.uni-leipzig.de/index.php?page=festmusiken).
8 Handel Chandos Anthems: HWV (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandos_Anthems); sheet music (https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&sxsrf=ALeKk01KE38s59_Cd8baaajccQsk6-Batg%3A1588018070308&ei=ljunXvSEEsH9-gS2jaqIDA&q=handel+chandos+anthems+imslp&oq=handel+Chandos+Anthems+&gs_lcp=CgZwc3ktYWIQARgAMgIIADICCAAyAggAMgYIABAWEB4yBggAEBYQHjIGCAAQFhAeMgYIABAWEB4yBggAEBYQHjIGCAAQFhAeMgYIABAWEB46BAgAEEdQp2VYp2Vg-IABaABwAngAgAGwAYgBsAGSAQMwLjGYAQCgAQGqAQdnd3Mtd2l6&sclient=psy-ab); recording (https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/products/7923064--handel-complete-chandos-anthems).
9 Types of Psalms: Communion, Psalms 8, 15, 20, 23, 30, 42, 67, 84, 92, 103, 111, 117, 121, 146; Penitential Psalms 6, 32, 38, 51, 102, 130, and 143; see also Bach Choralbuch, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZG_53zeSvg).
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To Come: Bach, Handel Instrumental Music. |
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Bach, Handel Comparative Vocal Genres: Serenades |
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William L. Hoffman wrote (May 2, 2020):
Both Handel and Bach composed musical serenades for royalty (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serenade) with allegorical, mythological, or metaphorical characters in morality plays. Handel composed three works: "O lucenti, o sereni occhi" (O shining, o serene eyes), HWV 144, classified as a short cantata for soprano, was composed for the Ruspoli court in Rome in 1707;1 "Aci, Galatea e Polifemo," HWV 72, classified as an extended masque for three voices was composed in 1708 for a wedding in Naples;2 and "Il Parnasso in festa," HWV 73, also classified as a lengthy masque for the wedding of Anne, Princess Royal and Prince William of Orange in 1734 in London.3
Bach is known to have composed at least nine profane serenades as Capellmeister at Cöthen, some surviving as texts only or parodies: BWV 66a, 134a, Anh. 6=1151, Anh. 7=1153, 184a, Anh. 197=1150, 173a, Anh. 8=1152, and 194a (http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Topics/Kothen-Serenades.htm). In Leipzig, Bach composed BWV Anh. 195, Anh. 194=1154, Anh.20=1155, BWV 249b, BWV 210a, 1159, Anh. 10=1160, Anh. 13=1161, Anh. 196=1163 (http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Topics/Leipzig-Serenades.htm), also BWV 215, Anh.9=1156, 193a. Extant or reconstructed from Leipzig liturgical cantatas are: Cantata BWV 66a, "Der Himmel dacht auf Anhalts Ruhm und Glück" (Since heaven cared for Anhalt's fame and bliss), Alexander Ferdinand Grychtolik reconstruction (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwExJxmkSy4, http://bach-cantatas.com/BWV66-D5.htm), for Prince Leopold's birthday, 10 December 1718; BWV 134a, "Die Zeit, die Tag und Jahre macht" (Time, which makes days and years) for New Years, 1719 (http://bach-cantatas.com/BWV134-D6.htm); BWV 173a, "Durchlauchtster Leopold," (Most illustrious Leopold), birthday 1722 (http://bach-cantatas.com/BWV134-D6.htm); and Cantata 215, “Preise deine Glücke, gesegnetes Sachsen“ (Praise Thy Good Fortune, Blessed Saxony), for Augustus III 1734 birthday (https://www.bach-cantatas.com/BWV215-D3.htm, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-Ea5TxZvjg).
1 "O lucenti, o sereni occhi": description (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O_lucenti,_o_sereni_occhi), score (https://imslp.org/wiki/O_lucenti%2C_o_sereni_occhi%2C_HWV_144_(Handel%2C_George_Frideric), recording (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cb_Z3bxbSNY).
2 "Aci, Galatea e Polifemo": description (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aci,_Galatea_e_Polifemo), score (https://imslp.org/wiki/Aci,_Galatea_e_Polifemo,_HWV_72_(Handel,_George_Frideric)), recording (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwuRlxzK4Qs).
3 "Il Parnasso in festa": description (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parnasso_in_festa), score (https://imslp.org/wiki/Parnasso_in_festa,_HWV_73_(Handel,_George_Frideric)), recording (https://www.amazon.com/s?k=handel+parnasso+in+festa&i=popular&tag=intemusiscorl-20); selections (https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&sxsrf=ALeKk000dTtERphsXyvDJYVY5itRNn1GAA%3A1588190595133&ei=g92pXv7JB5K1tAant7mwDA&q=Parnasso+in+festa+complete+YouTube&oq=Parnasso+in+festa+complete+YouTube&gs_lcp=CgZwc3ktYWIQDDIFCAAQzQI6BAgjECc6BwgjELACECc6BQghEKsCUImVAljYqgJgsrgCaABwAHgAgAGwAYgB6gySAQQwLjExmAEAoAEBqgEHZ3dzLXdpeg&sclient=psy-ab&ved=0ahUKEwi-l4iCt47pAhWSGs0KHadbDsYQ4dUDCAs). |
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Bach, Handel Instrumental Music |
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William L. Hoffman wrote (May 7, 2020):
Bach and Handel share several important features in their instrumental works, particularly their common genre sonatas and concertos. This music developed from the trio sonata form (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trio_sonata) 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. "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 http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Other/Handel-Gen5.htm: "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.2 The versions and datings of some of these works are still disputed, as are some of Handel's sonatas. >> 3 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,4 with the cantilena Adagio (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGR17vSp6Tc).
Concertos as Drama
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 at that time began performing organ concertos during the intermissions of his oratorios (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_concerto). 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.5 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 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXCs4awAfZM), 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 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKAMnyl80Ho: SHOW MORE, 2:00). In both cases the young composers had an opportunity to demonstrate their abilities as keyboard performers.
The concerto form (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concerto) 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 (https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/articles/2697--recording-of-the-week-vox-luminis-explore-cantatas-by-the-bach-family) 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 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonata) was described "in more equivocal and varied ways," he says (Ibid.), while in Bach and Handel's time they began to reflect the four temperaments of personality traits (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_temperaments). 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, as for example in the latter's Organ Concerto in B-flat major for Organ, Op. 4. No. 6, HWV 290 (1735, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7D7K4TJOxfQ) as the orchestra opens and closes the binary frame of the first movement as a frame, while in Bach's E Major Concerto No. 2 for Harpsichord, BWV 1083 (1730s, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Af05K0ZHR0: 3:02), the string orchestra siciliana theme also is a bookend in the opening movement to the solo. The Bach slow movement, BWV 1053ii, "might be characterized as a kind of cantilena in the Venetian tradition of Vivaldi and Albinoni," he says (Ibid.: 491). "Where Handel uses a variety of risky rhythmic delays that lead to rewarding accelerations, Bach unleashes his prodigious chromatic technique," he observes (Ibid.: 492).
Trio Sonatas, Solo Sonatas
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 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZncccdqTfA), 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).6 In contrast is the solo sonata of Handel, for Violin and Continuo in D Major, BWV 371 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8wWyMBkr2k). 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 syntaxes of harmonic and rhythmic integration, unwritten but far more subtle . . . 'invention' become much more abstract," he says (Ibid.: 500).7
Handel Instrumental Publications
The instrumental music repertoire of both composers shows that they composed in virtually every genre, Handel for publication of solo music and performance of organ concertos, Bach for pedagogical purposes in a wider array of solo music and for performance purposes with the concertos in the 1730s. Observing Baroque conventions, Handel published his instrumental works in seven Opus groupings involving four genres: No. 1 (1732), 12 solo sonatas for flute, recorder, or violin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_compositions_by_George_Frideric_Handel#Solo_sonatas); Op. 2|5 (1733, 1739), 6 trio sonatas for 2 treble instruments and continuo (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_compositions_by_George_Frideric_Handel#Trio_sonatas); Op. 3|6 (1734, 1740), 6|12 concerti grossi for strings, winds (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_compositions_by_George_Frideric_Handel#Concerti_grossi), Op. 4|7 (1738, 1761), 6|6 concertos for organ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_compositions_by_George_Frideric_Handel#Concertos). Only a small portion of
Bach Instrumental Publications
Bach's vast instrumental music output was only published as five keyboard studies (Clavierübung, http://bach-cantatas.com/NVD/Keyboard-Music-Mature.htm): No. 1 (1731), also known as "Opus 1," 6 partitas (dance suites) for harpsichord, BWV 825-30; No. 2 for harpsichord(1735), Italian Concerto, BWV 971, and French Overture, BWV 831; No. 3 for organ (1739), Prelude and Fugue in E flat major, BWV 552, 21 chorale preludes, BWV 669–689, and the Four Duets, BWV 802–805; and No. 4 for harpsichord (1741), Goldberg Variations, BWV 988. Later publications involved Canonic Variations on "Vom Himmel hoch," BWV 769 (1747, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canonic_Variations_on_%22Vom_Himmel_hoch_da_komm%27_ich_her%22); Six Schübler Chorales, BWV 645-50 (1747), for organ ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schübler_Chorales), and two contrapuntal studies, The Musical Offering, BWV 1079, and The Art of Fugue, BWV 1080. Bach's collections began in Cöthen with three keyboard studies, the unfinished Orgelbuchlein, BWV 599-644; the 24 preludes and fugues in the Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1, BWV 846-869; and the Aufrichtige Anleitung (Faithful Guide), 30 Inventions and Sinfonias, BWV 772-801 (http://bach-cantatas.com/NVD/Keyboard-Music-Early.htm), as well as the six each English and French Suites of dance music, BWV 806-817. Other instrumental collections as outlined by Christoph Wolff include the Cöthen Six Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin, BWV 1001-06; the Six Suites for Solo Cello, BWV 1007-12; and the Six Brandenburg Concertos, BWV 1046-51; as well as early Leipzig Six Sonatas for Harpsichord and Violin, BWV 1014-19, and Six Trio Sonatas for Organ, BWV 525-530. In the late 1730s and 1740s, Bach produced the collections of the eight Harpsichord Concertos, BWV 1052-59; the Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 2, BWV 870-893, and the unfinished Great 18 chorales for Organ, BWV 651-668.
By contrast, Handel produced only two published collections of keyboard suites, eight in 1720, HWV 426-433, and nine in 1733, HWV 434-442 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_compositions_by_George_Frideric_Handel#Keyboard_works).
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
1 Joseph P. Swain, Part IV, Music and Drama, Chapter 15, "Solo Sonata and Concerto," in Listening to Bach and Handel: A Comparative Study, Monographs in Musicology No.18 (Hillsdale NY: Pendragon Press, 2018: 3481ff); descriptions, Amazon.com, http://www.pendragonpress.com/media/toc_760.pdf).
2 See Bach Chamber Music, http://bach-cantatas.com/Order-2019.htm: 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."
3 See Handel Sonatas, Johan van Veen, musica Dei dominum, http://www.musica-dei-donum.org/cd_reviews/IBSClassical_IBS162019.html.
4 Handel's Il Pastor Fido: description, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Il_pastor_fido_(Handel), Overture, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZNa8wqxbtQ.
5 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), https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Keyboard_in_Baroque_Europe/AVSI8ph-LlgC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=The+Keyboard+in+Baroque+Europe&printsec=frontcover.
6 Bach's solo instrumental sonatas and concertos are discussed in the Bach Mailing List, Bach Chamber Music and Bach Orchestral Music, http://bach-cantatas.com/Order-2019.htm.
7 The best survey of this idea is Lawrence Dreyfus, Bach and the Patterns of Invention (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), says Swain (Ibid.: 500).
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To Come: Christoph Wolff's Bach's Musical Universe: The Composer and His Work (New York: W. W. Norton, 2020), Amazon.com; Chapter 1, "Revealing the Narrative of a Musical Universe: The List of Works from 1750." |
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Bach and Handel |
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Zachary Uram wrote (May 10, 2020):
https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/The-Preacher-and-the-Actor%3A-Bach%2C-Handel-and-the-Neufeld/20e9e28047b0eb175bc5e05dd843c53c5168887b |
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Continue on Part 7 |
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