Bach and Handel

In 1685, a month apart and less than two hundred kilometres from each other, two Germans were born who would sum up and crown the whole of Baroque art: George Frideric Handel, on 23 February in Halle, and Johann Sebastian Bach, on 21 March in Eisenach. (Domenico Scarlatti was born the same year, in Naples.) They never met, and their lives could hardly have been more different: one spent his whole life in central Germany, serving churches and small courts; the other became an international star and a theatre entrepreneur in London.

Bach, the tireless craftsman

Bach was born into a family of musicians so numerous that in Thuringia "Bach" almost meant "musician". Orphaned at ten, he was brought up by his elder brother, an organist. As a young man he reportedly walked all the way to Lübeck (several hundred kilometres) to hear the famous organist Buxtehude. His career followed his posts:

• Weimar (1708–1717): court organist, he wrote much of his organ music. When he wanted to leave, the duke had him placed under arrest for nearly a month before dismissing him!
• Köthen (1717–1723): the prince was a Calvinist and the church needed no elaborate music, so Bach wrote instrumental music: the Brandenburg Concertos (dedicated in 1721), the cello suites, the sonatas and partitas for solo violin, the first book of the Well-Tempered Clavier (1722).
• Leipzig (1723–1750): as Cantor of St Thomas's School he had to provide the music for the city's churches. He composed cantatas almost every week in his first years (about two hundred survive), the St John and St Matthew Passions, and the Mass in B minor.

Father of twenty children, only half of whom survived childhood, he trained several sons who became famous: Carl Philipp Emanuel, Wilhelm Friedemann, Johann Christian. For his pupils and children he wrote teaching pieces still at the heart of piano study: little preludes, the Inventions, the Well-Tempered Clavier.

The fugue, summit of counterpoint

Bach is the supreme master of the fugue, a piece built on a single theme (the subject) that passes from voice to voice:

1. one voice states the subject alone;
2. a second voice takes it up, usually a fifth higher (the answer), while the first continues with an accompanying melody (the countersubject);
3. the other voices enter in turn; then the subject travels through different keys, separated by freer passages (episodes);
4. towards the end, entries sometimes come closer together and overlap (stretto), until the conclusion in the home key.

The Invention No. 1 in C major is not a fugue, but it shows the same principle of imitation, in two voices. Listen to the right-hand motif taken up an octave lower by the left hand, half a bar later:

M:4/4
L:1/16
Q:1/4=72
%%staves {RH LH}
V:RH clef=treble
V:LH clef=bass
K:C
[V:RH] z CDE FDEC G2c2 B2c2 | dGAB cABG d2g2 f2g2 |]
[V:LH] z8 z C,D,E, F,D,E,C, | G,2G,,2 z4 z G,A,B, CA,B,G, |]

Late in life Bach wrote works that read like testaments to his art: the Musical Offering (1747), on a theme given to him by King Frederick II of Prussia during a visit to Potsdam, and The Art of Fugue, left unfinished. He died in Leipzig on 28 July 1750. His contemporaries saw him as a prodigious organist but a somewhat old-fashioned composer; it took the 19th century, and notably the young Mendelssohn's revival of the St Matthew Passion in Berlin in 1829, for him to be recognised as one of the greatest composers of all time.

Handel, the man of the theatre

Handel studied law in Halle, played in the Hamburg opera orchestra, then left for Italy (1706–1710), where he learned the art of Italian singing from the best. He settled in London in 1712 and wrote dozens of Italian operas there (Rinaldo, Giulio Cesare…), with the greatest singers of the age. He became a British subject in 1727; his anthem Zadok the Priest, written for the coronation of George II that year, has been sung at every British coronation since.

When the fashion for Italian opera faded in London, Handel reinvented himself: he created the English oratorio, a large work for soloists, choir and orchestra, often on a biblical subject, but given in concert, without sets or costumes. The most famous, Messiah, was first performed in Dublin in 1742; its Hallelujah chorus is among the most-sung choral pieces in the world. He also wrote outdoor music for the court: the Water Music (1717), played on barges following the king on the Thames, and the Music for the Royal Fireworks (1749).

Both men ended their lives nearly blind, unsuccessfully operated on by the same travelling eye surgeon, John Taylor. Handel died in London in 1759 and is buried in Westminster Abbey.

1750: the end of an era

Historians often take Bach's death (1750) as the end of the Baroque. It is a symbolic date: for twenty years already, young composers — including Bach's own sons — had preferred a lighter, more melodic style, the galant style, which led to Classicism.

What to listen for

• In Bach: independent lines interweaving, dense counterpoint, rich harmony, an unshakeable pulse.
• In Handel: a sense of theatre, great choruses in powerful chords, broad melodies, spectacular effects.

Listen

• Bach: Toccata and Fugue in D minor for organ (its attribution is sometimes questioned); Brandenburg Concerto No. 3; the opening chorus of the St Matthew Passion; the first suite for solo cello.
• Handel: the Hallelujah chorus from Messiah; the aria Lascia ch'io pianga (Rinaldo); the Water Music.