Transcription
Well, again today, I'm going to talk about J.S. Bach's talk and George Frideric Handel, considered the two greatest composers of the late Baroque era. J.S. Bach is generally considered to be the greatest composer of all time. And it's actually easier to teach these two composers—teach a little bit about their lives and their careers—it's easier to do it in tandem; in other words, comparing and contrasting the two of them, because there are a lot of interesting similarities, things they have in common, but even more interesting differences. And these differences kind of explain why their careers took different paths, etc.
Just for reference's sake, we have a biography of Bach, about a page and a half or so, condensing 65 years of life into a page and a half, beginning on page 133 in the ninth brief edition of Grout, and then about 10 pages later, on page 143, we have the same for Handel, about a page and a half biography. So let me start out with the parallels, the similarities between these two composers.
First of all, they were born the same year, 1685. They were also born in the same part of the world; they were born in northern Germany. I believe that the towns they were born in—Bach was born in Eisenach, and Handel was born in Halle—which I believe are something like 60 miles apart. I should have googled this beforehand to check on that, but not too far apart from each other. They were also both considered to be among the greatest keyboard players of their time, and keyboard was their primary instrument. Of course, they could play other instruments as well; they were both good violinists, for example, but keyboard was their main instrument in both cases. And I'm just going to note again—notice how I use the word "keyboard" rather than "organ" or "harpsichord," or certainly "piano." So just keeping in mind our three—or our main keyboard instruments of the time—there's actually only really two of them: the organ and the harpsichord. The piano, although it was invented in the late Baroque era, doesn't really catch on and come into widespread use until the Classical era. So just kind of keep the—the piano off to the side for a moment. The harpsichord and the organ were used more or less interchangeably, and composers and performers at the time didn't really think of themselves as either harpsichordists or organists; they just considered themselves keyboard players, and they would write pieces for keyboard. And so Bach and Handel were certainly probably the two greatest keyboard players of their time.
Okay, so three big similarities: born the same year, from the same region—northern Germany—and both primarily keyboard players and among the top players of their day. And right about there is where the similarities end, and the rest of what I'm going to talk about are differences between the two of them. And these differences help explain why their careers and lives took kind of different paths.
So the first difference I'm going to talk about is that although I just said a little while ago J.S. Bach is today considered the greatest composer of the Baroque, and by most people—like myself—the greatest composer of all time; however, in his own time, that is, during the late Baroque era, Bach was not particularly famous, was not all that well known, certainly as a composer. He was fairly well known as a keyboard player among people who knew about keyboard players, who were into that kind of thing, right? But that's a—that's going to be a sort of a narrower arena within which to be well known or famous than as a composer, right? It was Handel, actually, during this time who was considered by most people to be the greatest living composer. And so, in—in their own time—and remember their own time is the exact same time—they were born—J.S. Bach, Handel was far more famous than J.S. Bach.
So there are several different reasons for this, and this again points to some differences between the two of them. So one of the—the reasons probably is the fact that J.S. Bach never traveled outside of Germany his entire life, whereas Handel was fairly well traveled. So I'll start with Bach. So I said Bach never left Germany his entire life. He did have a several different jobs; the longest post that he had was basically the music director for the town of Leipzig, especially the Lutheran churches at the town of Leipzig, a position held for the last 27 years of his life. But I should first state that when I say he never left Germany his entire life, we should keep in mind that there was no such thing as a single unified nation called Germany back then. What we today call Germany was a geographical area where people spoke German that was divided into something like 250 different autonomous or semi-autonomous kingdoms, states, principalities, right? Some of them were very large and powerful, like Prussia and Bavaria, and others very, very small, maybe just the size of an individual city. So it's sort of a patchwork of independent city-states or nation-states that actually didn't unify until the mid-to-late 19th century, until 1871. And we—okay, so Bach moved in the course of his career and served in several of these different independent states, but he never left Germany—German-speaking lands, we might say—his entire life.
Now keep in mind that this is during a time when there is no such thing as the radio or certainly YouTube. Now there was printed music, and of course, if your music could be printed and distributed and sold internationally, you could become fairly well-known that way. But this was kind of a problem because, for some composers, the music that they were composing they didn't actually really own, because they were working for an employer—let's say a prince, a duke, whatever—and oftentimes that employer owned the music that his employee—his court composer—produced. So getting your music published, if you were in that circumstance, might be kind of tricky. But in any case, if you want your music to be well known, then as now, the best way to—for that to happen is for you to personally go to different places and perform or oversee performances—maybe conduct orchestral works or operas—maybe play your own pieces yourself in front of live audiences. That's really how you build a reputation, then as now. And since Bach never traveled outside of German-speaking lands, his reputation was more localized. So he was—he was known within Germany to be a great keyboard player, certainly, and a few people knew about his compositions.
Handel, on the other hand—so Handel, early in his career, moved from Germany, and when he was in his early 20s, moved and spent a couple years in Italy, actually. And the reason he did this—and again this points to another one of these differences—from the very beginning of his career, Handel was most interested—interested in opera. Remember the significance of opera; this goes back again to the beginning of this unit. Opera was the big leagues, was the major—the—the biggest; it had the biggest scale, the biggest budget, and had the biggest audiences of any of these different genres that we've talked about. So if, for example, your goal was to become famous and well-known as a composer, then opera would be the genre that you would want to specialize in. And if that's what you wanted to do—if you wanted to break into the world of opera and develop a reputation for yourself as an opera composer—Italy would be the place to go, because Italy, after all, is the birthplace of opera; it's most embedded in the culture there, right? So you wouldn't—you would want to learn and master that style in the place where it was most popular, where it was invented. It's sort of like today, if you want it to be a film composer, you would move to Hollywood, and you would try and break into that world. If you wanted to compose musicals, you would go to New York City and you try and break into the world of Broadway; you'd want to physically be there to make connections, etc., etc. Same thing in the case of opera: that was your goal, then that's where you'd want to go, and that's what Handel did. So he moved to Italy; I believe he spent about two years there, and in fact developed a reputation for himself, which is kind of—when you think about it—an outsider, a German, a North German, moving to Italy and breaking into the world of opera there—that's kind of a major accomplishment for a young man in those days.
So based on this reputation, Handel got a job—a very prestigious job—back in Germany when he was in his mid-20s—25, 26 years old—he was—it was appointed to the job; he applied for and won this position as court composer to the Elector Prince of Hanover, Prince George of Hanover. Now the Elector Prince of Hanover was—was a prince who ruled over one of these German states that I've talked about—one of these independent German states—the state of Hanover. So Handel gets this job, moves back up to Germany, and reports for work with his boss, the Elector Prince of Hanover, but he has kind of an interesting request right off the bat. He requests time off from this job that he just got; he asked for some time because some of his operas are being performed in England, and he would like to personally go to England and supervise and oversee the production of these operas. Again, it helps his reputation. Now the prince—you might think, well, geez, I just hired this guy, and now he wants to go over to England—well, the Elector Prince agreed to this request, and in fact this kind of thing actually brought more sort of glory to the prince himself—more prestige—because his employee—his court composer—is making a big name for himself in England. So by all means, go ahead and go to England, because that will be sort of—whatever glory you win over there will be reflected upon me—your boss—your prince—your patron. So go ahead, go to England, just don't be gone for too long. Handel ended up spending the rest of his life in England, due to—as some kind of interesting circumstances. So Handel moved to England when he won his—when he was in his late 20s, and ended up spending the rest of his life—I believe—yeah, almost 50 years left to live at that point. Handel died in—in 1759, having spent the majority of his life in England.
Okay, so why was he able to stay in England although he had this job back in Germany? Interestingly enough, this is sort of historical sidebar that the book doesn't really mention, but when Handel moved to England, the—the Queen of England at that time was Queen Anne. Sadly, although she had something like a dozen children over the course of her life, none of them survived to adulthood, and she left—she died without having any heir to the throne. So it was determined by looking at all the—the various, you know, relatives to the Queen. Of course, there was a law in England at the time; there could be no Catholic monarch sitting on the throne in England. So they had to look at the Protestant side of the family and look at the family tree, and actually the person who had the closest connection—the strongest claim on the throne—to be the next monarch of England was Handel's old boss in Germany, Georg Ludwig, the Elector Prince of Hanover. Actually, he was related to the English royal family, and he became George the First, King of England—the first of the Hanover Kings. If you know your English dynasties, the Hanover line of Kings includes George the First, George the Second, and George the Third, whom we rebelled against back in 1776. And all of this—right—so—so there was really—at once—once George the First, or George Georg Ludwig, Elector of Hanover, became George the First of England, there was no reason for Handel to go back to Germany; his boss—his patron—was now the king of England.
Okay, so Handel spends the rest of his career in England, and as we will see at a certain point in his career, he shifts from—from composing mainly operas to composing mainly oratorios. No, actually, Handel composed all kinds of music—you can close concertos and sonatas and keyboard suites and all kinds of pieces. But remember, initially he was focused on opera, and that accounts, I think, in—in part for his fame, because remember opera was the big leagues. So here's another contrast with J.S. Bach. J.S. Bach never composed an opera; that was the one genre that he never, ever touched. Everything else he did, and he did probably better than anyone else. So he composed concertos and sonatas and fugues and suites and oratorios and cantatas—you name it, he did all of it. The one thing he never did was opera. And since he never composed an opera, and opera is the big leagues, after all—it's the most high-profile, high-budget—it's the biggest audience—that may be another reason why Bach was never as famous as Handel, who specialized in opera early in his career.
So another major difference between them. Here's some other interesting differences in their personal lives. Bach was married twice; his first wife, unfortunately, sadly died while Bach was out of town. Bach was working for, I believe, a duke at that time as his court—as a court musician—court organist and composer. And when the duke traveled, he liked to bring his sort of retinue—his entourage—with him, including his court composer. So Bach was—was—was out of town, was traveling with his boss, the duke, for something like a month, and when he came back home, he found that his wife had died while he was absent and had already been buried. So Bach eventually remarried; so he was married twice; had a total of 20 children, I believe—something like eight by his first wife, 12 by his second wife—20 children. Now, of course, about half of them did not survive to adulthood, which was fairly common back then. But of the children who survived, by the way, four of them—at least four—were major, important musicians at the time. Two of them, in particular—Johann Christian Bach—we usually refer to as J.C. Bach—and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach—C.P.E. Bach—these two—J.C. Bach and C.P.E. Bach—actually were even more famous than their father, even in his own lifetime. And I'll explain a little bit the reasons for this later, but so again, Bach married twice, had twenty children. Handel never married, never had any children. Here's another difference. By the way, speaking of family relations—all this—Bach was born into a musical family; music was kind of like the family business. And I don't mean just Bach's immediate family, but his grandfather, his father, his uncles, his cousins, and as we've seen, his own children—you know, his nephews—there were so many musicians—professional musicians—named Bach in northern Germany at this time that the name Bach—which actually in German simply means "brook"—the name Bach became synonymous with musician, because they were all named Bach in that part of—were like, oh, who's the Bach in this town? You know, who is your boss in your—it was just assumed that the professional musicians in northern Germany—there were so many of them named Bach—that that—that name just came to be associated with—with professional musicians.
Handel, interestingly, was not born into a musical family. His father was a barber/surgeon. Yes, in those days, if you needed surgery, you did not go to a physician; you went to a barber. If you needed something amputated or whatever, that was the barber's job. And the barber—or a surgeon—was much less prestigious position than a physician. A physician would come to your house and try and make a diagnosis of your ailment and would prescribe medicines, but he would not cut you open; that was kind of like beneath him; that was a job for a—a butcher or a barber or a surgeon. Anyway, that's what—that's what Handel's father was—was a—was a barber-surgeon. And Handel's parents wanted young Handel to be a lawyer—something, you know, some good, solid, respectable, prestigious kind of career. But Handel loved music from an early age, and he kind of sneaked away and played music. There's a famous story of the Handel family visiting some—some friend's house—some family friend or relative—and Handel kind of sneaking up into the attic and discovering a harpsichord up there and practicing the harpsichord. So Handel had kind of a rough time apparently trying to convince his family to support him in becoming a musician rather than, let's say, a lawyer. But eventually he won out, and that's what he was allowed to do. Kind of unusual for the time, by the way. In those days, you know, it's sort of like in Bach's—it was just kind of expected that a young man would follow in his father's footsteps and kind of inherit the family business, whatever that may be—musician, shoemaker, barber-surgeon.
Okay, so now interesting—another interesting parallel—although both Bach and Handel lived fairly long lives for their—for their time—Bach, of course, we remember, died in 1750, and that's the year that we use to mark the end of the Baroque era, really, in honor of Bach. Handel lived a little bit longer and lived until 1759. Interesting coincidence. Again, this will not be on the test; I just find it kind of interesting. When Bach died—the reason he died—actually, he was in pretty good health for an old man—for a 65-year-old man—but he was going blind; he had cataracts. And so it was decided that they were going to call a famous English eye surgeon to remove these cataracts. And I don't know about you, but the—even the idea today of having surgery on my eyes—I think maybe I'd rather just kind of go blind; it kind of freaks me out. But imagine having eye surgery in the year 1750, when first of all, doctors and surgeons really didn't know what they were doing, and secondly, they didn't have anesthesia. And you know, so Bach had eye surgery in early 1750, I believe, and the surgery was unsuccessful, but also he developed an infection that he never really recovered from. I believe about six weeks after this eye surgery, Bach died, and—and directly as a result of the complications from this eye surgery. Handel, years later, also had—had eye surgery from this same physician—also unsuccessful in his case. Now Handel survived the surgery, but he was blind in his later years. Interestingly, Bach and Handel never met. Now Bach was well aware of the other composers of his day and studied their works; for example, he knew very well the music of Corelli, the music of Vivaldi; for example, he even made some arrangements of Vivaldi violin concertos—he rearranged them for keyboard and orchestra rather than violin and orchestra. So Bach was very familiar with Vivaldi. Bach was also very familiar with the music of Handel. Handel was, of course, the big famous composer of the time. Handel was not all that familiar with Bach and seems to have been kind of dismissive—did apparently didn't really think that much of Bach—probably didn't know his music all that well. There was one occasion apparently when Handel traveled from England back to Germany to visit his mother, and at the time Bach was living only—I don't know—a few dozen miles away, and he had heard that Handel was coming back to the area—was visiting his—his mother. So Bach decided, hey, let's—let's go pay him a visit. And they got in the coach or whatever and rode off in the direction of Handel's house, and apparently they got there, knocked on the door, servant answered the door, and Bach said, "Is his Mr. Handel home?" "Oh, no, I'm afraid he's gone out of town; perhaps he could come back tomorrow," you know. So they just kind of missed each other, and sadly these two giants of the late Baroque never actually got to meet in person.
One other thing I want to mention about their—about their musical styles—maybe another reason why Bach was less famous in his own time than Handel. And I already mentioned this a little bit in the very first lecture on the Baroque era when I was talking about the significance of those dates—1685 at the beginning and 1750 considered the end of the Baroque era—really just because that happens to be when J.S. Bach died. I mentioned in that lecture that although both died in 1750, by the time of his death, the style that he was composing in—the very complex polyphonic late Baroque style—was already starting to be considered kind of old-fashioned, right? So I would say even the last 20 years of Bach's life—right, from his let's say his mid-40s to the time of his death at age 65—that style was considered kind of too complex, too serious, too heavy, too difficult to follow with all these different simultaneous melodies in the polyphonic texture. And what people wanted at that time—as styles and fashions were changing—was something lighter, maybe more use of homophonic texture with one melody and accompaniment sort of in the background. All right, this is the style that we are going to see as we shift into the style of the Classical era, which will follow. All right, but really there's sort of—there's some overlap; it's a mistake to think, oh, 1750, the Baroque era ends. The style had already been starting to change really in the 1730s, and Bach was kind of left behind. Now he was probably aware that he was composing in a style that was now considered old-fashioned, but like many old people—like myself—he probably just didn't care, you know? Like, okay, that's what the kids—that's what the young people like these days; they like something simpler and lighter; they like homophonic texture, whatever. I have this way that I have been trained in that I have tried to perfect my entire life; I'm not just gonna throw it all away just because some people consider it to be old-fashioned. And now again, I'm imagining—I'm trying to imagine maybe the—the way Bach would have felt. But in any case, as I mentioned, two of his children, in particular, were more famous than the—the old Bach, as he was known himself. And this was in part, I think, because they were composing in this newer—what we might call classical—style. In fact, those two sons of Bach that I mentioned—C.P.E. Bach—Carl Philipp Emanuel—who was even appointed to a very prestigious position as music director—court composer to Frederick the Great of Prussia—Frederick the Great's court composer for a time was C.P.E. Bach—and then Johann Christian Bach—both were composing in what we would today consider the Classical style. In fact, both of them were heavily influential on Haydn and Mozart, who are two of the three greats of the Classical period. When we get to the Classical period, we will learn about really three composers mainly—Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven—right? And both—Mozart were—the older two were heavily influenced by J.S. Bach's two sons—C.P.E. Bach and Johann Christian Bach. Again, during that time, the old Bach, as he was known—the old man—was not all that well known. In fact, if you could go back to the year, let's say 1740 or 1750, if you were talking about Bach—"Oh, I love Bach"—people would not assume that you were talking about J.S. Bach—Johann Sebastian Bach—they would probably think—they would probably say, "Oh, which Bach are you talking about? C.P.E. Bach or Johann Christian Bach?" Okay, so I think I've made my point. Bach was not all that well—not that famous until later in his life—actually, as we will see, the—the sort of revival in interest in J.S. Bach began about 80 years or so after Bach's death, and it begins with the composer Felix Mendelssohn, who rediscovered some of Bach's works that hadn't been—that had been set aside on a shelf for decades and not been performed since Bach's lifetime. And it was really Mendelssohn who started the ball rolling in this interest in Bach, and to the point where today—almost two hundred years later—Bach's entire works—as far as—as many as we have—know—a lot of Bach's works unfortunately were lost. I read an estimate somewhere that only about one-third of the music that Bach composed has survived to the present day. So a lot of it was lost; we just don't know what happened to it. But that which has been preserved has been studied and recorded and—and is very well known today and is performed all over the world all the time. Anyway, I was drawing a contrast—in Bach, who was considered old-fashioned, Handel was—was more flexible in his style. So, for example, when you listen to excerpts from his most famous work, the oratorio Messiah, you will hear that it's not polyphonic all the time; in fact, it's very often homophonic, sometimes even monophonic. So Handel, I think, was more flexible in his use of texture; did not stick to this complicated polyphonic style as thoroughly as Bach.
Did his music? Is it a little bit, a little bit lighter, perhaps a little bit more transparent? And it was, therefore, I think, more appealing to people at that time. So I think Handel was more sensitive to changes in fashion and more accommodating. And again, that's maybe even why he was so much more popular. I'll talk a little bit more about Handel when I talk about the oratorio, which is the last genre that we will look at.
Now, lots of composers composed oratorios, but Handel is, I think, probably the most famous composer of oratorios. And his oratorio Messiah, which we all know—we hear it sung very often, excerpts of it at Christmastime or sometimes even Eastertime, like right around now—is the single best-known oratorio by far.
Okay, I think I've covered everything I intended to regarding Bach and Handel. Next lecture is going to be about the cantata, and I'll talk a little bit more about Bach in that lecture, in his role as music director at St. Thomas's Lutheran Church in Leipzig, Germany, where he worked for 27 years and where a major part of his job was to compose cantatas. We'll talk about what a cantata is next time. See you then.