May 30, 1980

NEW SOLIDARITY

Page 11

Music: Vivian Zoakos

Critic Lies on Handel, Bach

The family of Johann Sebastian Bach at morning prayers.

A recent article by Paul Henry Lang appearing in the program notes of a New York City concert held this spring, praises Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel as "the twin musical peaks of the Baroque," Lang proceeds to misinform concertgoers: Bach became the quintessentially German musician and the embodiment of the Lutheran spirit, while Handel, a globe trotter and international celebrity, became truly an Englishman, and rests among Britain's great in Westminster Abbey. . . Bach remained the German Protestant cantor . . . often chafing under the chicanery of his superiors; Handel became an independent composer . . . an English gentleman.

Lang's division between "religious" and "secular" is spurious. The only standpoint for musical composition is science. The compositional method utilized by Bach and Handel in both their explicitly "religious" works (such as the St. Matthew's Passion and the Messiah) and in their so-called secular keyboard and other great instrumental works, is identical. Handel's early musical training was also identical to that of Bach, as Mr. Lang himself partially documents in his biography, The Life of Handel. For the first 21 years of his life, prior to his 1706 trip to Italy, Handel studied intensively with Frideric Wilhelm Zachow, a formidable proponent of the "old-style" German contrapuntal tradition. Zachow himself had studied with Johann Theile, the man who also taught Bach's own teacher, Dietrich Buxtehude. J. S. Bach was first and foremost a scientist. Nothingnot even the exigencies of his own careermattered more to him than the education of his pupils and children. This unswerving commitment expressed itself in his compositions themselves; specifically, Bach's pedagogical models "for young people anxious to learn," such as the Well-Tempered Clavier, the twoand three-part inventions, and the various "Bchlein.'' Bach's students were many, whereas Handel confessed his distaste for teaching; his only students were the daughters of George I and George II. According to Johann Philipp Kirnberger, Bach's most dedicated and brilliant student: The great J. S. Bach used to say: "Everything must be possible" ("es muss alles moglich zu machen seyn"), and he would never hear of anything being "not feasible." This has always spurred me onward to accomplish many difficult things in music, by dint of effort and patience, according to my own poor powers. And on another occasion, when he was asked to explain his incredible mastery of the organ, Bach replied: "There is nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the right notes at the right time, and the instrument plays itself." In short, Bach was no isolated, religious monk-like composer, laboring away in some God-forsaken town in Saxony. Bach saw his role as employing every composition to inspire the individual with the desire to become "more like God." In that sense and that sense only, are his compositions religious.

Lang's conclusion is that Handel was "the opposite of Bach," and that "these two are the extremes which by complementing each other sum up the era." The only thing which separated Handel and Bach was the degree of moral commitment to the humanist method and traditionboth politically and musicallyin their everyday lives. While Bach spent his entire life training a future generation schooled in his contrapuntal method, Handel wasted much of his life writing "galant" music and pleasing the British court and aristocracy with "charming melodies." To the extent that Handel became an "English gentleman" and lost sight of his obligation to extend and reproduce his own creative powers, to that extent his musical power was degraded and his music was inferior to Bach's. This column was contributed by Robyn Press.