Chapter 10: Class of 1685 (I): The Instrumental Music of Bach and Handel

I. Introduction
A. Bach, Handel, and Scarlatti were all born in 1685. In the nineteenth century, their status as
composers rose to the point where most music students eventually play some of their pieces.
B. Of their works, those most suited to present-day concert forces remain in the repertory.
C. The mythology that surrounds Bach and Handel is due to various factors within and without
music.
D. Careers and Lifestyles: Handel First
1. Handel was born one month earlier than Bach, and they have often been linked in
music history. Nonetheless, the two never met, and their careers took them down entirely
different paths.
2. Handel moved from Halle when he was eighteen, traveling to Hamburg. There he
played violin and harpsichord in the opera house.
3. Having found his true calling, Handel went to Italy (Florence and Rome) to study.
4. In 1710 Handel became the court music director for George Louis, Elector of Hanover.
5. This man became King George I of England in 1714.
6. Handel moved to London before George I ascended to the throne, and lived there the
rest of his life.
7. Handel presented thirty-odd operas for London theaters between 1711 and 1738.
8. Competition from younger opera composers caused Handel to turn his efforts to
oratorio.

II. Bach
A. Bach’s Career
1. Bach never left Germany.
2. He held a series of organist positions (sometimes combined with other duties) early on
(Arnstadt, Mühlhausen, Weimar), worked at the ducal court at Cöthen, and then was music
director in Leipzig.
3. Bach’s career was provincial, and he composed what was needed at the time
(depending on what his assigned duties were).
4. Most of his great vocal music dates from Leipzig, but not all. (He never wrote an
opera.)
5. His later years saw the composition of esoteric and old-fashioned masterpieces of
counterpoint that have never been surpassed. Numerology is also a part of these works, as is
variation technique.

B. The Chorale Prelude

1. Bach belonged to a family of church musicians that stretched back to the sixteenth
century.
2. Most of these musicians were church organists and cantors.
3. Bach sought out the greatest composers in the Lutheran tradition for study: Böhm,
Reincken, and Buxtehude, walking some 300 miles to hear the latter in 1705–06.
4. Bach inherited the genre of chorale prelude, a single-stanza setting of the chorale that
introduced congregational singing or served for meditation.
 a. At Weimer he started a cycle that would suit the entire church year, but only
completed forty-six of these (known as the Orgelbüchlein).
b. Anthology 1-84 allows for a comparison of how Buxtehude and Bach treated
the same chorale, Durch Adams Fall ist ganz verderbt.
1) Both composers leave the melody relatively unadorned.
2) Buxtehude imbues the piece with chromatic lines.
3) Bach highlights the pedal part—something he was particularly adept at
doing as a performer.
a) The pedal vividly depicts Adam’s fall with dissonant descending
7ths.
b) As such, he brings together form and content, a style that
hearkens to the discussions about music heard in the early sixteenth century.
c) Harmonically and structurally, however, it pointed forward.

C. The Fugue
1. Pachelbel began to separate the free and strict sections of a toccata, and by Bach’s time
these were separated into distinct pieces, such as prelude and fugue or toccata and fugue.
2. A fugue can be a self-alone piece, part of a piece, texture, or procedure.
3. Bach’s Fugue in G Minor is an example of the composer’s approach to the fugue in his
early years and is relatively straightforward.
a. Subject is in soprano
b. Alto enters with the answer, on the dominant; soprano moves to countersubject.
c. Tenor and then bass enter in same fashion. When the bass finishes, the
exposition is over.
d. An episode follows, during which the subject is not stated.
e. The subject enters again. This alternation of subject and episode continues
throughout the work.
f. Bach adds intensity through stretto toward the end.

D. The “Well-Tempered Keyboard”

1. Bach wrote two series of preludes and fugues in every key (major and minor) for
keyboard, known as the Well Tempered Keyboard, Das wohltemperirte Clavier.
a. These date from 1722 (Book One) and 1738–42 (Book Two).
b. The title indicates that an instrument can be tuned to accommodate all keys.
c. There is tremendous scope and variety in these works.
2. The C-major prelude from Book One is famous for a number of reasons.
a. As an example of a teaching piece, it follows in the prelude tradition.
b. The repetitive arpeggiation is representative of French “broken” technique,
borrowed from the lute.
3. The B-minor fugue differs in almost every way from the Prelude in C.
a. The chromatic subject grows in intensity as the work progresses, heightened by
the disjunct theme’s inherent properties.
b. The polyphonic intensity is severe.

E. Bach’s Imported Roots: Froberger and Others

 1. Even though Bach never left Germany, he was able to assimilate various national
styles and idioms. (Some say this is because Germans at this time did not compete with warring
French and Italian enthusiasts, but rather gleaned what they wished from both.)
2. German musicians had long brought in other styles, including the French dance suite.
a. Chief among the proponents of the dance suites was Johann Jacob Froberger
(1616–67), a native of southern Germany who worked at the Viennese court.
1) Froberger helped establish the standard dance sequence in a suite:
allemande, courante, sarabande, gigue.
2) Bach adopted this model as a basic pattern for all of his suites.
3. These four dances were all in binary form, but varied in meter and tempo.

F. Bach’s Suites
1. Bach learned French style through publications.
2. His position at Cöthen did not require him to write (or play) elaborate church music,
and he composed works suitable to the tastes of his patron, Prince Leopold (who had a court
orchestra of roughly sixteen instrumentalists).
3. For almost six years, Bach wrote mostly instrumental music, including concertos,
sonatas, and suites.
a. He wrote for a variety of groups and soloists, including the unaccompanied
suites for violin and cello.
b. Most of his suites are organized into groups of six, including the six English
Suites and six French Suites, for keyboard.
c. The French Suite in G major contains elements that demonstrate some of the
aesthetic contradictions of eighteenth-century style.
1) At the core of this work is the standard sequence established by
Froberger.
2) Bach inserts three extra dances before the gigue, and his title tells us
these are in addition to the core. He calls them “trifles.”
a) Such “trifles” are indicative of the French style galant, an
aesthetic that differs significantly from that of the Lutheran church.

G. “Agréments” and “Doubles”: The Art of Ornamentation

1. The gigue in the French Suite in G major is closer to Bach’s traditional style since it
begins with a fugal exposition.
2. The French style of keyboard suites can be clearly demonstrated in the works of
François Couperin, his “greatest-keyboard-playing contemporary.”
a. A gigue from his fourteenth ordre (set, longer than a suite) makes a nice
comparison for Bach’s French Suite in G major.
b. Both are in compound meter, although Bach’s precise choice indicates a faster
tempo.
c. Couperin’s piece is not called a “gigue,” but is a character piece. Nonetheless,
internal musical clues let the performer know it is indeed a gigue.

H. Stylistic Hybrids: The “Brandenburg” Concertos

1. By combining elements of familiar styles in unfamiliar ways, Bach produced new
pieces that sounded somehow familiar, but not quite.
 2. He put six concertos together in hopes of attaining a position in Berlin, but the
concertos were never acknowledged or performed there. Their unusual scoring may be part of
the reason.
a. Bach required different soloists for each, including rare instruments such as the
violino piccolo.
b. The fifth has a written-out harpsichord part.
c. The sixth does not include a violin part.

I. The Fifth Brandenburg Concerto

1. This atypical concerto is ambitious in several aspects.
a. Bach sets up the flute as protagonist, only to have the violin and harpsichord
join it.
b. The ritornello is exceptionally robust.
c. Ultimately, the harpsichord proves the dominant instrument. This event was
unique in the early eighteenth century.
d. The second movement contrasts markedly with the first, a soft affettuoso in B
minor.
e. The last movement fuses different genres: fugue, concerto, and gigue. Instead
of the full band having the opening ritornello, the soloist group begins.

III. Handel
A. Handel’s Instrumental Music
1. Even though Handel is remembered chiefly for his vocal music, he left a considerable
amount of instrumental music, some of which remains popular today.
2. His orchestral suites are his largest instrumental pieces.
3. The most famous are the “Water Music,” composed for performance while the king
floated down the Thames, and “The Musick for the Royal Fireworks”—composed for just that.