Bach and Handel
The exact contemporaries Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frederick Handel (both born in 1685) represent the pinnacle of Baroque art in its most exalted and characteristic phases.
The intensity, piety, and intellectual rigor of Bach’s art is represented by such secular masterworks as the Keyboard Suites and the “Brandenburg” concertos, and Bach’s towering spiritual attainments are represented by the “St. Matthew Passion” and selections from cantatas and the Mass in B minor.
Handel’s art, much more ostentatiously grandiose and yet remarkably direct and communicative, is represented by orchestral concertos and his inimitably dramatic oratorios, such as “Messiah” and “Israel in Egypt.”
Taken together, Bach and Handel offer a fascinating and comprehensive panorama of an age suffused with elegantly complex ornamentation and an elaborately architectural vision of music composition that spans the expressive palettes from the most intimate to the grandest of conceptions.
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