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CHAPTER 10 1. Compare and contrast the biographies and careers of Bach and Handel. What influences did their career paths have on the types of works they composed? Although they each belong to the “class of 1685,” and were born within 100 miles of one another, Bach and Handel lived remarkably different lives, employed in remarkably different careers. Handel was a true cosmopolitan, living and studying in Germany, Italy, and England, absorbing the disparate national styles and learning to cater to audiences of all types. He would eventually come to dominate the operatic world: a German-speaking composer producing a string of Italian-language operas for a primarily English-speaking audience. Bach, by contrast, never once left Germanic lands, confining himself mostly to the cities of Weimar, Cöthen, and Leipzig. His work, too, bears this stamp: robustly German in character, drawing heavily upon the Lutheran chorale tradition. 2. Compare and contrast the reputations that Bach and Handel had among their contemporaries and their reputations in modern times. What aspects of the music by the “class of 1685” still seem familiar or “modern” today? Handel was, at the height of his powers, a character of international renown. He was courted by one of the most affluent of the German nobles, the Elector of Hanover, and had his works performed in the most prestigious theaters of England. To this day he enjoys considerable popularity, especially among speakers of English, for his masterly oratorios. The trajectory of Bach’s career was quite different. Although the Bach family name commanded some prestige (and was actually used as a synonym for “musician” in some quarters), Bach was considered by many of his time to be something of a mediocrity: The position he eventually assumed in Leipzig was originally offered to Telemann, who declined. Bach’s reputation has, of course, risen since then, and he is now often considered the greatest composer of instrumental music in the Baroque period. Between these two composers, much can be found which is seemingly modern. Both were capable of varied, and even eclectic, styles, and seemed to exercise a disdain for national and stylistic borders that we associate with an age far beyond their own. Bach practiced in a harmonic idiom almost unthinkable in his time, and Handel’s theatrical sensibilities were very similar to our own—no doubt in part because they have been so greatly shaped by him. 3. Using Bach’s and Buxtehude’s settings of Durch Adams Fall ist ganz verderbt, discuss the chorale prelude. How does Bach depict Adam’s fall into sin, and how is this related to Baroque conventions of madrigalism? The chorale prelude is a single-stanza setting, performed by a keyboardist and meant to prepare a chorus to sing the chorale in question. As the first line of Durch Adams Fall ist ganz verderbt details the commission of Adam and Eve’s sin, it is fitting that both Bach and Buxtehude would fashion their chorale preludes in a suitably despondent fashion. Bach even turns to a technique similar to the “madrigalisms” previously discussed, putting drops of a dissonant seventh in the prominent pedal part. The imitation of the “word painting” heard in earlier madrigals is clear, even if the lack of a text in this prelude means that it is less than obvious. 4. Describe the contrapuntal procedure known as the fugue, including definitions of the following terms: subject, answer, countersubject, episode, stretto. The fugue (variously called a form, a texture, and a device) revolves around contrapuntal imitation. It begins with the exposition of a subject, the first and most important theme. This is followed by an answer, the restatement of the subject in another voice. As the answer is stated, the voice which had originally sounded the subject begins performing the countersubject, a subsidiary theme which is fixed around the subject. After a statement of the subject in every voice (usually there are three or four), the fugue enters an episode, a period of music which indulges in free counterpoint without statement of the theme. There are countless other devices typically employed in the fugue, such as the stretto—a gesture, typically made at a fugue’s close, in which the subject and answer are stated in a shortened and stacked form by all voices, which close in with a tightened frequency to bring the work to an end. 5. Describe the tempo and metrical characteristics of the following dances, as reflected in Froberger’s suites: (a) allemande, (b) courante, (c) sarabande, (d) gigue. In what ways was Bach influenced by Froberger’s suites? How do Bach’s French-style works differ from those of Couperin? The allemande is a quick dance in 4/4; the courante a slow triple-meter dance, much like the sarabande in this regard; and the gigue a fast dance usually in 6/8. Bach seems to have been influenced by Froberger in his selection: He typically chooses from the core dances which had been established as de jure in the dance suite by Frobeger before Bach’s birth. The difference between Bach’s French-influenced works and the authentically French dances of Couperin lies in their attitudes toward the galant spirit. For Bach, pleasant amusement was a trait of the broader dance style, and yet not its raison d’etre. Couperin, by contrast, thoroughly indulges himself in galanterie, going so far as to insist, in his scores, upon the strict use of frothy ornaments, and even turning some of his dance works into miniature character pieces. 6. In what ways are Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos a fusion of Italian, French, and German elements? The Italianate character of the Brandenburg Concertos can be heard in their operatic or madrigallike expressivity. In their imitation of dance styles, and their affinity for the harpsichord, it is possible to hear the influence of the French; and their robust counterpoint, a by-product of the chorale tradition, is a sign of Germanic influence. 7. Describe some examples of unusual instrumentation and uses of instruments in these concertos. How might these unusual uses of instruments be interpreted? What do these concertos suggest about the eighteenth-century relationships between the individual and society, the soloist(s), and the ensemble? In the Brandenburg Concertos, Bach employs several instruments which were nearly antiquated even in his own time, such as the violino piccolo and the clarino trumpet. At other times, his instrumentation calls for more conventional instruments in unusual usage, as is seen in the decision to use a harpischord in the concertino of the Fifth. As this harpsichord part becomes more and more prominent, eventually culminating in a cadenza of unusual length, a social interpretation of the work as a whole begins to invite itself. The concerto is, as has been previously discussed, easily heard as the conflict between individual and societal forces. But in this concerto, the “individual,” if we are so to term the soloist, acts in a violently anti-social fashion, dominating the work with a willfully bizarre interjection. Some have interpreted this as Bach’s own self-asserting statement of individuality, a minor revolt on his part against the social mores of the seventeenth century.