Johann Sebastian Bach and Georg Frideric Handel were both born in 1685 - the year Judge Jeffries' Bloody Assizes dealt a gory blow for James II after the Monmouth Rebellion. Bach was born in a small place called Eisenach some 200 kilometres north-east of Frankfurt. His was a musical family and at an early age he would obsessively transcribe music scores for his own personal education. After a spell in a youth choir, he got the first of various organ jobs, at Arnstadt. From then on, in a career that lasted till he was sixty-five at Mulhausen, Weimar and Leipzig, Bach wrote acres of superb music. Despite most of it being devoted to the greater glory of God, he did have a few small weaknesses. Coffee was one. At that time, coffee was seen as almost a dangerous narcotic, but Bach indulged his caffeine passion to such an extent that he even wrote a piece of music about it/
Another was numerology. Bach was convinced certain numbers were significant. If you give all the letters a numerical value pertaining to their position in the alphabet (so A = 1,? = 2, etc) then, as far as Bach was concerned, his second name added up to 14 (i.e. B2 + Al + C3 + H8 = 14). And so 14 became very significant for him, and he would write cantatas where the main tune had just 14 notes. One choral prelude, 'Wenn wir in hochsten Noten sein', has exactly 166 notes, which, if you care to add it up, is the numerical value of his full name. Look:
J + 0 + H + A + N + N = 62' I
S + E + B+A + S + T + I + A + N = 90 I total 166 19 5 2 1 19 20 9 1 14 f
2 13 8 I
•PThe Coffee Cantata, 'Schweiget stillc, plaudert nkbt' from 1732. Handel was born not a million miles from Bach, some 60 kilometres west of Leipzig. His family was an entirely different kettle of fish. His dad was a barber-surgeon - the very mention of the phrase 'barber-surgeon' makes me wince: apparently it was a 'jack of all trades' mini-doctor who would pull your teeth one minute then amputate your arm the next (and you'd only come in to say hello) - and Handel had to go against his dad's wishes in order not to follow him in the grisly family business. Ironically, he eventually went to university to read law, but became an organist on the side, at the Domkirche in Halle, before eventually leaving for Hamburg and a job playing violin and harpsichord in the Hamburg Opera. Gradually he began to get more and more of his operas staged, and set off round Europe to play, compose and take in the music of the continent's greatest living composers.
I think it's fair to say that, yes, although they did dominate the age -the age of baroque, that is - it was in very different ways. Despite the fact that they lived at exactly the same time, they were really like chalk and cheese. Handel was a great traveller who went all over Europe. Bach stayed at home. Maybe washing his hair. Handel was opera mad - in fact, set up the Royal Academy of Music specifically to promote opera and wrote operas till they were coming out of his ears. Bach wrote none.
Handel was a shrewd cookie, a clever entrepreneur who always knew which side his bread was buttered when it came to the next commission, or concert series or cushy job - very much the smooth operator. Bach? Well, Bach was a bit hopeless with money. He never really felt comfortable in 'building his part up' as it were, and even went to gaol because he couldn't always bite his tongue when confronted by someone dangling a state job in front of his nose. And having a family the size of Bournemouth didn't exactly help much, either. I always had the image of the Bach family home as a bit like the one in the Monty Python film, The Meaning of Life - kids leaping out of cupboards and cries of'Ooh, get that for us, will you, Deirdre?' as another sibling comes into the world.
Also, I imagine, and, true, I'm just surmising here, but I get the feeling Handel was a bit of a goer - liked to party, eat for both England and Germany at the same time, and generally live a little. Bach was more the pious, totally dedicated and strictly Lutheran artist, who worked to express the profound musical thoughts that were in his head, for the glory of God. It's said he once walked a round trip of some 426 miles and several pairs of boots, just to hear a recital by fellow composer Buxtehude. To be fair, that could be down to commitment, but it could also be just general 'organist madness'. Organists, see! Take my word for it - they're not normal.
Bach's output, despite his dishevelled life, was staggering. The job of collecting and publishing all his music took some forty-six years.
To get some idea of the similarities of Bach and Handel, and yet, at the same time, the amazing differences, you could do worse than listen to the Water Music back to back with the Brandenburg Concertos. Bach's Brandenburg Concertos are simply DIVINE, absolutely fantastic - I couldn't rave about them enough. And yet they have a general… seriousness about them. Alongside them, Handel's Water Music is overwhelmingly joyous and, dare I say it, almost light. In fact, even the genesis of the two pieces is typical of both composers. Bach's were a slightly desperate gift to the Margrave of Brandenburg, given to him in the hope of eliciting some much needed money - money which never came, sadly. Handel's, on the other hand, were light and fun - twenty short pieces written to accompany George I on a boat trip up the Thames. Indeed, their first performance was on a boat, rocking like nobody's business, with musicians desperately trying to keep their music on the stands/ Somehow I couldn't see Bach in the same role. That said, both pieces are brilliant and gorgeous, and I couldn't live without either.
ANT AND HIS SISTERS
Q
uick update, if I may. Technology, first. Technology is coming on in leaps and bounds. Someone, for example, makes a bid to be forever remembered in the history of music by inventing the piano. The guy's name was Cristofori. I repeat… Cristofori. You see, I can't .0 Mmmm, lean see the school essay subject now: 'HanAel was not so much a composer as a Royal Ghetto Blaster - discuss. Not more than 1,000 words.' help thinking that he missed a trick, really - more or less blew the 'history' bit. He should have taken a leaf out of, say, Biro or Hoover's book, and called it the Cristofori. That way, today we would be quickly nipping over and playing scales on the 'Cristofori', or listening to Cristofori concertos. Even watching tea commercials on TV where performing chimps said, 'Eh, Dad. Do you know the Cristofori's on my foot?' 'No, but you hum it, son, and I'll play it.' As it is, he called it a 'piano', and, so nobody knows his name.
What else? Well, Handel and another of the big, young composers, Domenico Scarlatti, have had a piano duel. That's just like a real duel, only you're expected to kill your opponent by throwing a piano at them. Not surprisingly, it was declared a draw, and they both lived/© Elsewhere, we've had the first cricket match - Londoners versus Kentish men - and also in England banknotes are now in. Only a matter of time, I suppose, in that snuff had been around since 1558, so… well, sooner or later you were going to need a banknote, weren't you? All this AND the Prussian army introduce pigtails as their standard haircut, beating the corporate Britain of the 1980s by some 270 years.
Now, I want to introduce you to Antonio Vivaldi, the man who wrote 400 concertos. Or, as Stravinsky said, wrote one then copied it out a further 399 times. (Saucer of milk for the Russian - he was expressing the not uncommon view, it has to be said, that many of Vivaldi's concertos can sound a little… well, samey. At least after the first 200.)