JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
By Lissewsky
Bach’s compositions for a solo violin, unaccompanied, are the most stupendous works ever written by anybody for a single instrument. Great players have always delighted in mastering their technical difficulties, which are very great.
Handel was born the same year as Bach, in 1685, though he seems a little nearer to us somehow. While Bach was living his quiet, uneventful life, Handel was gaining experience in the world. He was a native of Saxony and was the son of a surgeon, who considered music a degrading business. We know under what difficulties little Handel practised the spinet in the garret. The Duke of Saxe-Wessenfels heard him play and persuaded his father to let him follow the bent of his genius. Handel played in the Orchestra in the Opera House of Hamburg, “the Northern Venice,” a cosmopolitan city where the people had the best of music.
Then Handel travelled in Italy, where he met the famous Alessandro Scarlatti[53] and had his opera of Agrippina performed. Then he went to the Court of Hanover to become Kapellmeister.
But Handel wanted a larger field for his activity, and so he went to London in 1710 and brought out several operas. Queen Anne was reigning at this time and her Court was famous for its brilliant literary men—Pope, Addison, Steele, Sheridan and many others; and Handel’s music pleased many of the Court, as well as the Queen herself. In 1713 he wrote a Birthday Ode for her, which delighted Her Majesty. It was literally “to the Queen’s taste.”
But Queen Anne died in 1714; and a strange thing happened for Handel—the Elector of Hanover, his old patron, was called to the British throne as George I. Handel now became director of the King’s Music.
In 1717 he left George I to become Chapel-master for the Duke of Chandos, who had a palace at Cannons, not far from London, where he lived in great magnificence. For instance, he had a guard of a hundred Swiss soldiers and a chapel like those of Italy. His Orchestra was of the best.
Handel stayed at Cannons three years and then he became director of the Italian opera in London, where he produced one opera after another, some of which brought forth witty satires from Addison and Steele, but all of which attracted large audiences. Most of them were on mythological subjects, were written in the Italian style and were superbly staged. Occasionally, a beautiful aria from one or another of these operas appears on a programme to-day; and it is so noble and lovely that we long to hear the old operas themselves. As a rule, these arias are accompanied by several instruments supporting one that plays an obbligato part; and these show what Handel did to develop and exhibit the technique of various instruments.
The last years of his life were devoted to composing the magnificent oratorios of Saul, Samson, The Messiah and Israel in Egypt.