ABSTRACT
German organist and composer. Chronologically, the music of Bach coincides with a peak point in European humanism, in that he was born in 1685 and died in 1750, just as the “modern world” was taking shape. He is less decisively, or at least less straightforwardly, representative of the era than his contemporary Handel who, born in the same year as Bach, died nine years later: for Handel’s favorite métier was heroic opera, the most patent and potent manifestation of the High Baroque’s self-glorification, so that most of his music was directed toward human gratification, rather than to the worship of God. Handel, born in staunchly Teutonic HALLE, spent his apprentice years in Italy, where in his early twenties he produced dazzling ceremonial works as well as heroic operas; and was then established in ENGLAND, to become an icon of the rising middle class, with its ethical rather than religious morality. Handel was thus a European figure, if not yet fully international, whereas Bach was content to remain parochially a servant of the Lutheran church, fulfilling a series of ecclesiastical appointments. True, he made two arduous pilgrimages, on foot, to visit the ancient organist Reinken and the brilliant Scandinavian organist DIETRICH BUXTEHUDE-but that was in the interests of music, and of God, not of self-advancement.
