Program Notes:
Baroque Splendor

Featuring soprano Barbara Quintiliani, The Boston Cecilia (Donald Teeters, Music Director)
Steven Lipsitt, Music Director, conducting

Friday, October 13, 2006 at 8pm
Sunday, October 15, 2006 at 3pm

BACH AND HANDEL — “And Music Shall Untune the Sky”
By Donald Teeters

The two towering geniuses of European music in the first half of the eighteenth century were born in Germany in 1685, one month and less than a hundred miles apart. Handel, the elder of the two, was born in Halle on February 23, Bach in Eisenach on March 21. It is thought that they never met, although both surely knew of the other at least by reputation if not through direct acquaintance with each other’s music. Handel lived longer, to 1759, and died childless, having never married. Bach, the father of many, wed twice, and died in 1750.

Fame and honors came quickly and abundantly to Handel, who left Germany for Italy while still a teenager, met and learned from the many famous musicians there, and ultimately migrated to England, where he received royal patronage, and artistic and popular success. He died in London, highly honored and financially secure.

Bach never left Germany. He spent his life as a court or church musician and, though a proud and self-confident man, never attained a position of independence comparable to Handel’s. He certainly never could have been described as wealthy, and spent far too much time engaged in wrangling with or humoring his superiors—noble, civic, ecclesial—in an attempt to obtain the necessary resources for realizing his artistic goals.

Bach seems to have enjoyed the blessings of a supportive domestic life within a large and lively family. Although far more details of Handel’s social and professional life have survived through the journals of his many acquaintances, little is really known about the nature of his private life or what sufficed as surrogate for familial relations.

Artistically, both men were fully acquainted not only with the tools, but also the esthetic and cultural underpinnings, of the music that preceded them. They were skilled in the techniques of the past and drew on them for inspiration in their own compositions throughout their lives. Bach especially seemed to revel in taking all the formal structures and techniques in the catalogue and investing them one at a time, time and time again, with unprecedented substance, complexity, and imagination.

Although he wrote a great number of secular works for instruments (and some for voice—we’ll hear one in these concerts), Bach must still be thought of as essentially a church composer, for that is where he invested his primary artistic efforts—his skill and devotion, in roughly equal parts—throughout most of the years of his maturity. Handel, on the other hand, was the quintessential Enlightenment secularist. Opera was his passion. He immersed himself in its Italian roots, accepted its conventions, relished interaction with its other practitioners—composers, librettists, and superstar singers. He abandoned opera in London only when the London audiences abandoned it, and thus him. Fortunately for us, Handel then took up the composition of oratorios: large scale, unstaged works, based mainly on Biblical events, intended for performance in English. He transformed an existing form into something almost entirely new by introducing operatic drama into the narrative and making the chorus a major player. Handel found even greater success in oratorio than he had known in opera, due largely to oratorio’s wider appeal. He kept the patronage of the nobility, but was able to add the middle class and the religious, both Christian and Jew, to his audience. Most of the oratorios, after all, draw their texts from Hebrew Scripture.

In these performances we will hear a sampler of works by both composers showing, in Bach’s case, various aspects of his use of the chorus in his church music, but including one startlingly beautiful and intimate example of a secular solo work, the Wedding Cantata, set to a text with classical roots. From Handel, we have an example of his festive instrumental style at its most exuberant and a transcendent moment from one of his works in the oratorio style, the Ode on St. Cecilia’s Day.

Three choral movements from three different Bach cantatas lead off.
BWV 69, Lobe den Herrn, meine Seele (Praise the Lord, my Soul) was revised by Bach several times over a period spanning 1723 to 1748. We will hear the first (choral) movement, brilliantly festive, written to celebrate the inauguration of the Leipzig town council. The importance of the occasion warranted an orchestra that is large and opulently outfitted by Baroque standards. Its three trumpets, three oboes, and timpani, signify: A Celebration! The choral parts are energetic, extroverted, and require virtuoso command of the florid style.

BWV 194, Höchterwuenschtes Freudenfest (Welcome, Joyful Feast Day) dates from 1723, when it accompanied the dedication of a new organ in one of Leipzig’s churches. It follows the form of an earlier secular cantata Bach wrote while he was employed at Cöthen. The first chorus, performed here, is written in the French-Overture style — a stately beginning in crisply articulated long-note/short-note patterns, followed by a lively allegro — with the chorus entering only at the allegro. The mood is still festive although the absence of brass reduces the blood pressure rate a bit and imparts an attractive, French-like elegance to the festivities.

BWV 143 Lobe den Herrn, meine Seele (Praise the Lord, my Soul), by contrast with the movement heard above to the same text, though also quite jolly, partakes of a more rustic, pastoral affect than that one. It is the only extant cantata of Bach’s that employs three hunting horns (Corni da caccia), who supply a colorful, outdoorsy obbligato to the first chorus. There is some question about the provenance of this cantata; no autograph score survives and the style of the whole cantata is unusual in the Bach canon. Nevertheless, it is hard to imagine any contemporary of Bach’s (with the possible exception of Handel!) possessing the skills to compose a work of such charm and sophistication.

BWV 50 Nun ist das Heil und die Kraft (Now is Come Salvation and Strength) is a single movement cantata (very unusual in Bach) scored for double chorus (even more unusual) and large orchestra (three trumpets, three oboes again) intended for use on Michaelmas, the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels. The background of the composition of this very energetic, but brief, work is unclear in the extreme. The text, from Revelations, is appropriate for this feast day, but what kind of movements, if any, might have followed this overwhelming piece is unknown. Overwhelming it is, too! The energy of the competing choral groups vigorously defines the conflict in heaven between Michael and Satan, and the richly scored orchestration spurs the choruses on to a stirring finale. Here are four minutes of music in which cataclysm and conflict are engaged and resolved to a degree, that in reference to another medium, might equate to a Hollywood Hour! That metaphor, however, is insufficient to the splendor of this cantata movement.

BWV 202 Weichet nur, betrübte Schatten’ (Yield now, Brooding Shadows) is a secular cantata based on classical sources, scored for solo soprano and small orchestra. It is one of Bach’s most touching and intimate works, fitting indeed, although this is not specific in Bach’s intentions, the celebration of a young couple’s nuptials. No autograph score exists and the first copy, in another hand, dates from 1730. It might have been composed in Cöthen, or perhaps even earlier, in Weimar. In the haunting beginning (the “brooding shadows”), oboe and voice in pensive, intertwining melodies seem to belie the occasion we are here to celebrate. But this is just winter’s snow giving way to the ardor of love. A recitative leads to the second aria, which shares its musical materials with a violin sonata (BWV 1019). The alternation of recitative and aria continues, leading to a third aria in which an elegant violin obbligato ornaments the soprano line. Then a fourth introduces a more light-hearted oboe, quickening the spirits. A final recitative sets in motion a spirited gavotte sending the wedding guests happily on their way to the wedding feast. One envies the lucky couple who were the inspiration for this enchanting work.

BWV 51 Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen (Praise God in all the Lands). Imagine dragging yourself to church in the morning, eyes heavy with sleep, mind full of cotton-wool and being hit with this! And pity the poor boy (?) who had to sing it!” This is the way Simon Crouch introduces an essay on this extraordinary solo cantata, likely written in 1730 — but for whom? Women were not customarily allowed to sing in church, so did Bach have a youngster capable of executing it? Robert Marshall, writing in Bach the Progressive, suggests that it might have been written for Faustina Bordoni, who was commonly considered to be the outstanding soprano in Europe at the time (Handel wrote for her, too, and witnessed a famous onstage fight she had with another soprano in one of his operas!). She sang at the Dresden opera, and Bach might have corresponded with her husband, who was a successful Dresden composer. Possibly it was written for a castrato. Whatever the circumstances, it is a supremely beautiful work, and one of only a few sacred cantatas to be carried entirely by a solo voice. The florid and virtuosic opening aria and second, gentler one are separated by an accompanied recitative. A splendid chorale prelude with the soloist singing the chorale tune, Sei Lob und Preis mit ehren, with elaborate instrumental figures for accompaniment is followed immediately by the bracing Alleluia. Where BWV 202 casts a solo oboe opposite the soprano, BWV 51 employs a solo trumpet.

When Handel arrived in England in 1711, he had two distinctly valuable calling cards in his pocket. It was at that very moment that the aristocracy “discovered” Italian opera, turning it into a new and fashionable element in society. Rinaldo, Handel’s first opera composed for England, was completed and performed that very year. The second card had to wait until 1714 to be played. The Hanoverian reign began that year with the coronation of George I. Handel, the young German émigré with some spectacular successes already under his belt, was only too happy to ally himself with the German-born royal family. Once that patronage was secured, additional aristocratic commissions and positions were proffered and happily accepted. As long as Italian opera prospered and the Royals were pleased with him and his music, Handel’s position was never in jeopardy. And being the clever businessman that he was, he managed to escape financial disaster in the collapse of operatic enterprise by swiftly turning his attention to oratorio, where the costs were less and the profits, it turned out, much greater. One might say, musical issues aside, that Handel did indeed live a charmed professional life. He almost always managed to be in the right place at the right time. He chose his employers, his place of residence, and his professional colleagues with discriminating care.

The Royal Fireworks Music was a commission, in 1749, from the King to celebrate the signing of the Treaty of Aachen, which put an end to the War of the Austrian Secession. A vast celebration was planned for London’s Green Park where elaborate fireworks were prepared, a triumphal arch erected, all amidst a panoply of Georgian excess. All came to nought when the famous English weather intervened. (Think Esplanade!) Not even a King could order the rain away. Fireworks fizzled, the scaffolding caught fire. Musically, the saving grace was that several days earlier some 12,000 people had attended an undampened dress rehearsal in Vauxhall Gardens, where the music was wildly acclaimed. The king had wanted the work scored only for winds and timpani. Handel wanted to include strings. Knowing what we know of Handel’s ingenuity, who do you think won? Look and listen and you will find out.

John Dryden’s Ode for St. Cecilia’s Day dates from 1687. Handel’s setting of this astoundingly beautiful text was composed in 1739. The final solo and chorus, performed here, is a work of perfect symmetry and rousing energy. Dryden’s evocative words and Handel’s extraordinarily powerful music come together in honor of Music itself. The soprano declaims Dryden’s potent lines with an almost Verdian urgency, the melody stripped of ornament, as if Handel were disinclined to impose one art upon another:

“So when the last and dreadful hour
This crumbling pageant shall devour,
The trumpet shall be heard on high:
The dead shall live, the living die,
And Music shall untune the sky.”

Handel lived another twenty years, but the decade beginning with the composition of this work marked the fullest flowering of the art of this long underrated genius.

Bach and Handel lived chronologically simultaneous lives, but their orbits were differently aligned. If one was the sun, must the other settle for the moon? From the perspective of those of us who remain earth-bound, the indispensable illumination these two composers continue to provide after two and a half centuries still seems startling and wondrous and very bright indeed.


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