Handel vs Bach cont.

[Rod]

Originally posted by Joy:
P.S.: You're never too old!!

Joy

I think you misunderstood this remark!

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"If I were but of noble birth..." - Rod Corkin

[Chaszz]

Originally posted by Rod:
By default you and Chazss must be equally predjudiced as your own position re Handel and Bach is, whether you admit it or not, the direct opposite of my own. If I had stated a preference for Bach with equal zeal it would have met with no contradiction from yourselves, this I am sure of.

In my case this is true. After this cutting contest I'm as confirmed in my opinion of Bach as you are in yours of Handel, so we've got nowhere. It seems pointless to continue, though I heard a version of Bach's Orchestral Suite #3 last night that I think would even melt the heart of a... well, it is probably pointless.

My Bach collection was mostly built years ago, on LP. Lately I've been listening to and collecting CDs of Wagner. So I can't really be putting up specific forms by Bach to match those by Handel. I'd have to start collecting Bach CDs and really don't know enough about the original instruments movement to do so effectively in a short period of time. However, I don't think there's a point to this excercise anymore anyway. I did however, get a good re-appreciation for Bach and will be getting into some works I haven't yet heard. I think this exercise did me good for that. And I will try some of Handel's oratorios.

[Rod]

Originally posted by Chaszz:
And I will try some of Handel's oratorios.

I recommend that if you do this, you ask me for a CD recommendation for whatever piece takes your fancy, as I've got them all. It could save you from making any costly mistakes.


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"If I were but of noble birth..." - Rod Corkin

[This message has been edited by Rod (edited October 17, 2002).]

[Rod]

Originally posted by Chaszz:
[BThis version is arranged by Neville Marriner, conducting the Academy
of St Martin-in-the-Fields. Although I invite Rod to try it, I don't
think he will like it based on his previous reactions. Others may
find it fine, six voices of counterpoint with some really beautiful
chordal combinations and progressions. I think it's the best
counterpoint I've heard by Bach, far superior emotionally to the Art
of Fugue which came a year or two later and is considered by some to
be the old composer's crowning achievement in polyphony.
[/B]

I've finally managed to get the time to listen to this piece. I agree its certainly the most sophisticated piece from Bach that I have heard, in fact I barely sounds like a Bach piece at all compared to the vast majority of Bach works I have heard. I thought the flute sounded a little out of place in this recording, although an authentic flute would have sounded far less intrusive. The treatment of the piece reminds me strangely of some of the chorus's in Handel's last Oratorios - Theodora and Jeptha, though Handel is more consise and diverse dramatically. I still have trouble, based on this recording at least, deciding whether the material can survive this lengthy treatment. On my second listening I got sensations of monotony creeping in - is the remainder of this work in the same style? Of course I would never even consider buying a Handel piece by the Academy of St Martin-in -the-Fields (of which there are many). But still, a good piece. But for the best piece in all Baroque try Theodora, CD by McCreesh and the Gabrielli Consort on Archiv if you have a few spare pennies (or better still the cheaper and superior video production at the Glyndebourne Festival Opera by Christie and the OAE, here the piece is acted (appropriately) as an opera though with (appropriately) minimal staging. This is a miraculous production, if only Fidelio were given such a considered treatment!

Rod

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"If I were but of noble birth..." - Rod Corkin


[This message has been edited by Rod (edited November 12, 2002).]

[Chaszz]

Originally posted by Rod:
[b]...I thought the flute sounded a little out of place in this recording, although an authentic flute would have sounded far less intrusive.... But still, a good piece.



Bach.. a good piece... an admission I thought I might never hear.

A flute is featured in most ensembles which record 'The Musical Offering' because Frederick the Great, for whom it was written, was an accompliushed flautist. Though the piece as a whole with its 16 or so movements is mostly unspecified as to instrumentation, there is a trio sonato for flute and continuo which IS specified, and the flute usually gets some assignments in the other movements as well.

As far as dull, the theme (which was provided by the king during a visit by Bach) is varied exhaustively every which way during the work. To me, there is a kind of rarefied, beautiful spectrum of emotions throughout, which I don't necessarily find in other exhaustive themic explorations by Bach, such as the Goldman Variations.

Since I like putting up mp3s, in the future I'll put up some movements from the Bach orchestral suites and concerti for solo instruments (not the Brandenbergs), which are mostly early works. I am also looking for a decent piano performance of the Busoni adaptation of the massive Chaconne from the Violin Partita #2. If anyone can point me to one, please do.

[Rod]

Originally posted by Chaszz:

Bach.. a good piece... an admission I thought I might never hear.
[/B][/QUOTE]

I have said before that I have liked the odd thing here and there from Bach. But I like everything from Handel who, imho, is capable of communicating much more via much less.

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"If I were but of noble birth..." - Rod Corkin

[Chaszz]

Originally posted by Rod:
I have said before that I have liked the odd thing here and there from Bach. But I like everything from Handel who, imho, is capable of communicating much more via much less.

By the way, Rod, if you don't mind my asking, if you WERE of noble birth, what would be the rest of that thought?

I would think that noble birth is of little relevance these days, compared with the past, since we tend to evaluate people on their attainments rather than their births.

Also one would hope you weren't related to the British Royal Family, which as time goes on seems to be anything but noble.

Of course, if your noble birth carried an inheritance, it could free you to do as your heart desires, which would be....?

[Rod]

Originally posted by Chaszz:
By the way, Rod, if you don't mind my asking, if you WERE of noble birth, what would be the rest of that thought?

I would think that noble birth is of little relevance these days, compared with the past, since we tend to evaluate people on their attainments rather than their births.

Also one would hope you weren't related to the British Royal Family, which as time goes on seems to be anything but noble.

Of course, if your noble birth carried an inheritance, it could free you to do as your heart desires, which would be....?

My quote is in fact a corruption of a Beethoven quote. It conserned his court dealings with Karl and his mother. It turned out that nobles got a better deal in Viennese courts, and thus prompted this remark from B.

As it relates to me the quote is self mocking and Royal mocking at the same time. I assure you I am a republican. What a sophisticated sence of humour I appear to have.


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"If I were but of noble birth..." - Rod Corkin

[Rod]

Might I also add that Beethoven's original quote was "If HE were but of noble birth". The HE being his nephew Karl.


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"If I were but of noble birth..." - Rod Corkin

[This message has been edited by Rod (edited November 15, 2002).]

[dice45]

Rod,

i am still wondering why you defend Händel so much and why you are so afraid of getting closer acquainted with J.S.Bach .
And why you are so afraid to admit that supreme preference toward a certain composer, artist, whatever, is partly depending on taste and partly on artistic quality **and** partly on personal perception. I could dump 200k text of expamples for that on you, i resist that temptation . Instead i confess i have a hole in my soul as far as composed music from the Romantic era is concerned; there are few opuses i have mental access to (right performance presumed to be at hand), the rest just gives me nothing. But i would never dare to hang a tag of inferiority on that music.
Question: why do you need it that your personal preference is the one-and-only standard? Why have you to hang an inferiority tag on other member's personal preferences?

I am an engineer and engineers are reputed to stick to facts, theory. Real-life has to be aligned with theory or is ignored. The usual prejudices
Well, i already collected some experience in my job and i have this witchcraft-polluted audio engineering as private passion. My experience: all the theory, all the laws, all the formulas gives us an overly simplified model of the real world. I have ceased to believe that such things as facts exist (and only truth as well). I believe we are facing probability clouds, okok, those probability clouds described in the basic textbooks are quite dense.
And i can tell you, there are dozen of technical solutions leading to achieve a goal and whether the solution chosen is acceptable or good lies only in the eye of the customer who ordered the job. No objectivity ... although there seems to be iron rules how to do a job, there are none ...

Now art; there are no rules like in engineering and good art, good music exists in the eye of the beholder, ear of the listener. Everyone of us has mental limitations, just everyone has different ones.
I hate to take sides, but i am with Chazz here.

Rod and all,
There are composers and composers. Some have a bigger impact on musical fashion, some smaller. Some remain popular over centuries, some are just an ambulant fashion.
And then there is this hard-to-grasp concept of quality. Amazingly there seems to be a quality scale from inferiority to superiority in art. For instance, it is thinkable a person likes naive painting. It is thinkable the person (provided a certain openmindedness) gets acquainted with other painters and ends up in liking Picasso ... or maybe Rembrandt. Now what has this to do with quality? It cannot be that more people agree in seeing a certain art as artistic standard: the naive painting (i am intentionally avoiding to name an example) is bought as repro by millions and is adorning the bedroom or living room and people are happy with it. It cannot be the price, some pictures are sold for incredible money but are obviously crap, just rare. Hold on, Rembrandt's Nightwatch is guessed to cost 40 Mio Euro ... but it's never appearing on the market, a very virtual value. The Nightwatch is a good example, a very good one, but not of the price. Can you imagine a person likes naive painting and develops and end up in adoring Rembrandt's Nighttwatch or Dürer's "Knight, Death & Devil"? Methinks, that's possible. Can you imagine the inverse, 1st preferring and grasping Rembrandt and ending up in seing the naive painter as state-of-the-art?
I cannot. Can you?
Rembrandt, Picasso, Dürer (list incomplete) have a higher quality: a much wider horizon of depicting life and a deeper and way more detailed and diffentiated scope of transferred emotions.
Being the boring engineer i'd like to recommend an engineers read (really?): Robert A.Pirsigs "Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance". To get deeper into the question "What is quality?"

OK, but Händel and J.S.Bach play in the Rembrandt league, so i assume. And within this league of quality, which is not dependent on locality, they adress differnent preferences, different historic backgrounds, different impact on the horizon of mind of their environment. And the latter is definitely local.

My assumption is that J.S.Bach was a local genius of Germany whereas Händel was a local British genius. "Genius" in this context is a local attribute, it adresses a certain innovation for differnt nations brough by different people. And the general message can be transmitted via different channnels.
And e.g. a German genius' impact on Germans was maybe observed but definitely not experienced by another country's people.

Let me translate the term "genius" here as "door-opener", "horizon-widener", "mental innovator", "messenger bringing a new, unpreceded quality".
I have not enough data to judge on, just from discussions on the web i got the impression that Händel had (and still has) an impact of similar size in British composed music as J.S.Bach had for Germany.
Bach brought absolute music to the Germans, he opened their ears for music as such. Before, music was a utility, it was used as secular adornment, as religios propaganda, as accompaniment to any sort of amusement; it had only a serving function.
Maybe Händel did same or similar to the British. Could i be right there?

Beethoven was also one of Germany's geniuses whereas Haydn and Mozart do not qualify as "genius" in the context described above. While they were incredibly gifted musicians and composers, their art did not bring any new quality. In Jazz this is called Mainstream. Not an inferiority tag at all IMO. The innovator among those 3 great composers of Wiener Klassik era was Beethoven: he was the first to bring a concept called "Leidstolz" to the Germans (Rembrandt brought the same to the Dutch people, just, he was a painter). Leidstolz could be translated best as "Pride and confidence while suffering". Before Beethoven, someone with bad luck, bad health, poverty, not born with a golden spoon in the mouth etc., was considered as nothing and considered himself as nothing.
Beethoven did not let life intimidate him, he fiercely stroke back, he was not giving in. He stood proud and upright, no matter how hard Fate hit him. His music transferred that emotional message as well as the example he was giving by his life.
With the people becoming aware of Beethoven, Germany and Austria were not the same anymore, Zeitgeist had changed dramatically.

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Greets,
Bernhard

[Rod]

Originally posted by dice45:
Rod,

i am still wondering why you defend Händel so much and why you are so afraid of getting closer acquainted with J.S.Bach .

Perhaps the same reason why you 'have a hole' for the Romantics.

Originally posted by dice45:

Question: why do you need it that your personal preference is the one-and-only standard? Why have you to hang an inferiority tag on other member's personal preferences?

I was offering an alternative position ot the Establishment status-quo, which rates Bach the superior. At worse I am no worse than this status quo. Chazz was taking a position opposite to myself, nobody else seemed to be very interested in the discussion. I do not recall hanging an inferiority tag on anybody.

Originally posted by dice45:

I hate to take sides, but i am with Chazz here.

I'd be interested to know how much Handel you have actualy listened to.

Originally posted by dice45:

My assumption is that J.S.Bach was a local genius of Germany whereas Händel was a local British genius.

This is not so with regard to Handel, who was internationally famous. On arriving in Italy he virually destroyed all the competition by the time he was 22. In Germany he was, uniquely, awarded honourary membership of Leipzig's most famous Academy - Bach had to earn his membership by submitting a composition for assessment. In England he received commisions from the King (Water music, Fireworks music for example). Does Bach's experience equate to all this?


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"If I were but of noble birth..." - Rod Corkin


[This message has been edited by Rod (edited December 02, 2002).]

[dice45]

Rod,

sorry, but you are IMO hanging an inferiority tag on J.S.Bach. Maybe not be direct statements but by how you talk about it and also by frantically trying to have the last word on your point. You have superior knowledge, please care not to use it as weapon. Please!

So, having said this, i am no entering the slippery terrain of proving my Händel competence, i haven't claimed one. This is not a "my fax copier is better than your mobile phone" pissing contest, nor is this a struggle who is the main deer on the place, atleast i am not entering it.

Heck, can't we leave that silly comparative ranking game?

I do not rate him superior, i do not rate him at all. Guess whom i mean with him, J.S.Bach or Händel. Guess on, i won't tell you. Both are for me in that non-local quality league. And if a person is claiming a composer is deserving to belong to this league or is not deserving, i won't have a word against it-- maybe he hass access to layers inaccessible to me. Maybe inverse, who knows, does not matter.

If you have read and understood my previous post thoroughly, you will find i assigned J.S.Bach having a certain function to Germany, means: locally restricted to Germany. With Germany i mean: people on the street, all people, not only musical experts. I mean: the man had an overall impact on the population, on their minds. With Händel this is not observable. For Germany. Has nothing to with his skill and enlightenment as composer.
What i was wondering (as i have few data on it): had Händel a Mozart-like or Beethoven-like impact on British minds?

I do not know much from Händel, i have the Messiah, cond.by Hermann Scherchen which i enjoy enormously and some orchestral suites.
Before, Wanda Landowska performance was spinning, "Harmonious Blacksmith".
Before that, i had the Würzburg Guität Trio playing a Fugue. At the moment the Scherchen Messiah is spinning.
i found some other Messiah, cond. by Helmut Koch. Have to try that out.
I have Li Stadelmann playing 5th, 7th and 8th harspichord suites and Aria con variazioni, B flat major, one of those performnaces you do not need a comparison to know it's right on the spot.
And i have quite some performances of the Brüggen/Leonhardt/Bylsma club. A complete set of sonatas for wind and basso continuo among them which i have worn down considerably, like the music very much.
To be honest, finding Brüggen and/or Bylsma on vinyl triggeres a "shoot 1st, ask later" behaviour in me .

Händel is new huge terrain terrain for me to explore. And i have so many other new terrains to explore. I take the freedom to set my own priorities. Ok, to soothe you, i haven't stepped into a single opus from Händel so far which was boring me -- they is still a considerable count of Mozart opuses boring me. Does that depend on the performance? Probably, Mozart is terribly hard to get right, terribly hard to avoid interpretation. But there are some opuses i lost hope . Always the key question before one can dare to downgrade an opus: is the performer up to task? Few listeners have the imagination how a work could sound if played different.

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Greets,
Bernhard

[This message has been edited by dice45 (edited December 02, 2002).]

[Sorrano]

Originally posted by dice45:
Rod,

Beethoven was also one of Germany's geniuses whereas Haydn and Mozart do not qualify as "genius" in the context described above. While they were incredibly gifted musicians and composers, their art did not bring any new quality. In Jazz this is called Mainstream. Not an inferiority tag at all IMO.

I must disagree to a point here, although in general I like very much the points you have made. Haydn, at least in my mind more so than Mozart, expanded a great deal the way of thinking in regards to the Sonata-Allegro model that is the basis of the Symphony and Sonata for solo and multiple instruments. His clever and economical development of ideas also has a lasting impact. Perhaps not near as much an impact that Beethoven has but nonetheless he did more for that structure than any other save Beethoven. (And then again, I am nuts about Haydn, too!)

[Chaszz]

Originally posted by Sorrano:
I must disagree to a point here, although in general I like very much the points you have made. Haydn, at least in my mind more so than Mozart, expanded a great deal the way of thinking in regards to the Sonata-Allegro model that is the basis of the Symphony and Sonata for solo and multiple instruments. His clever and economical development of ideas also has a lasting impact. Perhaps not near as much an impact that Beethoven has but nonetheless he did more for that structure than any other save Beethoven. (And then again, I am nuts about Haydn, too!)

(Perhaps I shall start a new controversy here). I think that Mozart contributed greatly in orchestration, unlocking the possibilities of tonal colors in the orchestra to a greater extent than Haydn. (Here is the red flag thrown to the floor) This bypassed Beethoven, possibly because of his deafness. Not merely I, but no less an authority than Leonard Bernstein, held that Beethoven was a mediocre orchestrator, notwithstanding his titanic greatness as a composer. Orchestration, in my opinion, following Mozert's lead, came to fruition in the late Romantics, with Brahms, Wagner, Mahler and R. Strauss, among others.

[dice45]

Sorrano & Chazz,
please put off the musician's glasses
i was not talking about music, I was not saying anything concerning what the composer was to other composers and the musician to other musicians, this is expert's network internal communication. No objection against what you say -- i am myself exploring new Haydn and Mozart miracles every week. And enjoying that music enormously (not today, Rod chased me to go thru my small Hänndel collection )
I was talking about the man and the work having impact and influence on the peoples daily lifes, on Zeitgeist.

Let me give you the small list of German geniuses:
Otto I.(emperor), Albertus Magnus (cathedral builder), A. Dürer (painter), M. Luther (reformer of religion), N. Kopernikus (astronomer), J.S.Bach (composer), I. Kant (philosopher), F.G.Klopstock (poet, lyricist), L.v.Beethoven (pianist & composer), J.W.v.Goethe (poet, lyricist),
A.Einstein (physicist). List closed.
Those guys had tracable influence on my home country's history.

Now please anyone feel invited to muse about of a list of geniuses of your home country. You will find different guys and even for similar messages & innovations, you may find e.g. a painter where you would expect a musician. Or whatever.
Remember, Rembrandt was for the Dutch what Beethoven was for the Germans. Both brought the Leidstolz concept to their people.
Guess what fellow artists thot about Leidstolz. They would have had face expression like a car, just not as fast .
Because there was not enough historical distance. Same with people on the street. They became aware of the new quality, possibly enjoyed it but i sincerely doubt they would have found a name for it.
We find a name for it, with a couple of centuries observing distance.

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Greets,
Bernhard