This article was updated in May 2025.
For Bachtrack’s Baroque Music Month in November 2013, musicologist and passionate Handel advocate Corrina Connor and Margaret Steinitz, Artistic Director of the London Bach Society, debated the relative merits of their preferred Baroque composer.
Corrina Connor: Handel versus Bach? What a dilemma! I worry that participating in this debate will end in being struck down by a thunderbolt hurled from Parnassus by either Bach or Handel. It seems intolerably audacious to compare the creative work of these two musical giants, let alone come out in favour of one or another of them. But, I am Handel’s advocate on Bachtrack (now, there’s a thing: where’s Handeltrack?), and as such I will wind around my little finger the great jury that is the Bach-devoted public, and convince them, beyond reasonable doubt, that it is Handel whom they love.
Let us consider the bravery of Handel. He was born in Halle in February 1685, about a month before and 200km away from where J.S. Bach would be born in Eisenach. Handel was not born into a musical dynasty: the parental wish was for him to become a lawyer, so he defied his family to become a musician: he moved towards a profession which was insecure unless one could find a position in the court or the church. Even in these spheres, his living would be at the risk of aristocratic whim.
But Handel was brave and clearly interested in theatre and opera: in 1703 he was working as a violinist and keyboard player in the opera house in Hamburg. He was drawn to opera and wrote two of his own before he set out on an incredibly long journey to Italy — not only hundreds of kilometres away, but also a Catholic country. We know little about the journey, but can only imagine how the Baroque dynamism of Italy, the glory of the Medici and the bright Roman sun must have struck the young Handel, who swiftly was taken up as a musical talent by cardinals, and mixed in exalted society.
In 1710 he became Kapellmeister to the Elector of Hanover, Georg, who – after the death of heirless Queen Anne (the last of the Stuarts) – would be an imported King of England; Handel wasn’t tied hand and foot to this post, and by 1711 he was in England, and receiving a retainer from the Queen, but establishing himself again in the risky world of the theatre. Again, a brave man.
Notwithstanding his outstanding compositions and his virtuosity at the keyboard, think of the distances Handel travelled, in discomfort and uncertainty about what he would find in each country. Only a man with courage and stamina could have undertaken these journeys – today, if one makes a mistake about relocation, it is just a matter of a quick flight home. Not in the early 18th century, when a journey was a lengthy ordeal. Ah yes, the Bach advocates will say: Bach travelled too, uncertain of what he would find when he reached his destination, and not knowing what was going on at home. Bach’s journeys, like Handel’s, were speculative, but in the main, he stayed in the part of the world he knew – Lutheran North Germany – and did not fraternise with the Papists, who had been the opposition in the Thirty Years’ War which had devastated the population in so many German states as one of the consequences of Reformation.
So, perhaps we can say that Handel, who plunged into Catholic Italy, and then into an England which was still fermenting discord between Protestants and Catholics, transcended these conflicts, and established himself as a bravely independent artist who enjoyed patronage from aristocrats on both sides of the religious divide, but was never tied (apart from his stint as Kapellmeister), servile, to any institution.
Margaret Steinitz: Still no contest in my view. All they really have in common is the same year of birth, 1685. They are two distinctly different composers – in musical terms, in lifestyle and career. They never met, although there were a couple of attempts, but each knew of and respected each other’s music and reputation, especially as masters of the keyboard. Handel's works were played at the Leipzig Coffee House concerts in the 1730s. Did Handel ever play Bach’s music, I wonder? Given the pioneering work of Samuel Wesley in the early 1800s to promote JSB here, probably not. Why?
My first Bach experience was when I was eight years old – a B minor Mass sung by a local choral society, and Janet Baker was one of the soloists. Sitting in the full audience, I found it all very hard going and I little imagined at the time that Bach, this towering, bewigged musical figure whose keyboard miniatures I would practise as a child till I was blue in the face, would introduce me to my husband and ultimately take over my entire life! But he is just that kind of composer. Millions of words have been written about him, yet few of his original letters and documents have survived and much is still unknown. Today the bookshelves groan with voluminous tomes and “definitive” biographies. Bach societies exist from Venezuela to Vladivostock and if JSB were alive today he would be coining in the royalties by the truckload on the B minor alone! Interest in his music is global; there is even some JSB on the Moon. Archival surveys in central Germany may well unearth more vital clues, even missing material, but we really have to go with what we’ve got – a complete treasure house of music composed in every genre, all written for a purpose and Soli Deo Gloria... and this is exactly how Bach’s greatness is revealed, how his character shines through, his thoughtfulness, musical demands and devotion to his faith and his family.
I would not say that Bach’s travels within and beyond Thuringia and Saxony were speculative. They all had a purpose. His longest trip on foot and by cart was to meet and study with Buxtehude at Lübeck and the experience had a profound musical effect, leading him to overstay his agreed leave of absence by a couple of months. The regular trips to Dresden, the state capital and where the Royal Court was centred, were to soak up the musical opportunities there and extend his reputation – do a bit of networking, even!
CC: If we are talking about the variety of genres in which these composers worked, Handel was as astoundingly various as Bach: the riches of the sonatas and trio sonatas, the vivacity and sensuality of the concerti grossi, and characterful keyboard pieces for musicians of every level of ability, are all evidence of the imagination Handel possessed. Then there are the vivid secular cantatas, the glory and rapturous grace of the Coronation anthems, and the many oratorios. The genre of music that marks the difference between Bach and Handel is the opera.
Bach did not write operas, although, of course, he had an acute instinct for drama, as his oratorios and Passions demonstrate. Handel is unique for the operas in which he distilled his genius for exploring musically the psychological progress of his characters. In many of the operas – I am thinking of Alcina, Rinaldo and Rodelinda particularly – Handel’s protagonists are all inarguably human, whether they are ecstatic, triumphant, resigned, or in crushing desolation.
Despite libretti and plots which are frequently fantastical, Handel always musically establishes characters who are believable, and every note contributes to our understanding of them. Think of the pyrotechnic hostility of Bertarido’s “Vivi, tiranno” from Rodelinda. He has lost his throne (of Milan) to Grimoaldo and hauls himself through the opera in exile, disguise, or prison. Then, at the moment when he sees that Grimoaldo’s “trusty” henchman Garibaldo is about to assassinate Grimoaldo, Bertarido grabs the sword, kills Garibaldo, and then casts the bloody sword at his enemy’s feet, challenging his rival to kill him as well: “Live, Tyrant! I have saved you”, Bertarido goads, “Now kill me, ingrate, unleash your rage”. There is not a single gratuitous note here – the entire aria is designed to emphasise Bertrarido’s total scorn for Grimaldo.
It is reasonable to point out that this is not a situation in which most of us find ourselves. But, there are few instances of music in any opera of the 18th century (or subsequently) that better express such desperate defiance mixed with fury; these emotions are instantly recognisable almost 300 years after composition. And, despite his long involvement in the sorcery and warfare of the theatre (on- and off-stage) Handel remained devout and directed his every effort towards God. When writing Messiah, he said, “I did think I did see all heaven before me, and the great God himself.”
MS: Some very interesting Handelian points are raised here. Bach and Handel did indeed compose in a variety of genres, each reflecting their own unique compositional style. Bach did not write an opera, that’s true, but one of the joys of travelling to Dresden would have been to revel in the opera performances by Hasse and others. JSB might even have become sorrowful that the opportunity for him to put pen to paper similarly at Leipzig or in service to the Dresden Court really did not exist. The secular cantatas are perhaps the nearest; congratulatory extravagances often set to absurd texts and with a hidden, even political message, interwoven. The Coffee Cantata (BWV 211) first performed at Zimmermann’s is a satire on the public’s obsession with the liquid; Phoebus and Pan (BWV 201), also premièred at the Coffee-House, takes a swipe at one of Bach’s greatest critics. I don’t think Handel used the medium of opera to make the same comments – although you will probably tell me one immediately!
Bach is at his best dramatically with the Passions. Here we have this form of composition, staple passiontide fare in 17th- and 18th-century Lutheran Germany, raised to new heights in scale and invention with Bach’s settings. Following the traditions of his predecessors, as the Leipzig Cantor, he would have been expected to provide suitable Passionsmusik for the Liturgy and Meditation for Good Friday and he set about it with a will. With the St Matthew, we have a work conceived on a grand scale – double choir, double orchestra (regardless of how many to a part) plus ripieno choir – three hours of the most absorbing, uplifting and inspired music ever written, telling the most powerful story of all and with the meaning of Christ’s Passion revealed at the very beginning! The cantus firmus in the opening chorus is about redemption and is written in the major key, whilst the vocal and instrumental parts below are in the minor key. As well as the more familiar 1736 version, we also have an edition credited as being the early version dating from c.1727, the material for which was only published in 2004–06. The St John is in no less than four versions. And as for the cantatas...
CC: You are quite right to say this about the Coffee Cantata and Phoebus and Pan: both pieces are ingenious, and remind us that however profound Bach was in his most penitential or joyous sacred music, he also was possessed of humour. Handel, too, dealt with his critics and with the politics of the times in which he lived – skilfully, and with wit. Georgian London was a place of increasing prosperity and culture but was also riven with political machination, wars at home and abroad, and controversy and scandal in public life. Handel – who trod a delicate path through the complexities of patronage and independence – had to demonstrate finesse in his operas. Audiences and critics would be sure to pick up allusions to current events in his libretti and characterisations. The historian Paul Monod has pointed out that in the last years of Queen Anne’s reign, theatres, plays, and opera were all fertile ground for political point-scoring between the Whigs and the Tories; for a time the Queen’s Theatre in the Haymarket (where Handel’s Rinaldo was first performed) was something of a Whig stronghold. The “bellicose” nature of the libretto and some of the music in Rinaldo made quite clear allusions to the triumphs of the Duke of Marlborough and his army abroad. And later, when Handel had turned to oratorio, Judas Maccabeus (1746) was “a compliment to the Duke of Cumberland upon his returning victorious from Scotland”. The Duke had routed the Scottish army of the “Young Pretender” to the throne, Charles Edward Stuart. Laying waste to a Jacobite invasion was a significant victory for the Hanoverian monarchy, but politically difficult to justify, as King George II’s army, led by the Duke, had slaughtered men at Culloden who were the King’s subjects. Therefore, “victory celebrations” were low-key. Handel’s oratorio was not a direct result of Cumberland’s victory, but the subject (Judas Maccabeus rescues the people of Judea from the pagan rule of the Seleucid Empire, and forms an alliance with Rome that will continue to protect the Judeans) could easily be interpreted as a metaphor for a Protestant Hanoverian triumph over Catholic usurpers.