Bach and Handel essays

Bach and Handel essays Johann Sebastien Bach and George Frideric Handel are two of the most profound yet different composers of their time. Handel was born in 1685 into a family with very little musical background. With them being middle class, his family expected him to be a lawyer and make decent money, not become a musician (which then was considered to be low class or scum job). Music came so easily to Handel that he was able to go along with it anyway. At the young age of just eleven, he was already able to compose and give organ lessons. Around the age of eighteen he set out for job in Hamburg, Germany as a violinist with the salary of $1,500 a year. Handel traveled a lot forming his style as more international and variegated than Bachs. He was a master composer who had a dramatic sense and used more texture than Bach. Handel wrote thirty-nine Italian operas but they are not as well known as his Oratorios. One of his most famous pieces was the Messiah. It was two and a half hours long and only took him twenty-four days to compose it. Handel started to lose his eyesight while he was in London where he lived for fi fty years until he passed in 1759. Bach also born in 1685 only sixty minutes from Handel yet they never met and their styles differed greatly. Bach was born into a family with a musical background so things came more naturally and easy for him than for Handel. Bach had more of a local, unique style since he never traveled over a hundred miles away from his birthplace. Bach was expected to be a musician and with that he started out as a church organist at Amstadt, making only $80 a year compared to Handels $1,500 a year. Later, he worked as a court music director in Cothen, where most of his instrumental pieces were written. His style was very unique, as it shared the combination of polyphonic texture and rich harmony. Today, his pieces are used for their style with music students everywhere. Lastly, Bach was a Can...