Masters of the Late Baroque 

While The Berkshire Bach Society performs music by many different composers, four stand out with repertoire that represents some of the best of the period. They were contemporaries—collectively their lives spanned the years 1678 to 1767— shared friendships, and learned from each other. Bach and Telemann were close personal friends and musical peers; Handel and Telemann (both largely self-taught) met early on and shared musical, operatic, and horticultural interests over their lifetimes; Bach admired the music of Handel, and was a student of the work of Vivaldi, seven years his elder. Together these four composers are the core of Berkshire Bach Society programming and present an astonishing variety of musical forms and styles that continue to delight and uplift audiences and define the essence of the late Baroque.

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) was born in Eisenach to a respected family of musicians. He was well-educated in performance and composition, first by his father and, after his father’s death, by his elder brother, who was a student of Pachelbel. Part of his education was copying the scores of other composers, which exposed him to a wide range of styles and developed his encyclopedic interest in all types of music. Over his life, Bach served as organist at Arnstadt (1703-1707) and Mühlhausen (1707-1708), court organist and Concertmaster in Weimar (1708-1717), Music Director in Köthen (1717-1723), Cantor of the Thomas-Schule, and Music Director in Leipzig (1723-1750). During his lifetime he was recognized as an organ virtuoso and master of complex counterpoint, but he never traveled outside Germany and consequently was not especially widely known in an age dominated by international music celebrities. His music fell out of favor after his death but was studied and promoted in the 19th century by Felix Mendelssohn and others, leading to a permanent revival. With the exception of opera, which was frowned upon by his employers, Bach composed in all forms and styles of Baroque music—secular, sacred, solo, ensemble, vocal, and instrumental—achieving comprehensive perfection. After Bach, music developed in another direction, moving into the Classical Era of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. Scholars conventionally use the death of Bach to mark the end of the Baroque era and consider him one of the greatest composers of all time.

Georg Friedrich Handel (1685-1759) was born in Halle (Saale) in Magdeburg, Saxony-Anhalt, in the same year as J.S. Bach and Domenico Scarlatti. With his father’s reluctant approval, he studied music with W.F. Zachow (d. 1712), the organist at the Halle parish church, and was instructed in the works of old and new masters. Handel later attended the University of Halle, matriculating in 1702, moving to Hamburg to join the opera orchestra at the Theater am Gänsemarkt, and meeting lifelong friends Johann Mattheson and G.P. Telemann before touring Italy at the invitation of the Medici family. In 1710 he became Kapellmeister to the Elector of Hanover, later George I of Great Britain and Ireland, relocated to London in 1712, and became a naturalized English citizen in 1727. His career in England saw the creation of three opera companies, patronage by prominent aristocrats and the Crown, and the creation of an astonishing amount of music of the highest order. In his later years he was plagued by failing eyesight and in 1751 sought relief through an operation for cataracts by Chevalier John Taylor, the flamboyant ophthalmologist who also operated on J.S. Bach. As in Bach’s case, the operation failed, and Handel was totally blind by 1752. He lived another seven years, dying in London in 1759 at age 74. He never married. His funeral at Westminster Abbey with full state honors was attended by more than 3,000 mourners. He is buried in the south transept of the Abbey.

Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767) was born in Magdeburg, in Saxony-Anhalt.  At nine or ten he received his first music lessons from the cantor at his school.  He studied keyboard with a local organist for a few weeks before reportedly giving it up when faced with learning German organ tablature, the complex shorthand then in use to notate organ music. He largely taught himself to compose music and to play multiple instruments—keyboard, strings, winds—as well as to sing at an advanced level. Precociously, he wrote an opera at age 12. After enrolling at the University of Leipzig to study law, he decided to become a professional musician, perhaps at the urging of G.F. Handel, but definitely against his family’s wishes. Writing for the theatres and opera houses in the city, he also performed occasionally as a singer.  Over the course of his career he held prestigious posts in Eisenach (1708-12, where he knew the Bach family), Frankfurt (1712-21), and Hamburg (1721-67), as well as affiliations in absentia with other courts and cities.  He progressively increased his income and artistic standing through publications, founding or reviving various collegia for local musicians, managing a successful opera company, starting a music magazine, and writing in a wide range of musical styles and forms. Within a year of his appointment in Hamburg, his employers increased his compensation to discourage him from assuming the newly-vacant post of Kantor at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig, originally promised to him years earlier. After another candidate also declined the position, it was filled, famously, by Telemann’s friend, J.S. Bach.

Telemann kept the Hamburg post until his death in 1767.  He was one of the most prolific composers of all time, actively interested in society and the arts around him, both a polymath and a polyglot, as well as a savvy businessman who reportedly had a genial disposition that inspired friendship and cooperation rather than professional jealousy.4 He was dedicated to expanding audiences beyond the aristocracy, cultivating the public through works for amateur performance and establishing the first popular periodical devoted to music, Der Getreue Musik-Meister (The Constant Music-Master). He retained full control over the publication of his own works, generating sustained profits, and continually evolved his own musical style to keep up with changes in public taste. Due to his diverse business and musical activities, he was significantly better known than J.S. Bach both within and outside Germany and generally enjoyed an international reputation as a master of all musical styles. His music is innovative and consistently sophisticated from a contrapuntal and harmonic standpoint, yet it remains accessible to most listeners. Telemann was a close personal friend of J.S. Bach, godfather and namesake of Bach’s son C.P.E., and a close advisor to the family.  He outlived his old friend by 17 years and stands with Handel, another lifelong friend, as the embodiment of an international celebrity of the late Baroque. In the generation following his death, Telemann’s work fell out of favor but was revived in the 20th century and has since achieved sustained popularity. Recent scholarship has shed light on his importance as a musical innovator and transitional figure and confirmed the prominent position he held in the musical life of Europe and especially Germany.

Antonio Lucio Vivaldi (1678-1741) was born in Venice, the capital city of the Venetian Republic, and was one of nine children.  He received musical instruction in violin from his father, a professional musician, and studied composition with Giovanni Legrenzi (d.1690), one of the best-known Italian composers before Corelli. Ordained a priest in 1703—probably for the free education—he was appointed later that year as maestro di violino (violin master) at the Ospedale della Pietà, a home for orphans and illegitimate children in Venice. He apparently suffered from asthma, which prevented him from mastering wind instruments and eventually excused him from the obligations of celebrating Mass and other priestly duties.  Known as the “Red Priest” because of the color of his hair, Vivaldi worked at the Ospedale for 30 years, with only brief interruptions. It was there that he wrote nearly all of his major works and developed the all-female orchestra into a group with renown beyond Venice.  He first published in 1705, began writing successful operas in 1715, and wrote his most famous work, the four violin concerti known as Le Quattro Stagioni (The Four Seasons) during a brief sabbatical from the Ospedale around 1720. For much of his life Vivaldi’s music was popular and in demand, but it did not ultimately provide the financial security enjoyed by Corelli, Handel, and others. He died poor in 1741 in Vienna where he had followed Emperor Charles VI in hopes of obtaining a position. The Emperor’s sudden death left Vivaldi without a patron and few prospects, and he died a few months later.

As a composer Vivaldi was an innovator, particularly in his operas, and brought a fresh and playful approach to his writing that energized the music scene early in his career. He eclipsed the work of the previous generation with his masterly handling of tonality and melodic inventiveness, pushing Baroque musical forms and language in a way that influenced others.  Bach studied Vivaldi’s music extensively, transcribing six keyboard concerti and incorporating his techniques into vocal passages in his St. John and St. Matthew Passions, among other works.