HUAS78034 - The Baroque Culture and Spirit: Bach, Handel, and their Contemporaries

Course Description

This course looks at the relationship between the towering spiritual and cultural achievements of the Baroque era and the great composers of the time. Johan Sebastian Bach and George Frederick Handel (both born in 1685) represent the pinnacle of Baroque art. From Bach, we are bequeathed secular masterpieces of intensity, poetry, intellectual rigor, such as the "Brandenburg" concertos -- and breathtaking spiritual achievements such as the St. Matthew Passion. Handel's art, much more ostentatiously grandiose and yet remarkably direct and communicative, is represented by orchestral concertos and his inimitable oratorios. They and contemporaries such as Scarlatti and Vivaldi offer a fascinating, comprehensive panorama of an era.