J. S. Bach, George Frederick Handel, Heinrich Schuetz. Musicians

J. S. Bach, Musician 28 July 1750
George Frederick Handel, Musician 14 April 1759
Heinrich Schuetz, Musician 6 November 1672

Johann Sebastian Bach, widely regarded as the greatest of all composers of music for Christian worship, was born in 1685 in Eisenach, Thuringia, Germany, into a family of distinguished musicians. In 1708, shortly after marrying his cousin, Maria Barbara Bach, he became court organist to the Duke of Weimar, where he wrote his principal compositions for the organ. In 1717 he became music director (Kapellmeister) to Prince Leopold of Coethen. In 1720, his wife died, and in 1721 he married Anna Magdalena Wuelcken, for whom he composed a famous set of keyboard pieces. From 1723 until his death in 1750 he was at Leipzig, where he taught, conducted, sang, played, and composed. He had 20 children, of whom nine survived him, four of whom are also remembered as composers.

In addition to his secular music, Bach wrote a considerable amount of music for worship. He drew on the German tradition of hymn-tunes, and arranged many of them as cantatas, with elaborate choir settings for most stanzas, and a plain four-part setting for the final stanza, to be sung by the congregation with the choir. Normally each stanza is unique, using the melody traditional for that hymn, but with variations, particularly in the harmony, that reinforce the meaning of the words of that stanza. He wrote altogether about two hundred cantatas, including at least two for each Sunday and holy day in the Lutheran church year (matching the subject of the cantata with that of the Scripture readings prescribed for that day). Two of the better known are "Christ lag in Todesbanden" (Christ lay in the bonds of death"), based on an Easter hymn by Martin Luther; and "Jesu, meine Freude" (Jesus, all my gladness).

It is an ancient custom that during Holy Week the Gospel readings shall be from the accounts of the Passion (=suffering and death) of Our Lord, and that, where possible, these accounts shall be read, not by a single reader, but with the speeches of different persons read by different readers (and the crowd by the choir or the the congregation).

This may be said, or chanted to a simple tune. Bach wrote, for the St. Matthew Passion, and again for the St. John Passion, an elaborate musical setting, with the Gospel narrative sung by a soloist, with the dialog by other singers, and commentary by the choir in the form of hymns and more elaborate pieces. He also wrote a setting for the traditional Latin Liturgy, his famous B Minor Mass. The Liturgy (or Order for the Celebration of the Lord's Supper and the Administration of Holy Communion, Commonly Called the Mass) is divided into the Ordinary (the parts that are the same every time) and the Propers (the parts that vary from day to day, such as the Bible readings). The choral parts of the Ordinary include the KYRIE ("Lord, have mercy" or "Hear us, O gracious Lord"), the GLORIA ("Glory to God in the highest," based on Luke 2:14), the CREDO ("I believe in one God, the Father Almighty..."), the SANCTUS-BENEDICTUS ("Holy, Holy, Holy" and "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord", based on Isaiah 6:3 and Matthew 21:9), and the AGNUS DEI ("O Lamb of God," based on John 1:29). 

Bach wrote choir settings for these (in case anyone is wondering why a devout Lutheran would write choir settings for a Mass, I point out that the language of the Liturgy is ancient, and contains nothing not taught by Lutheran and Methodist and Presbyterian churches), and his work is not simply a matter of supplying pleasant-sounding melody and chords. For example, in the Creed, there occurs the line, "And I believe one holy catholic and apostolic Church." In Bach's setting of this line, there are two melodies sung by the choir simultaneously. One is a traditional plainchant melody, most frequently sung by Roman Catholics. The other is a Lutheran chorale melody. The two melodies are interwoven, and they harmonize perfectly. Bach was not just a musician. He was a Christian, and a preacher of the Gospel.

George Frederick Handel (Georg Friedrich Haendel) was born at Halle in Germany in 1685. He originally studied for the law and then began to write operas. He moved to Italy in 1706 and to England in 1710, where in 1726 he became a British subject. From operas, Handel turned to the writing of oratorios, works with a religious theme to be sung by soloists and a chorus. His greatest work, The Messiah, was first performed in Dublin in 1741. The words are Scriptural passages from both Testaments dealing with the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus. G. B. Shaw referred to it as "the hymn that can make atheists cry." (My advisor, Herbert Feigl, an atheist of Jewish ancestry, loved it and went to church whenever it was to be sung.) In most large towns in the English-speaking world, it is performed every Christmas and Easter. Handel died 14 April 1759.

Heinrich Schuetz was born in Saxony in 1585, and twice (1608-12 and 1628-30) went to Venice to study music, first under Giovanni Gabrielli and then perhaps with Monteverdi. He was music director at Dresden for most of his life, but spent time in Copenhagen and elsewhere when Dresden was devasted by plague and the Thirty Years' War. His special achievements were (1) writing choral settings of Scriptural texts that emphasized the meaning of the words; and (2) introducing into his music the modalisms of Monteverdi and his Italian associates while retaining a distinctively German character and feeling. He died 6 November 1672.

The biographies were written by James Kiefer

LinK: http://elvis.rowan.edu/~kilroy/JEK/home.html