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The Musical Discourse of Servitude
Discussions - Part 4

White Chapter 4, "Handel, Fux, Oratorio"

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William L. Hoffman wrote (April 23, 2021):
Harry White's Chapter 4, "A Darkness Which Might be felt: Handel, Fux, and the Oratorio," summarizes the importance of Handel's oratorio Samson and the influence of Johann Joseph Fux's John the Baptist Oratorio. The symbolic and metaphorical characters in the sacred action oratorios of the Holy Roman Empire in Vienna in the late 17th to the first third of the 18th century, notably in the Sepolcro sacrificial genre of the Italian liturgical Passion, are transformed into a new musical genre in Handel's English-language oratorio, Samson as the solitary human, tragic figure, based on Milton's Samson Agonistes. All the wide-ranging, affective musical elements of the Passion are found here: suffering, rage, engagement, and love. The incipit of Chapter 4, "A Darkness Which Might be felt," is based on Exodus 10:21: "And the LORD said unto Moses, Stretch out thine hand toward heaven, that there may be darkness over the land of Egypt, even darkness which may be felt." This darkness Samson describes near the beginning, as cited to begin Chapter 4, line 67, "O loss of sight, of thee I most complain!," and closing with lines 81-2, "Irrecoverably dark, total Eclipse / Without all hope of day!" With the setting of Newburgh Hamilton's text is Samson's aria, No. 14, Air, "Total Eclipse" (YouTube).

Milton's Samson Agonistes, Handel's English Oratorio

There are several intrinsic factors involving Handel's three-act Samson: influence of the Viennese oratorio genre; landmark English-language dramatic work; Milton's tragedy design and biographical influences; Hamilton's setting of Milton's free-verse poem and various dramatic conventions; the temporal context of Handel's settings of Messiah and other vocal works; and Handel's biographical influences. White's Chapter 4 begins with a perspective on his theme of The Musical Discourse of Servitude and its role in Samson. "The contest between servility and freedom which animates Paradise Lost is newly configured in Samson Agonistes," observes White (Ibid.: 150). In contrast to the evil, rebellious Satan and the "Minstrelsy of Heaven," "indentured to sloth, enchanted by obedience," says White" (Ibid.: 26), Samson on the side of God rebels against Philistine entrapment and slavery as "his emancipation from servitude is a moral act which both recovers and vindicates the spiritual authority and succor he had abandoned before the play begins." Essentially, "Remorse and devout obedience" — "through divine agency" — "guide the hero's path." There is the added negative biographical element of Milton's misogyny in Samson Agonistes not found in the biblical source Book of Judges (Wikipedia) which shows that his "servility is sexual" and "his freedom entails a corresponding repudiation" of sexual desire and women as an equal mate. Another, positive biographical factor is Milton's blindness which "lends conviction to the harrowing authenticity with which he imbues Samson's loss of sight (the poet had been completely blind for almost 20 years before he published the play in 1671)." "It is blindness that urges the play into life." "In this chapter," White says (Ibid.: 151), the general trajectory of Milton's dramatic poem — from darkness to light, and thereby from servitude to heroic autonomy — becomes exemplary of my reading of Handel's dramatic development in terms of the mid-eighteenth century European musical imagination." Breaking the bonds of opera seria with its inhibiting stylistic homogeneity, Handel achieves in the summer of 1741 "originality of compositional voice and technique" which defined his compositions "until he went blind in 1752." He supplanted the Italian genre "with one of his own making, emancipating "English musical drama from its 'Italian bondage'."

Handel's Dark Reception History: Three Eclipses

Unfortunately, reception history has not been kind to "the greatest musical dramatist of the early and mid-eighteenth century," given that only a handful of his operas and select oratorios are consistently performed today, eclipsed by Messiah. "Handel's darkness . . . entails at least three [categorical] eclipses," says White (Ibid.: 151f) First category: "(1) his reputation as a 'man of the theatre,' as a 'prince of public entertainers' (Winton Dean), and as the definitive musical intelligencer of English public (and political) sentiment"; "(2) his radical engagement with and creative subversion of Italian oratorio remains a thing apart from the general run (and history) of sacred musical drama on the continent [Italian and German oratorio genre];² and (3) in relation to his greatest contemporary, he remains the purveyor of opportune circumstance and public occasion, whereas Bach is the complex oracle of the soul." The second eclipse category is "his radical engagement with the creative subversion of Italian opera' apart from the decline of "sacred musical drama on the continent," says White (Ibid.: 152). The third category is that 'he remains the purveyor of opportune circumstance and public occasion, wheres Bach is the complex oracle of the soul." From the "purveyor of postmodernist recension," Handel is "a foil to Bach's imaginative extremism."

1784 Handel Apotheosis, Critical Neglect

A transitional reception history survey beginning with the 1784 Handel centenary apotheosis and Charles Burney's Account (Google Books) follows, entitled "This Is Handel" (Ibid.; 153-60). Four aspects of this apotheosis are prominent in Burney's account, says White (Ibid.: 155): Handel's English cultural meaning; the plan for a complete edition of Handel's music; the scale of the celebrations (with musical excerpts); and a critical evaluation of Handel's music. Reflecting immediate reception history following Handel's death in 1759, Burney remarks that after 1745, "I perfectly remember, that none [of his other oratorios] were well attended, except Samson and Messiah," according to White (Ibid.: 159), while Burney's Messiah "blazes more brightly than ever" but Samson receive short shrift. The next section in White's chapter 4 is "Handel's Darkness" (Ibid.: 160-68), which begins with the reception history darkness caused by Messiah with all its monographs which eclipses Handel's other English Oratorios with no individual monographs.³ "Handel's Darkness" "is both a thematic preoccupation inherent to his music and an expression of his critical neglect," says White (Ibid.: 164). "Handel's invention of the English oratorio as a formative episode in the history of the European musical imagination" is in contrast to "a more recent (and more general) reception in which the composer's public status, opportunism and commercial success continue to take precedence over his imaginative autonomy." English oratorio as "entertainment" underpins Richard Taruskin's appraisal of Handel's operas and oratorios,"⁴ says White (Ibid.: 164f), with a "discrimination between Handel's sunny rhetoric and the introspection of Bach's musical Lutheranism." In a very similar vein is Tim Blanning's popular assessment of the music of Bach and Handel as having "practically no cultural authority whatsoever,"⁵ says White (Ibid.: 166). Two differences involving Bach's St. Matthew Passion and Messiah are the former's restrictive church audience with greater performance demands and the latter's popular public reception with less challenging technique, says Blanning. The "larger argument about the emancipation of musical cultural in the present day," says White (Ibid.), finds that today rock "music is the religion of the masses and the stadium its cathedral," says Blanning (Ibid.: 319), cited in White (Ibid.). A similar perspective was taken by the American actor and writer Vincent Price (Wikipedia) in the late 1960s on the subject of pilgrimages around the world when asked where the annual American pilgrimage could be found and he replied: "The Super Bowl" (Wikipedia). "Blanning's diagnosis of mass entertainment as a mode of aesthetic emancipation" "represents a perspective which Blanning shares in significant measure with Burney and Taruskin.," says White (Ibid.; 167), describing Handel as "an agent of sublime national well-being (Burney), commercial savoir-faire and opportunism (Taruskin), or shrewd populism (Blanning)."

Messiah Eclipse

"Scarce half I seem to live," "declares Milton's Samson in contemplation of his blindness," White observes (Ibid.; 167). "My argument is that a similar half-life occludes Handel's dramatic prowess, no longer in actual performance (in which domain it thrives as never before), but in critical reception and commentary." Beyond Messiah, Handel's conception of the biblical oratorio "reconfigures its generic prototypes" and allows a "musical intimacy in which the public voice of English dramatic verse is itself transformed," thus "confirmed and heard in Samson" (Wikipedxia

Handel's equally impressive oratorio Jeptha (Wikipedia), says White, also was "eclipsed by the prestige of Messiah or the formative influence of the 1784 commemoration" and Burney's commentary. "One might profitably consider Jeptha as the fulfillment of Handel's musical dramaturgy as this unfolded in Samson," says White (Ibid.: 168), where both "reimagine the Italian oratorio as an English genre." Samson's "engagement with and emancipation from the ordinances of Italian opera and oratorio connect Handel to Fux. Italian oratorio and English oratorio define the axis that lies between generic servitude and imaginative autonomy."

Italian Oratorio in Vienna: Fux, Caldara

In the next section, "'To Thy Dark Servant': Fux and the Ordinances of Italian Oratorio," White (Ibid.: 169) examines the tradition of Italian oratorio, "assiduously cultivated at the [Viennese] imperial court throughout the composer's lifetime [c1660-1741] as a Lenten substitute for opera," which Fux especially created from 1714 to 1728. Of particular note was the Viennese sub-genre of sepolcro or allegorical Passion oratorio such as Fux's La Deposizione Dalla Croce Di Gesu Cristo, Salvator Nostro (1728, Good Reads) and Leopold I's Good Friday Passion oratorio Sepolcro, "The Sacrifice of Abraham" (1677-1700).⁶ When Fux established himself at the imperial court in 1711, "the sepulcro oratorio and the regular (biblical, allegorical and hagiographical) Italian oratorio (oratorio volgare) in Vienna were closely related," "distinct sub-genres but with" "differences in tone and poetic diction," says White (Ibid.). Oratorio performances until 1740 (death of Charles VI, Wikipedia) during Holy Week involved court composers Antonio Caldara, Francesco Conti, Giuseppe Porsile, and Fux, says White (Ibid.: 170), as "the sepolcro occupied pride of place," notably Fux's six between 1716 and 1728, poet Pietro Pariati (BCW: "Fux Oratorio, Bach Cantata Genres, Poets"). Fux's last three settings emphasize "the dramatis personae of the passion story itself," says White (Ibid.: 171).⁷ The regulating authority of the oratorio involved both generic intransigence and the liturgy itself, he says (Ibid.; 172). Fux's "dramatic masterpiece," says White (Ibid.; 172f), is his John the Baptist oratorio, La fede sacrilega nella morte del Precursor S. Giovanni Battista (Sacrilegious faith in the death of the Precursor St. John the Baptist, YouTube, YouTube), K. 291, poet Pariati. "This exceptionally close collaboration [between Fux and Pariati] is matched in the Viennese archives only by the number of Zeno libretti set by Caldara," White observes (Ibid.: 173). Fux and Parati "imported into its [the sepolcro's] doctrinal religiosity at least something of the fire of drammi per musica" (opera seria). It is the "closely-wrought paraphrase of the Gospel account of the death of John the Baptist⁸ that distinguishes Pariati's libretto and gives it dramatic life," says White (Ibid.: 175), as well as an "immediacy of poetic diction" (Ibid.: 1770 and "apparent deliberate ambiguity of dramatic perspective" (Ibid.: 179). Other features are "the fluency of his recitatives" (Ibid.; 180) "in a sequence of chiastic alternatives" (Ibid.; 181), and in the arias "the assurance of feeling in the text finds an impressive correlative in the musical setting" (Ibid.: 186). Fux's John the Baptist oratorio has a "certain kinship with the dramatic strategies of Handel's English oratorios," White concludes in the section, "A Darkness Which Might be felt: Handel, Fux, and the Oratorio," Ibid.: 193). Handel's Samson shows "the discourse of Fux's generic dependencies in relation to Handel's imaginative autonomy." Further, Fux's last sepolcro, La Deposizione Dalla Croce, "was repeated just once in his lifetime, in 1738. Five years later, Handel's reconfiguration of Milton's Samson Agonistes, was on the London stage," in 1743.

ENDNOTES

¹ Harry White, The Musical Discourse of Servitude: Authority, Autonomy and the Work-Concept in Fux, Bach, and Handel (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020: 149ff); Amazon.com: "Look inside."
² A study of Bach and Handel's oratorios shows that each ventured into the other's domain at least once: Handel may have set a German oratorio Passion in the so-called Postel biblical St. John Passion c. 1704 in Hamburg (GFHandel.org: "A note on the St. John Passion") and was the last of his North German colleagues to set a poetic Passion oratorio, his Brockes Passion, HWV 48, in 1719 in Hamburg (Wikipedia). Handel also produced two early Italian sacred oratorios in Rome, "Il trionfo del Tempo e del disinganno" (The triumph of Time and Disillusion, 1707), HWV 46a, and "La Resurrezione del Nostro Signor Gesù Cristo (Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ, 1708), HWV 47, the only other oratorio, besides Messiah, specifically Christian in it theme. Bach set one Italian-style oratorio, his Easter Oratorio, BWV 249, a 1725 parody of a German-stye vocal serenade (dramma per musica), lacking biblical narrative and closing chorale. Bach also adapted lyrics from the Postel St. John Passion and the Brockes Passion for his 1724 St. John Passion, BWV 245, with its chiastic structure, as well as in the 1740s performing Handel's Brockes Passion as well as the Pasticcio Passion setting of the "Keiser St. Mark Passion" and eight arias from Handel's Brockes setting).
³ White's list of Messiah monographs (Ibid.: Footnote 37: 161) involves the following authors: Winton Dean, Howard Smither, Ruth Smith, Ellen T. Harris, Tassilo Erhardt, Michael Marissen, and David Hunter. Others include Richard Luckett's Handel's Messiah: A Celebration (Vanderbilt Catalog Library: Contents), and Tim Slover's Messiah: The Little-Known Story of Handel's Beloved Oratorio (Amazon.com).
⁴ Richard Taruskin, The Oxford History of Western Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005: 2:305-40), Amazon.com.

⁵ Tim Blanning, The Triumph of Music: The Rise of Composers, Musicians and Their Art (Cambridge MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008: 84f); Amazon.com, Harvard University Press.
⁶ Leopold I Sepolcro is reviewed in Johan van Veen's current Musica Dei Donum; an aria from Fux's Sepocrol, La Deposizione dalla croce (The Deposition from the Cross), K 300), is discussed in Chapter 2: 94-104.
⁷ See Harry White, "The Sepolcro Oratorios of Fux," Taylor & Francis Group: 169.
⁸ See John the Baptist's beheading, Matthew 14:6-12 and Mark 6:17-29 (Wikipedia), while, in contrast, the Lutheran observance on the same feast day, June 24, celebrates with joyous hymns (see BCW).

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To come: White's Chapter 4, last two sections, "'Darkness Visible': Handel and the English Oratorio," and "No Passion Spent," as well as the Bach-Handel synchronicity (Bach & Handel; BML, March 8 to May 7, 2020; BCW).

White Chaper 4: Handel's "Samson," Bach Connections

William L. Hoffman wrote (May 2, 2021):
Handel's masterpiece oratorio Samson is based on the Newburgh Hamilton (Wikipedia) libretto, based on John Milton's tragic closet drama, Samson Agonistes (Wikipedia), influenced by the Old Testament Judges 16:23-30 (Bible Gateway). As the biblical figure Samson was emancipated from "abject servility" through the heroic action of his death, so was Handel freed from "the serene servitude of Italian opera," says Harry White in The Musical Discourse of Servitude,¹ through the agency of English oratorio which Handel developed but which had no definitive form (LCS Productions). In White's Chapter 4, "A Darkness Which Might Be Felt": "Handel, Fux, and the Oratorio," the penultimate section, "Darkness Visible": "Handel and the English Oratorio," focuses on the sacred drama Samson and the influences of the Italian Johann Joseph Fux (Wikipedia); Hamilton; Milton's drama and the "tragic unities of time, place, and action"; the challenges of shedding the influences of Italian musical drama, especially in the second of the three acts; and, finally, "Handel's gift for intimacy as a dramatic as well as an expressive resource," says White (Ibid.: 218), as well as the triumph of Samson beyond various constraints in the Chapter 4 final section, "No Passion Spent," where one common thread involving the Bach-Handel synchronicity is Handel's borrowing, part of the 2020 Bach Cantata Website Mailing List discussions of Bach & Handel (BML, March 8 to May 7, 2020; BCW), which examine Joseph P. Swain's recent, comparative study of Bach and Handel.²

Handel's English Oratorio

While the striking conventions of Italian opera seria (Wikipedia) and its sacred counterpart. Italian oratorio (LCS Productions) would continue on the European continent "long after Handel's enchantment with opera (his sweet captivity) had come to an end," says White (Ibid.: 195), and would still influence Handel's Samson, the English Oratorio which Handel established and exploited would reveal varied influences and conventions in a never-definitive genre, based on contextual conditions, prior influences, and all manner of intrinsic factors. English oratorio never completely escaped its Italian heritage, notably the ABA repetitive da capo aria and the impact of dramatic affectations while undergoing a transition or transformation to a distinctive vernacular expression based on Old Testament stories with collective choruses considerably lacking in much of its Italian forbearers. The first full English oratorio, Handel's Esther of 1732, originated as a masque (Wikipedia) or chamber drama in 1718 when Handel prepared to take up permanent residence in England. Hethen pursue the distinctive body of 42 Italian opera seria, subsequently replaced by 25 English oratorios (Wikipedia), as well as all manner of dramatic vocal compositions such as cantatas, serenades, anthems, canticles, and songs — usually in the English vernacular. All the English oratorios as sacred drama were composed in three acts but originally were hybrids with arias in Italian retaining absurdities and conceits. Athalia, HWV 52, of 1733 is considered the first truly English oratorio, a masterpiece of dramatic development with all manner of inventive Italian forms (YouTube). These operatic elements would continue while choruses became the unifying dramatic force. One of the elements of Italian drammi per musica (Wikipedia) preserved in some of Handel's oratorios is non-sacred subjects of mythology (Semele, Hercules) and allegory (Alexander's Feast, Ode for St. Cecilia's Day, The Triumph of Time and Truth). Like Bach's cantatas called drammi per musica with mythological and allegorical characters (BCW: "Bach’s Drammi per Musica"), and like Handel's early oratorios, with social, political, and cultural celebratory overtones. The dramatic language of Handel's English oratorio librettos varies, from straight operas (Susanna, Theodora, Joseph) and virtual opera (Samson, Jeptha) sometimes staged, to purely scriptural text (Israel in Egypt) and with no story line (Messiah). Two consistent, distinctive features of Handel's oratorios, unlike Italian oratorios, are its performing venues of theaters instead of churches and the borrowings of previously-composed music of the composer's own (as with Bach) or extensively from other composers after 1737 (LCS Productions: "Function and Form"). Another feature, greatly influenced by English choral tradition beginning with Handel's Anthems in 1717/18 (Wikipedia), is "Handel's Choral Style" ( (LCS Productions).

Handel's Samson: Autonomy, Originality

Handel's Samson "not only reconfigured dramma per musica as a domestic expression of English political sentiment (as Ruth Smith has decisively demonstrated):³ it also legitimated the English oratorio as a musical expression of imaginative autonomy" "in terms of generic invention" of the English oratorio, White observes (Ibid.: 195), "Handel devoted himself from 1741 until shortly before his death [in 1769] to the English dramatic genre which he inaugurated with Esther in 1718, confirmed with Samson in 1743, and (arguably) brought to its most intensive pitch of utterance with Jeptha in 1752." Here, "the generic intransigence of Handel's prototypes shows his own generic freedom of invention into srelief." Samson in the context of the Italian oratorio retains the authority of genre while "the generic intransigence that dominates [Fux's John the Baptist oratorio] La fide sacrilega no longer obtains," says White (Ibid.; 196).⁴ Like Samson, Handel "emerges from the oratorio emancipated by his own actions" with "inventive autonomy and originality for his musical-dramatic diction." "The first explanation for this emancipation lies with Hamilton's arrangement of Milton's play." "Chief among these matters is the deployment of the chorus," "differently represented in Milton's drama," with texts which Hamilton drew mostly from Milton's non-Samson sources or "invented himself." The exceptions are Milton's narrative as Handel/Hamilton recitative and Hamilton's creation of Micha (a friend of Samson's), "whose text is largely taken from that of the Chorus in Milton's poem."

Samson: Dramatic Structure, Movements

Hamilton's adaptation "reflects three considerations simultaneously,"⁵ says White, Ibid.: 197): his textual conception "as a progression from darkness and despair to light and courage; the imperium of Handel's musical requirements," particularly in madrigalian airs, duets and choruses; "and the immediate cultural environment for which the oratorio was intended." While the general trajectory and tragic unities in Milton are preserved, the "unremitting" progression in Milton becomes in Hamilton's treatment "concentrated scene-complexes which close in on the hero's tragic condition with two predominant scenes and movements in each act:⁶ Act 1, Scene 2 between Samson ("Total eclipse") and Micha ("O mirror of our fickle state," Milton line 164), and Scene 3 between his father, Manoa ("The glorious deeds") and Samson ("Why does the god of Israel sleep?") in Act 1 (and Micha's II/I, "Return of God of hosts" and response with chorus,"To dust his glory they would tread); Act 2, Scene 2 between Samson ("Your charms to ruin led the way") and Dalila ("My faith and truth") and duet (Traitor/Traitress to love?"), and Scene 4 between the Philistine giant Harapha ("Honour and arms scorn such a foe") and Samson (duet, "Go, baffled coward"/"Presume not on thy God"); and Act 3, Scene 1 and 2, between Harapha ("Presuming Slave"), Samson ("Thus when the sun"), Micha, and Manoa ("How willing my paternal love"), and Scene 3, between Messenger, Micha ("Ye sons of Israel now lament," with chorus, "Weep, Israel, weep"), and Manoa.

A Hamilton symmetry of dramatic emphasis involves the placement of commentary (Greek) "choruses midway through and at the end of individual scenes," says White (Ibid.), representing Philistines (I/I, "Awake the trumpet's lofty sounds," and III/ii, "Great Dagon has subdued our foe") and Israelites (I/ii, "Oh first created beam"; I/iii, "Then shall they know, "Then round him the starry throne"; II/iv, 'Hear Jacob's cry"; III/I, "With thunder arm'd, great God, arise"; ) and together (II/iv, "Fix'd in his everlasting seat"). Hamilton also added symbolic figures with solos of "An Israelite" (I/iii, "God of our fathers"; II/iii, "It is not virtue") and an "Israelite Woman" (III/iii, "May ev'ry hero"), and correspondingly "A Philistine" (i/I, "Loud as the thunder's awful voice"; II/ii, with chorus, "Great Dagon has pursued our foe") a "Philistine Woman" (I/I, "Ye men of Gaza," "Then free from sorrow") and a Virgin to Delilah" (II/ii, "With plaintive notes"). Handel added two instrumental movements to heighten the drama: the opening multi-sectional Overture and the Dead-March for Samson. The extended overture was a common element in many of both Handel's opera seria and English oratorios, constituting one of the largest groups of Handel instrumental works (IMSLP), while Bach used orchestral opening sinfonias in numerous cantatas as musical sermons, virtually derived from instrumental movements in concertos and overtures (BCW: "Sinfonias to Cantatas").

Italian Emancipation, Tragic Elements

"The structural contingencies of Hamilton's text not only afford Handel the space to create a musical intimacy of diction and characterization which transforms the epic quality of Milton's poem;⁷ these also afford a degree of flexibility entirely unavailable to Fux and [librettist Pietro] Pariati in Vienna," suggests White (Ibid.; 198). In Vienna convention "prescribed allocation of recitatives and arias for each personage in turn" as "the sovereignty of generic paradigms invariably took precedence." Handel's Samson setting delivers "English musical drama from the lockjaw of Italian oratorio and drama, and all the more persuasively on account of its liberation from the Popish servilities of Italian musical drama and its attendant Jacobite associations," White observes (Ibid.: 199). Still, Samson retains Italianate elements such as the "diversionary airs" (conventional affective displays) in the first two acts in conflict with "the explicit daring of Handel's attention to the drama as it unfolds," and "unresolved until the third act." With Hamilton's adaptation, Handel's music "transforms and transcends the confluence of biblical oratorio and English epic poetry in the continuity which Handel achieves between public and private registers of feeling. When this continuity is disrupted, Samson sags," says White (Ibid.). A passage from George Steiner's The Death of Tragedy⁷ "brings this problem into focus." Public verse found in Homer to Milton, Virgil to Dante "has grown private," "essentially lyrical"; "it is poetry of private vision rather then public or national occasion." Insight into Milton's drama also is found in Steiner's study. "Like all Christian tragedy, a notion in itself paradoxical, Samson Agonistes is in part a commedia," says Steiner (Ibid.: 31). The "work ends on a note of transfiguration, even of joy." Milton "wrote a tragedy in a modern tongue" (Ibid.: 32) "At the same time, he created magnificent theatre"; "we glimpse the totality of Greek drama.⁸ Milton's language seems to draw after it the attendant powers of music and the dance." Following the original composition of Samson in October 1741, Handel made extensive alterations with additional airs and, after the first performance in 1743, he shorted several recitatives and cut arias but added the closing Israelite woman's fireworks aria, "Let the bright seraphim," and the joyous Chorus of Israelites, "Let their celestial concerts all unite," observes White (Ibid.: 200). The emergence of Samson "from the prison-house of Italian prototypes," says White (Ibid.; 214), "is also a protracted birthing, as its second act especially attests." The two encounters which dominate Act II, between Samson and Dalila and between Samson and Harapha, "are the soft and loud sirens of Italian musical drama in the midst of English oratorio, and the rival claims which these represent are only resolved in Act III." Following Harapha's departure, there are only two stand-alone arias, Samson's "Thus when the sun," and Manoa's how willing my paternal love."

"No Passion Spent": Music Drama Enlarged, Borrowings

White's Chapter 4 closing section, "No Passion Spent," is a reference to the last line (1758) of Milton's Samsin Agonistes, "And calm of mind, all passion spent," White observes (Ibid.: 223, FN 145), now for White "No Passion Spent, "to signify Handel's vigorous pursuit of English Oratorio after Samson." Handel "remained 'man of the theatre' all his working life" and "contended servility with freedom in the dramatic emancipation of English oratorio from its Italian counterparts."⁹ White cites two conventions. Handel recovered a musical agency of expression in the Da capo aria, notably Theodora and Jeptha, while reaffirming "that he contended servility with freedom in the dramatic emancipation of English oratorio from its Italian counterparts." The Da capo recovery "affirms the relationship between servitude and autonomy (and between Fux and Handel) identified in this chapter and it contextualizes the generic and expressive innovations through which Handel enlarged nature of musical drama, not only in England, but also in Europe. When "Handel introduced the tenor as hero in Samson (and fortified this vocal identity in Judas Maccabeus, Belshazzar and of course, Jeptha), he did so against the grain and convention of the soprano or alto castrato as operatic hero." Old Testament figures also had been the subject of Italian oratorios in Vienna during Fux's lifetime, White points out (Ibid.: 224), but with a fundamental difference: "Fux tenaciously adhered to the static regimen of the Italian libretto all his life." Handel "broke this mold forever" and his remaining 14 oratorios after Samson "are the missing history of English opera staring us in the face." Handel's borrowing of himself and others (Bach only borrowed his own music, although he transcribed Italian-style concertos) "has long been a Paradise Regained of empirical retrieval, without any comparative reworkings of Fux (Ibid.: 225) "or anyone else's." "Originality is hardly at issue here, given the transformations which Handel (almost axiomatically) achieves when he primes the pump of his own invention this way." Handel's systematic recovery and re-conception of entire movements from one genre to the next . . . in the service of his English oratorios is the defining hallmark of his late compositional technique."¹⁰ "His transformational prowess in this regard perhaps speaks for itself" as he emancipated himself from static, self-serving Italian musical discourse of "prolific estate and the privileged milieu from which it emerged. The sovereign irony of Handel's emancipation from this estate is that his stylistic promiscuity found its truest purpose in a coherent and newly-conceived generic model of music drama. In that enterprise, "entertainment" "was the least of his achievements."

ENDNOTES

¹ Harry White, The Musical Discourse of Servitude: Authority, Autonomy and the Work-Concept in Fux, Bach, and Handel (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020: 194ff); Amazon.com: "Look inside."
² Joseph P. Swain, Listening to Bach and Handel: A Comparative Study (Hillsdale NY: Pendragon Press, 2018), Amazon.com).
³ See Ruth Smith, Handel's Oratorios and Eighteenth-Century Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 1995), Amazon.com: "Look inside").
⁴ See White Chapter 4, "Handel, Fux, Oratorio," "Italian Oratorio in Vienna: Fux, Caldara," BML.
⁵ The same considerations could be said of texts by Picander (BCW): the three also are found in Bach's biblical Passion oratorio settings of the double-ensemble dramatic Matthew (1727, YouTube) and the lean, chorale-reflective Mark (1731, YouTube)): textual conception as sacrificial atonement; the dominion of Bach's musical requirements for madrigalian solos and choruses; and the immediate cultural environment of orthodox Lutheranism with pietistic sentiments — both Passion settings revised slightly in their final forms in the mid-1740s.
⁶ To access individual movements from Samson, see the recording of Karl Richter and the Munich Bach Chorus and Orchestra: YouTube.
⁷ George Steiner, The Death of Tragedy (New Haven CN: Yale University Press, 1996 [1961]: 309; Amazon.com.
⁸ Handel's Samson was staged at Covent Garden in 1959 (Amazon.com) and at the Met in 1986 (AP News); the Covent Garden stage premiere in 1958 is described in Arthur Jacobs' Choral Music: A Symposium (Baltimore MD: Penguin Books, 1963: 153-59), Amazon.com.
⁹ Bach's historia oratorio tradition developed from the Dresden Court c.1600, based on Italian models, see Pentecost Oratorio Tradition, BCW. Bach composed oratorios for the major feast days of Christmas, BWV 248; Easter (Italianate), BWV 249; and Ascension, BWV 11, as well as gospel settings of the oratorio Passions for Matthew, BWV 244; John, BWV 245; and Mark, BWV 248. Bach compiled two pasticcio Passions in the 1740s, the poetic Passion oratorio, "Passion Pastiche After C. H. Graun" (BCW), and the Keiser-Handel Pasticcio gospel oratorio Passion (Wikipedia). Bach presented the Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel Passion oratorio Ein Lämmlein geht und trät die Schuld in Leipzig on Good Friday April 23, 1734. Bach in Leipzig also may have presented Brockes Passions by Telemann and Handel.
¹⁰ Bach's final decade and a half, from 1735 onwards, also has as a "defining hallmark of his late compositional technique," the invention and transformation of previously-composed works into major oratorios and existing Lutheran chorales into great liturgical works, as well as the "Great Catholic" Mass in B-Minor, although many doctrinal musicologists still denigrate certain "self-plagiarisms" while simultaneously venerating the "original" instrumental fugal works of this last period.

—————

To come: a departure from White's The Musical Discourse of Servitude with the Bach-Handel synchronicity, followed by White's Chapter 5, "Steps to Parnassus: Fux, Caldara and Bach," and "Conclusion: Well,Well, Well: Fux, Bach and Handel."

Kim Patrick Clow wrote (May 2, 2021):
William L. Hoffman wrote:
"(Bach only borrowed his own music, although he transcribed Italian-style concertos)"
That is quite the stretch and not how I would use those words.....

William L. Hoffman wrote (May 3, 2021):
[To Kim Patrick Clow] So how would you use those words?: "Bach only borrowed his own music, although he transcribed Italian-style concertos."

Kim Patrick Clow wrote (May 3, 2021):
[To William L. Hoffman] I wouldn't have used them at all, to be frank.

William L. Hoffman wrote (May 3, 2021):
[To Kim Patrick Clow] I guess you don't believe in borrowings and transcriptions from other composers?

Kim Patrick Clow wrote (May 4, 2021):
[To William L. Hoffman] Oh but I do.

You're the one that doesn't believe Bach borrowed from other composers:
“Bach only borrowed his own music, although he transcribed Italian-style concertos”

Uri Golomb wrote (May 4, 2021):
[To Kim Patrick Clow] A transcription of another composer's music is not "borrowing" that composer's music. If Bach had taken a movement from a Vivaldi concerto and incorporated it into one of his own works -- that is, had he created a work which was part-Vivaldi, part-Bach and claimed the entire opus as his own -- that would have been borrowing. AFAIK, Bach never did that -- but I'm open to corrections. (With so many of Bach's works simply lost, it's quite possible that he did do this but the evidence has disappeared).

It's the same with self-borrowing. When rewrote his violin concerti as harpsichord concerti, that didn't couas self-borrowing, but rather as re-arrangement of an entire work. On the other hand, when he took the first movement of his Third Brandenburg and reworked it into a Sinfonia for one of his cantatas, that was self-borrowing: using a bit from one of his works as a building block for another. Bach indulged in a lot of self-borrowing and in a lot of transcriptions and rewritings, as did everyone else at the time. Both activities were viewed as perfectly legitimate, indeed as standard practice; but they're still distinct from each other.

Julian Mincham wrote (May 4, 2021):
[To Uri Golomb] It is the case that Bach rarely borrowed from other composers, Reusing his own works at a later stage does not, in my view, constitute 'borrowing'.

However there is one established example which is his use of a movement from a passion/oratorio by Stölzel in BWV 200.

Aryeh Oron wrote (May 4, 2021):
[To Julian Mincham] Bach definitely used musical material by other composers in his works in various ways. See: https://www.bach-cantatas.com/Other/Work-Arrange.htm

Tierry van Bastelaer wrote (May 4, 2021):
[To Aryeh Oron] And this: https://www.bach-cantatas.com/Texts/BWVAnh160-Ger5.htm

Kim Patrick Clow wrote (May 4, 2021):
[To Thierry van Bastelaer] Yes, that "borrowing" (insert sly wink here) is from the Stölzel oratorio "Ein Lämmlein geht und trägt die Schuld" (1731) which was uncovered by Peter Wollny, who published his research in the 2008 Bach-Jahrbuch. And that Stölzel oratorio was just released in a new recording on the CPO label with audio samples @ JPC . Then there is a direct lift of the funeral song setting by Rosenmüller at the end of cantata BWV 27 ‘Welt, ade! ich bin dein müde’, 'borrowing' indeed! Or the research efforts of Tatiana Shabalina and Marc Roderich Pfau showing Bach's performing entire cantata cycles composed by Stölzel.

William L. Hoffman wrote (May 5, 2021):
Borrowing, Transcription

Thierry van Bastelaer posting: https://www.bach-cantatas.com/Texts/BWVAnh160-Ger5.htm. The pasticcio motet, BWV Anh. 160 has been reclassified in the pending BWV3 catalogue as: BWV App. A BWV App. A 4 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jauchzet_dem_Herrn_alle_Welt_(motet) previously Anh. 160) – Jauchzet dem Herrn alle Welt (pasticcio motet)[a][107]:119[232]. It is part of the on-going update of Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis (BWV, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis).

The new BWV3 catalogue is being proof-read and finalized at Bach Archiv-Leipzig, according to Christine Blanken, before publication hopefully this year at Bärenreiter Verlag. According to the online BWV, variant versions of Bach works are being added (in red) with extensions, i.e. BWV 8 both versions as BWV 8.1and BWV 8.2.

Also, the new BWV3 has a reclassification of the BWV Anh. (Anhang, Appendix; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BWV_Anh.): I Anh. groups of works lost (I Anh.1-23), II Anh. works of dubious authenticity (II Anh. 24-155), III Anh. works not by Bach (III Anh. 156-189), and IV Anh. new additions (Nachträge) to BWV2/BWV2a (IV Anh. 190-213). Instead the BWV Anh. are now divided into four Alpha listings (according to the BWV/INDEX BOOK, BACH333, https://www.bach333.com/en/ ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis: BWV App. A–D):
Appendix A (BWV App. A): Doubtful works on stylistic grounds but assigned to J. S. Bach in the 18th century -- App. A BWV App. A 4 = previously Anh. 160; as well as organ chorales, BWV deest (some Emans)
Appendix B (BWV App. B): Doubtful works on stylistic grounds that were previously included in BWV1-2a or NBA, transmitted in the 18th century mainly anonymously and variously as by Bach -- BWV 1022, 1024, 1070 and organ chorales
Appendix C (BWV App. C): Unattributed works in copies or arrangements by J. S. Bach or his family. On stylistic grounds unlikely to be by Bach -- Anna Magdalena Notenbüchlein, Missae
Appendix D (BWV App. D): Formerly BWV-listed works NOT by J. S. Bach; since demonstrated to be by other composers or variants/arrangements not from Bach -- Anna Magdalena Notenbüchlein, other composers (deest)

This information should be added to the BML discussion, "BWV Numbering System," http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Topics/BWVSystem-4.htm. Most of the authentic Bach works added to BWV are theoretical (BWV 1128-34); music lost, only text survives (BWV 1135-63); or newly attributed works (BWV 1165-1175).

As you can see from the above, Bach researchers are still trying to figure our how to deal with all manner of questionable works that could have involved borrowings, transcriptions, variants, etc.: DSFDF (different strokes for different folks)!

My apologies for causing such semantic confusion.

William L. Hoffman wrote (May 5, 2021):
The audio sample for the aria "Dein Kreuz, o, Bräut'gam meiner Seelen" in Stölzel oratorio Ein Lämmlein geht und trägt die Schuld is found at JPC: No. 32.

White "Steps to Parnassus: Fux, Caldara, and Bach," "Conclusion"

William L. Hoffman wrote (May 29, 2021):
The pursuit of the "relationship between generic intransigence and generic transcendence" also is found in Harry White's Chapter 5, "Steps to Parnassus: Fux, Caldara, and Bach,"¹ in The Musical Discourse of Servitude,² and also is central to White's reading of Bach's B-minor Mass in light of the Johann Joseph Fux (Wikipedia, Fux Onlone) Mass ordinary settings, his most engaged genre in his long career. While Bach composed only a handful of Kyrie-Gloria Lutheran Mass movement settings, BWV 233-36 (YouTube), and one complete Mass, BWV 232 (YouTube), he remained consistent with his generic adherences to Latin church music, as well as the generic adherences in his some 200 German Lutheran church cantatas, says White in his Introduction (Ibid. 22). While there is a striking contrast between the Fux and Bach Mass settings in their musical discourse of servitude and of imaginative autonomy, Bach's Missa tota, BWV 232, symbolic and expressive autonomy "achieves its emancipation through the agency of a perspective which Fux's [100] settings provide," while achieving a radical intervention. Bach's Mass music provides a retrospective "perspective on the definitive adherences and constraints which shape and delimit Fux's musical imagination." Further, the "progression from servitude to autonomy becomes clearer on account of those musical genres which Bach and Handel share with Fux," the Mass and oratorio, respectively. Sebastian Bach considered Fux "first among those composers he most admired," according to son Emanuel³ (as repeated by first Bach biographer Johann Nikolaus Forkel in 1802, Wikipedia), Sebastian owning a copy of Fux's Gradus ad Parnassum 1725 counterpoint treatise (Wikipedia) with extensive quotafrom Fux's Masses and motets that bolstered "Bach's preoccupation with the stile antico [Wikipedia] in his later writing," says White (Ibid.: 23).⁴ Fux was "an immediate precursor of Bach himself," specifically in the relationship between Fux's Missa Canonica (Missa Corporis Christi, YouTube, "a tour-de-force of strict contrapuntal artifice," says White, and Bach's Art of Fugue (YouTube).

Fux, Bach Mass Connections

In Chapter 5, White poses various questions concerning Fux's Masses in relation to Bach's Mass setting. Did Bach, "the inveterate copyist," arrange or transcribe music of Fux? Did Fux adapt (through parody process) his own Mass music in later settings? Did the Viennese Court's and Fux's Masses directly influence "Bach's radical adjacencies of style in this work,"⁵ specifically through proportional exactitude?⁶ Are Bach's "Lutheran Masses," BWV 233-236), mostly derived through contrafactum (Wikipedia) from Leipzig cantatas, influenced by Fux? Do the "different agencies of transmission" of Fux and Bach Masses infer "a corresponding difference as between liturgical servitude and the sovereign enterprises of an emancipated imagination"? Finally, "can we deepen the mental journey from servitude to autonomy represented by Fux and Bach⁷ through the agency of Caldara's [Antonio; Fux student and Vice Kapellmeister] engagement with the same genre?" The first questions involving Fux adaptations show none while White in this chapter shows strong court influences on Bach, especially from Caldara. Bach's B-Minor Mass (BMM) reveals an "autonomy of achievement," "a deliberate (and vast) meditation on the nature of musical discourse as an agent of liturgical discourse," White observes (Ibid.: 24), and a "centrifugal ingathering of church music and secular music in the service of its own imaginative enterprise" (see BWV 232 context, sources, BCW). Its "intelligible reliances on a musical practice which deepens its meaning and significance in the history of late Baroque musical thought" and its "manifestation of this practice in Fux's Masses" are "an illumination of this history." BCW: "Harry White's Musical Discourse of Servitude, Introduction to Chapters 3-5 and Conclusion," Chapter 5, "Steps to Parnassus: Fux, Caldara, and Bach."

Milton Paradise Lost, Bach Mass in B Minor: "Theme Sublime"

Andrew Marvell's poem, "On Paradise Lost," in Milton, Poems, 154-5, concludes with (Lines 53f): "Thy verse created like thy theme sublime,/ In number, weight, and measure, needs not rhyme." Cited at the beginning of White's Chapter 5, the Paradise Lost "theme sublime" also suggests that, "For Bach, the same [Roman Catholic Mass] liturgical text, akin to Milton's 'sublime theme,' enabled the most intensive ingathering and recrudescence [renewal] of previously-composed music of which he was capable," says White (Ibid.: 229). Bach's BMM, BWV 232, "is represented here as the summit of Parnassus, and that is the generic context from which Bach's unique address on the ordinary of the mass emerges." "It is this context" "which allows us to trace the route-map between musical servitude and autonomy, and between Fux and Bach." Significant in early 18th century vocal music, notably in Bach's Passions and Handel's oratorios, are two mediating factors: the "Bible as subject matter" and "the currency of dramatic feeling animated by religious sensibility," observes White (Ibid.: 228), particularly in "those registers of intimacy and private grief summoned" in Handel's Samson and Bach's St. Matthew Passion. Now the work-concept usurps the authority concept "to the extent that it becomes an indispensable constituent of musical meaning," so that "the intelligibility of Bach's Mass in B Minor" "is otherwise inaccessible," says White (Ibid.; 229). "The ultimate task of this chapter is to explain why this is so." The structural affinities of the Antonio Caldara (BCW) Mass settings promote "a meaningful relationship between the liturgical Gebrauchsmusik [utility music] of the imperial court and the singular enterprise of Bach's Mass," says White (Ibid.: 230) particularly in Fux's orchestral (concertante) Masses." Fux's Missa Corporis Christi, K 10,⁸ "is a characteristic example of Fux's solemn Mass settings," says White in his Chapter 5 section, "From the Archive of Forced Hallelujahs" (Ibid.; 230ff), as an "anthology of liturgical servitude." This Fux Mass setting begins with a sonatina in 6/4 sarabande style with Venetian echo before the Kyrie entrance of the sarabande motive in the four-part chorus at mm 16. Suffice is to point out that Bach uses various dance styles in his Mass settings.⁹

"Consolations of First Practice": Fux Masses, Bach

Echoes of "texture, compositional technique and abeyance of internal design," says White (Ibid.: 238), are found in Fux's Missa Sancti Joannis Nepomucensis: K 34A,¹⁰ where in the Chapter 5 next section, "The Consolations of First Practice," he describes that Fux Mass's Benedictus movement soprano duet in old-style canon as "how it closely resembles and reimagines the fluency of Fux's stile antico writing" (Ibid.: 243) in its "seamless intelligibility of discourse untroubled by the uncongenial enterprise of stylistic heterogeneity." Turning to the Kyrie in Fux's Missa Vicissitudines, K44,¹¹ White shows (Ibid.: 244) that the "seamless pursuit of the musical subject adroitly takes its cue from the mature technique of his avowed master, Palestrina." In stile antico, "Fux is "in possession of common ground with his greatest contemporary," says White (Ibid.: 246). This music invites comparison with the Kyrie of Bach's Lutheran Mass in G, BWV 236 (YouTube), a contrafactum of the opening biblical motet chorus (BCW) of Cantata 179, "Siehe zu, dass deine Gottesfurcht nicht Heuchelei sei" (See that your fear of God is not hypocrisy, Sirach. 1:28, trans. Francis Browne), for the 11th Sunday after Trinity 1723 (YouTube). There is "a mutual degree of technical and expressive assurance shared by Fux and Bach," in "the same self-consciously reserved stylistic governance," possibly composed within a few years of each other." This liturgical music in old style involves the "same axis of thought" and "instrumental conception of the music itself," White says (Ibid.: 247). Fux's Missa Quadragesimalis (Lenten Mass), K29, also shows both "cerebral exactitude" and "an imaginative ideal of Roman restraint," he says (Ibid.: 248).

"Pursuit of Rational Form: Approaching Parnassus"

In White next section, "The Pursuit of Rational Form: Approaching Parnassus" (the most substantial in Chapter 5, Ibid.: 253-277), "Fux's quest "to seek nothing but the pure form perfectly appropriate to his theme," quotes White (Ibid.; 253), "might apply to Bach's late collections, and to the Musical Offering and The Art of Fugue in particular."¹² "Beauty beyond reason," quotes White (Ibid.), is suggestive in "Bach's imaginative extremism in the contrapuntal labyrinths he devised in old age" in his musical treatises. The tour de force of Fux's Missa Canonica, K7, "brings Fux into the domain of Bach's late works more immediate than any other of his Mass settings," says White (Ibid.; 254), but looks back "whereas Bach's late preoccupation with the growth of the instrumental subject looks far forward." Fux's more progressive deputy, Caldara, in his Missa Canonica (1720), "eschews the abstract structuring of its putative model" and "manifests a more progressive conception of harmony in the service of text expression," White quotes. (Ibid.). Fux was a renown teacher, including Cin 1716 and Jan Dismas Zalenka (BCW) in 1717, both having directly influenced Bach, whose most admired composers were Fux, Caldara, and Handel, as well as Zalenka (see "J.S. Bach Connection." BCW). About 1740, Bach arranged and performed Caldara's Magnificat in C Major, with a Bach arrangement of "Suscepit Israel," BWV 1082 (BCW, BCW).

Caldara Mass Settings

"Two of Caldara [Mass] settings, the Missa Sanctorum Cosmae et Damiani and the Missa Matris Dolorosae (Mother Mass Dolours), moreover, share compelling structural and expressive affinities with BWV 232 which (for the first time) contextualize the autonomy of Bach’s setting," observes White.¹³ Bach's source at the Dresden "Hofkirche's inventory of Latin texted church music was unsurpassed in Germany," says George B. Stauffer (Ibid.: Footnote 9, 19ff). Caldara's Mass "structural unity and design," says White (Ibid.: 256) embrace both stile misto (mixed style) and emphasis on chorus movements. "Caldara's emancipation from the staid contrivances of the imperial Mass is even more pronounced in his Missa Sanctorum Cosmae," White observes (Ibid.; 259), with three unifying elements: short-term motives, through ritornello structures, and vocal-instrumental fugal subjects. This Mass Gloria (AMG) "brilliant opening is on a par with the engine that drives Vivaldi's famous setting," R 589 (YouTube), "or the monumental psalm achievements by Caldara's predecessor in Rome, Handel" (YouTube). The Gloria closing "Cum sancto spiritu," says White (Ibid.; 271) could be a model for Bach's same setting in the B-minor Mass (YouTube), as well as the influence on Bach's Kyrie (YouTube) of the Grave introduction of the Kyrie in Caldara Missa Matris Dolorosae of 1735 (Ibid.: 275, YouTube), which also was influenced by the Hugo von Wilderer Mass in g minor with its extended opening ritornello.¹⁴ These compositional affinities in proportion and style between Caldara and Bach "illuminate the ascent to Parnassus as Fux concertante settings never could," says White (Ibid.: 276). Catholic Mass settings composed or reworked by Zalenka about the same time as Bach¹⁵ reinforce the connections, says White (Ibid.: 274).¹⁶

"His Vast Design: Bach and the Musical Work"

The final section of White's Chapter 5, "His Vast Design: Bach and the Musical Work," shows the imaginative autonomy of Bach's B-minor Mass, influenced in part by "Caldara's emancipation from the drudge of imperial servitude and the sloth of reception history," says White (Ibid.: 277). Caldara "supplied at least three Masses to the Dresden Court through the agency of Zalenka's acquisition," says White (Ibid.): two Missae tota, Missa Matris Dolorosae and Missa Quid mihi et tibi (Mass what have you been sent), and a Zalenka 1728 Missa tota pasticcio of Caldara's Kyrie-Gloria Missa Providentiae¹⁷ with the Sanctus and Agnus Dei (each in three parts) that Zalenka derived from the Caldara Missa Providentiae Gloria and Kyrie, with Zalenka's added own Credo, ZWV 31. Around 1738-41, Bach made a copy of a Sanctus, BWV 239 (BCW, YouTube) which was based on the first section of the Gloria of Caldara's Kyrie–Gloria Mass, says Wikipedia. "When Bach turns his attention to the singular enterprise of setting the whole mass ordinary, his vast design radically recasts any useful connection between the ubiquity of the Mass as a (North Italian) musical genre and the extraordinary setting he produced in 1748-49," says White (Ibid.: 278). Bach's B-minor Mass, "with its exceptional originality as a complete work," he says (Ibid.; 279), "belongs among the increasingly abstract and 'speculative' cycles from his late years," says John Butt,¹⁸ as cited by White (Ibid.: 279). "Bach deliberately exhausts the Mass as a Baroque musical genre," says White (Ibid.: 280), but differs from the late instrumental cycles "because for the very last time in his career, Bach in this work tested the authority of a sacred text against that of his own imagination." "It was to transpire as," says White "a summary of his writing for voice . . . a mighty setting [which] preserved the musical and artistic creed of its creator for posterity," citing Christoph Wolff.¹⁹ "

Bach responded by offering a remarkable survey of retrospective and current choral styles," also says Wolff (Bach's Musical Universe, Ibid.: 324). "In due course the work came to be viewed — surely as its composer must have wished — as a superlative musical legacy, as did its instrumental counterpart, the Art of Fugue," with a text "that transcended confessional boundaries," says Wolff (Ibid.: 331; cited in "Mass in B Minor: Importance, Genesis, Legacy," paragraph beginning "Since there is no documentation . . . ., BCW). It is the "autonomous signature of Bach's musical utterance which takes precedence," says White (Ibid.: 280), beyond "its tonal planning, closed forms, proportional relations, and inaudible arithmetical exactitudes." Two instances of this auditory signature are the "deliberate contrast" between stile antico "and the instrumental figuration of his vocal writing whenever the stile antico (or colla parte scoring) in not in play" (ie Kyrie I), says White (Ibid.: 281), and "the exceptionally intimate relationship between ritornello and vocal writing throughout the solo settings, in which a differentiation between the two is frequently dissolved" (ie Laudamus te, YouTube; Quoniam, YouTube). "Throughout BWV 232, this ascendency of the musical subject is so complete, and so carefully integrated into the unfolding structural design of the whole, that the work deliberately subsumes the parodies on which it (mostly) depends into an unprecedented unity," says White (Ibid.: 282), and "eclipses its disparate origins" while "the Confiteor fugue [YouTube] may be the only original setting in the whole Mass." "Like Milton's 'slender book,' Bach's mass exceeds its circumstances."

White Conclusion: "Well, Well: Fux, Bach, and Handel

In the conclusion to his study, "Well, Well, Well: Fux, Bach, and Handel," White summarizes his findings in the five chapters. "As the primary exponent of the Austro-Italian Baroque, Fux embodies the routine servitude of a musical discourse," he says (Ibid.: 24), "which nevertheless prompted two of its most prominent adherents — Bach and Handel — to emancipate themselves from its formulaic absolutism," so that Bach "could countenance the extremity of his own musical imagination" in his B-minor Mass while Handel could "reinvent musical drama as the discourse of a specifically English tragedy" in his oratorio Samson. In all of this, Bach might be considered a musical subversive.²⁰

Postscript: "A convenient example of this progressive understanding" of Bach is the recent series of essays on the B-minor Mass, says White.²¹ It "unmistakably affirms the historical integrity" of the music with "textual scholarship, numerical and proportional analyses, stylistic, scrutiny and documentary study" as a single entity with self-standing text, and refuting previous criticism of Friedrich Smend and Richard Taruskin. "If BWV 232 is intelligible as an autonomous musical wobecause of empirical research, might we not want to reconsider other works by Bach in the light of these findings," White asks. "An increasing conflict between autonomy, cultural meaning and historical significance lies at the very nerve center of Bach reception since 1985," says White (Ibid.: 106). The 'Old' Bach "lost its singularity of meaning no later than 1945" while the "New" Bach Testament "is a much more plural enterprise" and "a continuity of meaning." "Despite the dramatic reconfigurations of his music over the past thirty years, a study of Bach's reliances in relation to the musical imagination of his contemporaries is long overdue."

ENDNOTES

¹ Source materials discussion: Bach Books: "Harry White's Musical Discourse of Servitude, Introduction to Chapters 3-5 and Conclusion," BCW.
² Harry White, The Musical Discourse of Servitude: Authority, Autonomy and the Work-Concept in Fux, Bach, and Handel (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020: 158-62); Amazon.com: "Look inside").
³ See "J.S. Bach Connection," paragraph beginning "A letter from Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. . . .," in BCW Biographies of Composers, "Johann Joseph Fux (Composer, Music Theorist)," BCW: "J.S. Bach Connection."
⁴ See also Christoph Wolff, "Bach and the Tradition of the Palestrina Style," in Bach: Essays on His Life and Music (Cambridge MA: 1991: 88ff); Google Books.
⁵ See Wikipedia, "Bach's Church Music in Latin" (original, transcription, adaptation), Wikipedia.
⁶ See Ulrich Siegele, "Some Observations on the Formal Design of Bach's B-Minor Mass," in Tomita, Leaver, and Smaczny (eds.), Exploring Bach's B-minor Mass (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013: 112-24; Amazon.com); based on the international symposium in 2007, "Understanding Bach's B-minor Mass" (Academia.edu), which is the most exemplary and definitive research activity, covering the topics of Historical Background and Contexts, Structure and Proportion, Sources, and Reception.
⁷ See Susan Wollenberg, "Vienna under Joseph I and Charles VI" (1711-40), in The Late Baroque: From the 1680s to 1740, ed. George J. Buelow Music and Society (Englewood Cliffs NJ: Prentice Hall, 1993: 32f8f, church music, Fux, Caldara; 332, style, instruments; Amazon.com; see also Susan Wollenberg (trans. and ed.), "Gradus ad Parnassum (1725): Concluding Chapters," Music Analysis II (1992): 209-43, Jstor, cited in White, Chapter 3, "The Steward of Unmeaning Art: Bach and the Musical Subject." 61-85.
⁸ Fux, Missa Corporis Christi, K 10: musical score, WorldCat Libraries; recording, Chandos.
⁹ <<The B Minor Mass is permeated with dance: the giga- or gigue-related nature of the "Gloria in excelsis Deo" and "Qui sedes," the passepied qualities of the "Pleni sunt coeli" and "Osanna," the rejouissance character of the "Et resurrexit," the passacaglia bass pattern of the "Crucifixus," the pastoral hues of the "Et in Spiritum Sanctum," and the gavotte-like rhythms of the "Et expecto" point to a work that is very much a part of the present world.>> George Stauffer - "The Universality of the B Minor Mass," Columbia University: paragraph beginning "The presence of dance. . . ."); source, George Stauffer, The Mass in B-Minor: The Great Catholic Mass (New Haven CN: Yale University Press, 2003: 261ff), Amazon.com.
¹⁰ Fux's Missa Sancti Joannis Nepomucensis: K 34A: score, IMSLP; commentary, Cambridge University Press).
¹¹ Fux's Missa Vicissitudines, K44 (Digital Staatsbibliothek: scroll to "Missa vicissitudinis. Auszüge: Kyrie"), ms. copy, D-B Mus.ms. 13162; source, Digital copies of Fux sources (selection), Fux Online, Compositions, Missa Vicissitudinis K 44 / L 14 (Kyrie) ( Fux Onlone); selection found in Fux's Gradus ad Parnassum, Susan Wollenberg (trans. and ed.), "Concluding Chapters," Music Analysis II (1992): 219-21, cited in White (Ibid.: 81).
¹² See Christoph Wolff, Chapter 8, "Instrumental and Vocal Polyphony at Its Peak: Art of Fugue and B-Minor Mass," in Bach's Musical Universe: The Composer and His Work (New York: W. W. Norton, 2020: 284ff), Amazon.com; BML Discussion, BCW.
¹³ Harry White, The Musical Discourse of Servitude; citation, Oxford University Press.
¹⁴ Hugo von Wilderer Mass in g minor (Carus Verlag, YouTube.
¹⁵ White cites Table 3.2 of Masses composed or reworked by Zalenka in 1729-33, of Janice B. Stockigt, "Bach's Missa BWV 232I in the context of Catholic Mass settings in Dresden, 1729-1733," cited in Footnote 6: here 274, Cambridge University Press.
¹⁶ Only recently explored are the extensive theatrical oratorio Passions of Caldara, also composed in harmony, concerted madrigalian form, notably his La passione di Gesù Cristo signor nostro of 1730 (Metastasio text, Wikipedia) with its alternating recitatives-aria pairings in opera seria form, as well as occasional choruses and a duet, instrumental introduction and sinfonia; YouTube.
¹⁷ Caldara Kyrie-Gloria Missa Providentiae (Wikipedia, IMSLP).
¹⁸ John Butt, "Mass in BMinor," in J. S. Bach: Oxford Composer Companions, ed. Malcolm Boyd (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999: 285), Amazon.com.
¹⁹ Christoph Wolff, Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001: 441f); Amazon.com.
²⁰ See Laurence Dreyfus, "Bach the Subversive," Lufthansa Lecture, London, 14 May 2011; Dreyfus proposes "thinking of Johann Sebastian Bach as a subversive, someone who overthrew a system of beliefs about music, someone who undermined widely acclaimed principles and closely guarded assumptions" (2), and "If, according to these propositions Bach goes about undermining the established order of things — subverting gaudium, logos, proprietas, inventio, natura and pietas — what does he put in their place? Or rather, whom is he placing in charge? Why, it is music herself who takes the reins. . . . (12), Academia.edu.
²¹ Harry White, Evangelists of the Postmodern: Reconfigurations of Bach Since 1985, Understanding Bach, 12, 103, passim 85–107 (Bach Network UK 2017), Bach Network UK; source, BCW.

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To come: more new Bach books explored.