Word: handels
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...Harvard--and everyone else--bringing back Bach? This year also marks Handel's 300th birthday, as well as Scarlatti's, but neither of these has drawn nearly as much attention...
...Harvard, this is partially explained by the types of works each excelled in. "You can't really have a major Handel festival without paying attention to his operas, and the difficulties for undergraduates in putting together an opera are nearly insurmountable," Wolff explained. "If you look at Bach's works, you have an ideal repertoire that can be tapped by chamber music, choral and orchestral groups...
Perhaps a reason is that so little physical evidence survives to humanize the man. East Germany has a plethora of preserved Luther sites--Eisleben contains the house in which Luther was born and also the one in which he died--and Handel's birthplace, a solid two-story house, still stands not far from his rather smug statue in Halle's central marketplace...
...possible that the country of Bach, Handel and Goethe could also be the country of Himmler and Eichmann? It is a question that has vexed the world for decades. Perhaps a better question is: What other country could it have been? The Germans have long been able to hold two opposing ideas in mind and remain untroubled by their mutual exclusivity. Only in Germany could Weimar and Buchenwald coexist, each denying the other's nature. "I wish and ask that our rulers who have Jewish subjects exercise a sharp mercy toward these wretched people," wrote Luther in 1543. "They must...
Bach, as vital a man as there ever was, has inevitably become part of that myth: in the Thomaskirche, his stained-glass window is near Luther's. In East Germany, as in most of the world, he has overshadowed his countryman Handel, who had the effrontery to defect to the West before it was politically necessary. And there Bach is praised for giving "artistic expression to the people's aspirations and endeavors for peace." But he is impervious to political manipulation, as Luther and Wagner are not. He was not seduced by the devil, who tempted so many others...