Product Synopsis

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1902. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... GEORGE FREDERICK HANDEL. (168B-17B9.) TF human history be mapped out like an astronomical -*- chart, we find that geniuses are generally grouped in constellations. There are widely separated periods when several stars of the first magnitude are shining all together. And now and again we come upon double stars. Such were Bach and Handel. Born within a month of each other, their courses were strangely parallel and at the same time strangely dissimilar. The one was the outcome of a long line of musical ancestors, burning like a sun, the evolution of which can be traced back to the primitive nebula. The other was the only representative of genius in his race; flaring like a splendid comet, come from no one knows where. The one never moved from his orbit; the other found it only after an erratic course. The one was calm and serene, though bright and beautiful; the other was fierce and dramatic, full of passion and fire. The one was domestic, always German, though he belongs to the world; the other, sweeping through all lands, a cosmopolitan, became England's pride, and hence the world's. The one published during his lifetime many compositions; the other saw scarce anything of his in print. Both, were men of wit, men of more than usual education; both were consummate organists, unequalled players on the clavier, religious composers of the highest rank; both, like Milton, became blind. But great as Handel was, Bach must forever be known as The One! On Monday, the 23d of February, 1685, the house in that part of Halle on the Saale, known as "der Schlamm," or the Mud, where lived the worthy town surgeon Georg Handel, was gladdened by the birth of a man child, who, in accordance with the good old Lutheran custom, was the next day taken to the solemn Liebfrauenkir...