Gottfried August Homilius - Matthäuspassion - Aria di Basso - Seid getreu, ihr wen'gen Frommen

Image via El Wik

Take someone trained as a lawyer, and send them to J. S. Bach himself to be taught music.  What do you get?  Improbably, you get what may be Germany's Handel.  Sure, he never wrote a "Messiah", but he did compose a St. Matthew's Passion (Matthäuspassion), probably the greatest but for the great Bach's.

Born in 1714, he was composing as a contemporary of Handel, and in much the same style.  Organist at Dresdener Frauenkirche, he - like Handel - specialized in sacred music in the Baroque style.

Listening to this piece, I'm struck at how similar it is to what you hear in The Messiah.  The give away is that it's sung auf deutsche, rather than in (a rather strange germanische dialect of) English, as Handel's works appeared.



If you like Handel, then you'll be able to, err, handle this.

Gottfried August Homilius died on this day in 1785.