Arturo Llamas Orenday <[log in to unmask]> writes:

>And you can forget the Bach-Handel influence on thte Great Mass K. 427.

Yes - but once again the prime influence on Mozart here is Handel, and
not Bach.

The essence of the point, re. Kundera's fable as to the supreme
importance of the Bach renaissance, is to differentiate between the Twin
Peaks of Baroque in terms of influence and style, and avoid conflating
them into the "Handel-Bach Inc." of popular musical legend!

As for the "lifting" of Handel by Mozart into his Requiem, I'm not too
sure. We should perhaps be wary of substituting our own 20th c. sense of
Musical Copyright for the baroque-rococo perception of using the Lingua
Franca as a common heritage. Though Mozart's use of techniques such as
fugato is certainly *very* Handelian in effect (c.f. "Quam olim Abrahae"
etx.) thematic musical tags weren't really anybody's personal property.

Christopher Webber, Blackheath, London, UK
http://www.zarzuela.net
"ZARZUELA!" The Spanish Music Site