'Some wit, comparing Bach and Handel, remarked
that both masters were “born in the same year and
killed by the same doctor.” Born in the same year
they unquestionably were, Handel almost an exact
month before his great contemporary. Halle, where
Handel first saw the light, is a comparatively short
distance from Eisenach, where Bach was cradled. It
lies not far from the eastern boundary of that Saxon-Thuringian
country which harbored some of the imposing
musical figures of Germany during the 17th
Century. Such names as those of the famous “three
S’s”—Schein, Scheidt and Schütz—of Kuhnau,
Krieger, Melchior Franck, Ahle, Rosenmüller, echo
powerfully through the history of that period.?
PAYSER, Herbert F. George Frideric Handel. The Philharmonic Symphony Society of New York, 1951.