_Ein’ feste Burg._--This cantata, one of the strongest of the remarkable series of church works composed by Bach, is constructed on Luther’s immortal hymn, the battle-hymn of the Reformation. Historians differ as to the exact time of its composition, but all agree that it was when Bach was at the height of his creative power, the occasion probably being either the Reformation Festival of 1730 or the bicentenary of Protestantism in Saxony, May 17, 1739. It is laid out in truly grand proportions and is permeated from first to last with the bold spirit of triumphant confidence that made the old Reformation days such a stirring memory in every German heart. The cantata opens with a stupendous fugue based on Luther’s melody and using the first stanza of the hymn, than which Bach never wrote anything grander. Following this comes a duet for soprano and bass, the text including the second stanza. A bass recitative and a soprano aria lead to the second great chorus, in which the chorale is sung in unison and with mighty effect, amid a whirl of wildly leaping figures in the orchestra, to the third stanza of the hymn, ‘And were the world all devils o’er And watching to devour us.’ The sixth number, a tenor recitative, leads to a duet for alto and tenor, ‘How blessed then are they who still on God are calling.’ The chorale is heard again in the final chorus, this time sung without accompaniment to the last stanza of the hymn--a thrilling ending to a colossal work. V Handel (1685-1759), one of the few great masters of choral writing, was a man in whose life strange contrasts jostled each other. He was born a German, but died a naturalized Englishman and was buried in Westminster Abbey among England’s most illustrious sons; he was intended by his parents to be a lawyer, but by nature to be a musician; the greater part of his life was spent in writing operas, popular in his day but now forgotten, while his fame now rests almost entirely on the great oratorios that he wrote after he was fifty years old and had been practically driven from the operatic stage by intrigues and cabals. He towers above all his contemporaries except Bach; while his greatest masterpieces are his oratorios, his smaller choral works in secular cantata-form display his fine instinct for gracious melody, dramatic coloring, and characteristic choral effects. ‘Acis and Galatea.’--This cantata or pastoral (the composer calls it a serenata, under which title it had its first London performance in 1732) was composed by Handel in 1720, while he was chapel-master to the Duke of Chandos, and was performed at Cannons the following year. In writing it, following a custom very much in vogue among composers of his time, he drew upon an earlier work composed in 1708 during his sojourn in Italy. Most of the text was written by the poet John Gay, though certain fragments were borrowed from Dryden, Hughes, and Pope.