[Eva Yojimbo]

I just find it really unartistic. It doesn't communicate deep thoughts or emotions for the most part.

While I like the answer of "leave it alone if it doesn't interest you," this does provoke the question of how you think music communicates deep thoughts and emotions to begin with. I find all kinds of music (including Classical and Baroque music) PROVOKES in me deep thoughts and emotions, but this is is distinct from saying the music expresses such things. It also then becomes a question that if it can (and it obviously does) provoke deep thoughts/emotions in some why it doesn't for you. Maybe it's because you don't "understand the language" (so to speak)? Just things to ponder.

 

[Eva Yojimbo]

A case can be made (I will make it) that the passage of time and the increasing number of tools available to composers allows for an ever-increasing palette of "colors" rhythms, longer-winded melodies, etc that were not available to composers of earlier eras. Hence there is more to hear and more to love as we approach and reach Bartok, Martinu, Stravinsky, Ravel, Debussy, even Respighi. I began mostly with 20th century music and have moved back in time over the decades to Mozart, Bach & company, finding much treasure in the older music. It may be what we first hear and have imprinted on us that determines our early enthusiasms, but as the years pass, the Captain will likely also discover the joys of earlier music, though not necessarily in the same abundance as, say, from Brahms to Bartok.

Even more than the "colors" of rhythm and melodies I think the more limited palette of instrumental/orchestral colors is what prevents me from enjoying the baroque-and-earlier eras more than I do. My love for melody and musical drama still pushes Handel into my top 5 composers, and I can appreciate intellectually (if not always be moved by emotionally) the harmonic complexity of Bach and many of his predecessors; but it's nice to come back to romantic-and-later music and hear such a diverse range of instrumental and tonal coloring that isn't relying on JUST melody and harmony, but also the subtle moods, atmospheres, and aesthetics afforded by the greater amount of instruments, not to mention the expanded concepts of tonality especially from late romanticism onward. The classical era sounds, to me, like a transitional period between the rather spartan palettes of the baroque-and-prior eras with the much more expansive palettes that came after. It's very much the point where I, personally, don't find much of anything limiting my musical enjoyment, at least with the greats like Mozart and Haydn. Maybe there's still something missing in terms of the more nuanced atmospheric/tonal elements I mentioned above, but most modern music also lacks the facility with melody and form that Mozart and Haydn possessed to, so it's more of an equal (to me) tradeoff.

 

[Eva Yojimbo]

Yes, I remember being surprised at how many subtle melodies there are in the Handel keyboard suites. When you play through them you're pleasantly surprised (at my young age I didn't expect it from dusty old Handel). They impressed me as more unabashedly lyrical than the suites of JSB.

I think Handel is right there with Mozart and a handful of other composers that are in the conversation for the greatest melodist ever. Everywhere you look in Handel--the keyboard suites, the operas, the oratorios, the chamber music, the orchestral music, the cantatas and other vocal/choral music--there are melodies so sweet that just melt your soul. Handel knew a good melody when he heard one too, as testified by his borrowings both of himself and others. He might've been the first to realize that "Lascia io pianga/la spina" was good enough to be be reused with a slight change of lyrics! Yet despite his recyclings he was also a first-class musical dramatist with a profound understanding of how to use music to illuminate character psychology and drama, arguably the best prior to Mozart.

 

[Eva Yojimbo]

In terms of vertical harmony? No. Neither was Gluck for that matter.

I wasn't limiting my claim to vertical harmony. I think melody, tonal coloring, and the withholding of certain elements for later dramatic contrast are equally valid methods (in aggregate, more so) for expressing character psychology as vertical harmony. A good, and very simple, example is the way in which Handel introduces the hulking Polyphemus in Acis & Galatea with a piccolo: the ironic contrast of the monstrous beast being accompanied by the orchestra's smallest, lightest instrument shouldn't be lost on anyone, but it's very much representing his psychological smallness in contrast to his physical largeness. If we're talking vertical harmony being used for psychological expression, yes, Handel wasn't among the best; his strengths are more in the other dramatic possibilities within music. Mozart and Beethoven recognized this very well. For vertical harmony and character I'd refer to more to Purcell even than Handel.