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70 text of the Senator Brockes. Following their example, perhaps in order to measure himself with these men, who had all three been rivals or friends, Handel took the same text and wrote on it in 1716 his Passion after Brockes. This powerful and disparate work, where bad taste mingles with the sublime, where affectation and pomposity are mingled with the most profound and serious art—a work which J. S. Bach knew well, and very carefully remembered—was for Handel a decided experience. He felt in writing it what a great gulf separated him from the Pietist German art, and on his return to England he composed the Psalms and Esther.