There's Nothing New Under the Sun

I've been exploring so much new music recently, (made possible in part by Eric's Academy Music recommendation: that place has an unbelievable hoard of dirt cheap used classical music) that I'm stumbling across all kinds of interesting things, and wanted to share one highly unexpected parallel.

I know next to nothing about the actual musical history involved, but I've been noticing that some baroque music sounds amazingly like 20th century minimalist music. Or to be more precise: sometimes Handel creates a nice effect by suddenly having his violins go into a very repetitious phrase for one section of a song...and Phillip Glass stole that one trick and made an entire career out of it.

Compare this selection from Einstein on the Beach:



with this from the Messiah: