Handel and Domenico Scarlatti were contemporaries almost to a year, both
as regards birth and death. They knew each other very well in Italy and
Scarlatti never mentioned Handel’s name without crossing himself, but I
have not heard that Handel crossed himself at the mention of Scarlatti’s
name. I know very little of Scarlatti’s music and have not even that
little well enough in my head to write about it; I retain only a
residuary impression that it is often very charming and links Haydn with
Bach, moreover that it is distinctly un-Handelian.
Handel must have known and comprehended Scarlatti’s tendencies perfectly
well: his rejection, therefore, of the principles that lead to them must
have been deliberate. Scarlatti leads to Haydn, Haydn to Mozart and
hence, through Beethoven, to modern music. That Handel foresaw this I do
not doubt, nor yet that he felt, as I do myself, that modern music means
something, I know not what, which is not what I mean by music. It is
playing another game and has set itself aims which, no doubt, are
excellent but which are not mine.
Of course I know that this may be all wrong: I know how very limited and
superficial my own acquaintance with music is. Still I have a strong
feeling as though from John Dunstable, or whoever it may have been, to
Handel the tide of music was rising, intermittently no doubt but still
rising, and that since Handel’s time it has been falling. Or, rather
perhaps I should say that music bifurcated with Handel and Bach—Handel
dying musically as well as physically childless, while Bach was as
prolific in respect of musical disciples as he was in that of children.
What, then, was it, supposing I am right at all, that Handel distrusted
in the principles of Scarlatti as deduced from those of Bach? I imagine
that he distrusted chiefly the abuse of the appoggiatura, the abuse of
the unlimited power of modulation which equal temperament placed at the
musician’s disposition and departure from well-marked rhythm, beat or
measured tread. At any rate I believe the music I like best myself to be
sparing of the appoggiatura, to keep pretty close to tonic and dominant
and to have a well-marked beat, measure and rhythm.