To the modern Englishman Handel is almost a contemporary. Paintings
and busts of this great minstrel are scattered everywhere throughout
the land. He lies in Westminster Abbey among the great poets,
warriors, and statesmen, a giant memory in his noble art. A few hours
after death the sculptor Roubiliac took a cast of his face, which he
wrought into imperishable marble; "moulded in colossal calm," he
towers above his tomb, and accepts the homage of the world benignly
like a god. Exeter Hall and the Foundling Hospital in London are also
adorned with marble statues of him.
There are more than fifty known pictures of Handel, some of them by
distinguished artists. In the best of these pictures Handel is seated
in the gay costume of the period, with sword, shot-silk breeches, and
coat embroidered with gold. The face is noble in its repose.
Benevolence is seated about the finely-shaped mouth, and the face
wears the mellow dignity of years, without weakness or austerity.
There are few collectors of prints in England and America who have not
a woodcut or a lithograph of him. His face and his music are alike
familiar to the English-speaking world.
Handel came to England in the year 1710, at the age of twenty-five.
Four years before he had met, at Naples, Scarlatti, Porpora, and
Corelli. That year had been the turning-point in his life. With one
stride he reached the front rank, and felt that no musician alive
could teach him anything.
GEORGE FREDERICK HANDEL (or Händel, as the name is written in German)
was born at Halle, Lower Saxony, in the year 1685. Like German
literature, German music is a comparatively recent growth. What little
feeling existed for the musical art employed itself in cultivating the
alien flowers of Italian song. Even eighty years after this Mozart
and Haydn were treated like lackeys and vagabonds, just as great
actors were treated in England at the same period. Handel's father
looked on music as an occupation having very little dignity.
Determined that his young son should become a doctor like himself, and
leave the divine art to Italian fiddlers and French buffoons, he did
not allow him to go to a public school even, for fear he should learn
the gamut. But the boy Handel, passionately fond of sweet sounds, had,
with the connivance of his nurse, hidden in the garret a poor spinet,
and in stolen hours taught himself how to play. At last the senior
Handel had a visit to make to another son in the service of the Duke
of Saxe-Weissenfels, and the young George was taken along to the ducal
palace. The boy strayed into the chapel, and was irresistibly drawn to
the organ. His stolen performance was made known to his father and the
duke, and the former was very much enraged at such a direct evidence
of disobedience. The duke, however, being astonished at the
performance of the youthful genius, interceded for him, and
recommended that his taste should be encouraged and cultivated instead
of repressed.
From this time forward fortune showered upon him a combination of
conditions highly favourable to rapid development. Severe training,
ardent friendship, the society of the first composers, and incessant
practice were vouchsafed him. As the pupil of the great organist
Zachau, he studied the whole existing mass of German and Italian
music, and soon exacted from his master the admission that he had
nothing more to teach him. Thence he went to Berlin to study the
opera-school, where Ariosti and Bononcini were favourite composers.
The first was friendly, but the latter, who with a first-rate head had
a cankered heart, determined to take the conceit out of the Saxon boy.
He challenged him to play at sight an elaborate piece. Handel played
it with perfect precision, and thenceforward Bononcini, though he
hated the youth as a rival, treated him as an equal.
On the death of his father Handel secured an engagement at the
Hamburg opera-house, where he soon made his mark by the ability with
which, on several occasions, he conducted rehearsals.
At the age of nineteen Handel received the offer of the Lübeck organ,
on condition that he would marry the daughter of the retiring
organist. He went down with his friend Mattheson, who it seems had
been offered the same terms. They both returned, however, in single
blessedness to Hamburg.
Though the Lübeck maiden had stirred no bad blood between them,
musical rivalry did. A dispute in the theatre resulted in a duel. The
only thing that saved Handel's life was a great brass button that
shivered his antagonist's point, when they were parted to become firm
friends again.
While at Hamburg Handel's first two operas were composed, "Almira" and
"Nero." Both of these were founded on dark tales of crime and sorrow,
and, in spite of some beautiful airs and clever instrumentation, were
musical failures, as might be expected.
Handel had had enough of manufacturing operas in Germany, and so in
July 1706 he went to Florence. Here he was cordially received; for
Florence was second to no city in Italy in its passion for encouraging
the arts. Its noble specimens of art creations in architecture,
painting, and sculpture produced a powerful impression upon the young
musician. In little more than a week's time he composed an opera,
"Rodrigo," for which he obtained one hundred sequins. His next visit
was to Venice, where he arrived at the height of the carnival.
Whatever effect Venice, with its weird and mysterious beauty, with its
marble palaces, façades, pillars, and domes, its magnificent shrines
and frescoes, produced on Handel, he took Venice by storm. Handel's
power as an organist and a harpsichord player was only second to his
strength as a composer, even when, in the full zenith of his maturity,
he composed the "Messiah" and "Judas Maccabæus."
"Il caro Sassone," the dear Saxon, found a formidable opponent as
well as dear friend in the person of Scarlatti. One night at a masked
ball, given by a nobleman, Handel was present in disguise. He sat at
the harpsichord, and astonished the company with his playing; but no
one could tell who it was that ravished the ears of the assembly.
Presently another masquerader came into the room, walked up to the
instrument, and called out: "It is either the devil or the Saxon!"
This was Scarlatti, who afterwards had with Handel, in Florence and
Rome, friendly contests of skill, in which it seemed difficult to
decide which was victor. To satisfy the Venetian public, Handel
composed the opera "Agrippina," which made a _furore_ among all the
connoisseurs of the city.
So, having seen the summer in Florence and the carnival in Venice, he
must hurry on to be in time for the great Easter celebrations in Rome.
Here he lived under the patronage of Cardinal Ottoboni, one of the
wealthiest and most liberal of the Sacred College. The cardinal was a
modern representative of the ancient patrician. Living himself in
princely luxury, he endowed hospitals and surgeries for the public. He
distributed alms, patronised men of science and art, and entertained
the public with comedies, operas, oratorios, puppet-shows, and
academic disputes. Under the auspices of this patron, Handel composed
three operas and two oratorios. Even at this early period the young
composer was parting company with the strict old musical traditions,
and his works showed an extraordinary variety and strength of
treatment.
From Rome he went to Naples, where he spent his second Italian summer,
and composed the original Italian "Aci e Galatea," which in its
English version, afterwards written for the Duke of Chandos, has
continued a marked favourite with the musical world. Thence, after a
lingering return through the sunny land where he had been so warmly
welcomed, and which had taught him most effectually, in convincing him
that his musical life had nothing in common with the traditions of
Italian musical art, he returned to Germany, settling at the court of
George of Brunswick, Elector of Hanover, and afterwards King of
England. He received commission in the course of a few months from the
elector to visit England, having been warmly invited thither by some
English noblemen. On his return to Hanover, at the end of six months,
he found the dull and pompous little court unspeakably tiresome after
the bustle of London. So it is not to be marvelled at that he took the
earliest opportunity of returning to the land which he afterwards
adopted. At this period he was not yet twenty-five years old, but
already famous as a performer on the organ and harpsichord, and as a
composer of Italian operas.
When Queen Anne died and Handel's old patron became King of England,
Handel was forbidden to appear before him, as he had not forgotten the
musician's escapade; but his peace was at last made by a little ruse.
Handel had a friend at court, Baron Kilmansegge, from whom he learned
that the king was, on a certain day, going to take an excursion on the
Thames. So he set to work to compose music for the occasion, which he
arranged to have performed on a boat which followed the king's barge.
As the king floated down the river he heard the new and delightful
"Water-Music." He knew that only one man could have composed such
music; so he sent for Handel, and sealed his pardon with a pension of
two hundred pounds a-year.