We now turn from the man to his music. In his daily life with the
world we get a spectacle of a quick, passionate temper, incased in a
great burly frame, and raging into whirlwinds of excitement at small
provocation; a gourmand devoted to the pleasure of the table,
sometimes indeed gratifying his appetite in no seemly fashion,
resembling his friend Dr. Samuel Johnson in many notable ways. Handel
as a man was of the earth, earthly, in the extreme, and marked by many
whimsical and disagreeable faults. But in his art we recognise a
genius so colossal, massive, and self-poised as to raise admiration to
its superlative of awe. When Handel had disencumbered himself of
tradition, convention, the trappings of time and circumstances, he
attained a place in musical creation, solitary and unique. His genius
found expression in forms large and austere, disdaining the luxuriant
and trivial. He embodied the spirit of Protestantism in music; and a
recognition of this fact is probably the key of the admiration felt
for him by the Anglo-Saxon races.
Handel possessed an inexhaustible fund of melody of the noblest order;
an almost unequalled command of musical expression; perfect power over
all the resources of his science; the faculty of wielding huge masses
of tone with perfect ease and felicity; and he was without rival in
the sublimity of ideas. The problem which he so successfully solved in
the oratorio was that of giving such dramatic force to the music, in
which he clothed the sacred texts, as to be able to dispense with all
scenic and stage effects. One of the finest operatic composers of the
time, the rival of Bach as an instrumental composer, and performer on
the harpsichord or organ, the unanimous verdict of the musical world
is that no one has ever equalled him in completeness, range of effect,
elevation and variety of conception, and sublimity in the treatment of
sacred music. We can readily appreciate Handel's own words when
describing his own sensations in writing the "Messiah"--"I did think I
did see all heaven before me, and the great God himself."
The great man died on Good Friday night, 1759, aged seventy-five
years. He had often wished "he might breathe his last on Good Friday,
in hope," he said, "of meeting his good God, his sweet Lord and
Saviour, on the day of his resurrection." The old blind musician had
his wish.
_GLUCK._