THE MAGNIFICENT BACHELOR
Two young and flamboyant musickers, boon companions, one twenty-two and
the other eighteen, strike the town of Lübeck in 1703. They are drawn
thither by a vacancy in the post of town-organist. And their competition
is to be friendly.
Two flamboyant young musickers leave the town of Lübeck as soon as can
be. For they have learned that the successful candidate must marry the
daughter of the man in whose shoes they would fain have trodden the
pedals. One look at the daughter was enough. She was not fair to see,
and her years were thirty-four--just six years less than the total years
of the two young candidates.
Back to Hamburg the two friends go, and the next year their friendship
suffers a serious strain. The elder, now aged twenty-three, is producing
"Cleopatra," an opera of his own composition, and incidentally playing
the role of Antony. The younger of the friends is the conductor, and
presides, as is the custom of the time, at the clavecin. There is
another custom in the performance of that opera, a curious one, too. For
it is the wont of the composer-singer, when he has died as Antony, to
come to life again and conduct the rest of his opera at the clavecin.
But the younger friend, now full of the importance of nineteen years,
and being the successor to the great Reinhard Keiser, is not disposed to
yield the clavecin, even to his versatile friend. A quarrel that
narrowly escapes ruining the melodious swan-song of Cleopatra, is
postponed till after the final curtain. Then it takes the form of a
duel. The composer manages at last to elude the parry of the conductor;
he throws all his weight and venom into a lunge that must prove
fatal,--but a large brass button sheds the point of the sword and saves
its wearer for a better fate.
By the strange medicinal virtue of duels, the wound in the friendship is
healed, honour is poulticed, and the friendship begins again, lasting
with healthful interruptions until the younger musician goes his way
toward the fulness of his glory; the elder his way along the lines of
versatility--which leave him in the eyes of posterity rather valued as a
writer than aught else.
The old organist whose death had brought these two younkers on their
wild-goose chase was Dietrich Buxtehude, the famous man whom Johann
Sebastian Bach walked fifty miles on foot to hear, and whose
compositions he studied and profited from. Old Buxtehude, himself the
son of an organist, had himself married the daughter of the organist who
had preceded him. The daughter he left behind to frighten away aspiring
candidates did not languish long. According to Chrysander, a certain
J.C. Schieferdecker, who is famous for nothing else, wed the daughter,
and "got the pretty job" ("_erhielt den schönen Dienst_").
The elder of the two young men was Johann Mattheson (1681--1764), a sort
of "Admirable Crichton," who married in 1709 Catherine Jennings,
daughter of an English clergyman and the relative of a British admiral.
That is all of his story that belongs here.
The younger man, whose life hung on a button, was that great personage
whose name has been spelled almost every way imaginable between Hendtler
and Handel--the later form being preferred by the English, who, as
somebody said, love to speak learnedly of "Handel and Glück." It is not
needful here to tell the story of his brilliant life and the big events
it crowded into the four and seventy years between 1685 and 1759. His
friend Mattheson, like Beethoven, spent his later years in the dungeon
of deafness. Händel, like his great rival Bach (who was born the same
year), spent seven years in almost total blindness, three operations
having failed. In almost every other respect the careers of these two
men were unlike, particularly in the obscure and prolific married life
of the one and in the almost royal prominence of the other's
bachelorhood.
Händel never married, and seems never even to have been in love, though
he was an unusually pious son and a fond brother.
The only time on record when he took a woman into his arms was the
occasion when the great singer, Cuzzoni, refused to sing an air of his
the way he wished it. He seized her, and, dragging her to a window,
threatened to throw her out, thundering, "I always knew you were a
devil, but I'll show you that I am Beelzebub, the prince of devils."
Händel's greatest love seems to have been for things to eat. In the
memoirs of him, published anonymously [by Doctor Mainwaring] in 1760,
the author says that Händel was "always habituated to an uncommon
portion of food and nourishment," and accuses him of "excessive
indulgence in this lowest of gratifications."
"He certainly paid more attention to it than is becoming in any man; but
it is some excuse that Nature had given him so vigorous a constitution,
so exquisite a palate, so craving an appetite, that fortune enabled him
to obey these calls, and to satisfy these demands of nature.... Had he
hurt his health or fortune by indulgences of this kind, they would have
been vicious; as he did not, they were at the most indecorous."
A story is told of him that he once ordered up enough dinner for three.
Noting that the servant dawdled about, Händel demanded why; the servant
answered that he was waiting for the company to come, whereupon Händel
stormed, in his famous broken English, "Den pring up der tinner
prestissimo. I am de gombany."
In his later years Händel was not so beautiful as he might have been,
and Queen Anne, alluding to his bulk, said that his hands were feet and
his fingers toes. Mrs. Bray, however, says that "in his youth he was the
most handsome man of his time."
Handel resembles Lully somewhat in his reputation for being a lover of
the table and a neglecter of womankind. Schoelcher in his biography
states "that not one woman occupies the smallest place in the long
career of his life." And yet contradicts himself in his very next
sentence, for he adds:
"When he was in Italy a certain lady named Vittoria fell in love with
him and even followed him from Florence to Venice. Burney describes
Vittoria as 'a songstress of talent.' Fetis calls her the Archduchess
Vittoria, but both agree that she was beautiful and that she filled the
part of the prima donna in 'Roderigo,' his first Italian score. At that
period, and even later, it was not uncommon to find princes and
princesses singing in the pieces which were produced at their courts.
Artist or archduchess, either title was enough to turn the head of a
young man twenty-four years old; but Händel disdained her love. All the
English biographers say that he was too prudent to accept an attachment
which would have been ruin to both. This is calumny, for he was never
prudent."
This Vittoria is an interesting problem in romance. Doctor Mainwaring
says that Händel was Apollo and she Daphne. Chrysander in his great
biography properly notes that the legend has been twisted, and
represents here the god as fleeing from the nymph. Coxe says that
Vittoria was "an excellent singer, the favourite mistress of the Grand
Duke of Tuscany"--which gives a decidedly different look to Händel's
"prudence."
Chrysander tries to prove that this Vittoria was no other than the
famous singer, Vittoria Tesi, "a contralto of masculine strength," as
one listener describes her voice. She was very dramatic, and made her
chief success in men's roles, singing bass songs transposed an octave
higher. She was born at Florence in 1690, and would have been seventeen
years old when Händel's "Roderigo" was produced there in 1707. That she
should be capable of so ardent a love at that age need hardly be
mentioned when we remember that Romeo's Juliet was only twelve at the
time of her immortal amour. Love _à l'Italienne_ is precocious.
Wild stories are told of the escapades of this brilliant singer, whom
Händel never brought to London among all his importations--and with
good reason, if she had once pursued him as legend tells. No stranger
account is given than that of Doctor Burney, who describes her peculiar
method of escaping the proposals of a certain nobleman who implored her
to marry him. She had no prejudices against the nobleman, but strong
prejudices against marriage. Finally, to quiet her lover's conscientious
appeals, she went out into the street and bribed the first labouring man
she met with fifty ducats to marry her. Her new husband sped from
dumbfounded delight to amazed regret, for he found that with her money
she bought only his name and a marriage document, as a final answer to
the count when next he came whimpering of conventional marriage.
In London Händel reigned as never musician reigned before or since. He
is still reigning to the lasting detriment of English musical
independence.
He was a lordly man in his day was Händel; and dared to cut that
terrible Dean Swift, whose love affairs are perhaps the chief riddle of
all amorous chronicle. Dean Swift is said to have said: "I admire Händel
principally because he conceals his petticoat peccadillos with such
perfection." This statement may be taken as only a proof either that the
dean had so tangled a career of his own that he could not see any other
man's straight; or that Händel was really more of a flirt than
tradition makes him out.
Rockstro said that Händel was engaged more than once; once to the
aforementioned Vittoria Tesi--this in spite of the tradition that woman
proposed and man disposed; and later to two other women. Rockstro bases
this last doubtless on the account given in that strangely named book,
"Anecdotes of Händel and J.C. Smith, with compositions by J.C. Smith."
This was published anonymously in London, in 1799, but it is known to
have been written by Dr. William Coxe. Smith _(né_ Schmidt) was Händel's
secretary and assistant. He was something of a composer himself, and on
his death-bed advised his widow to consult Doctor Coxe in every
emergency; whereupon, to simplify matters and have the counsellor handy,
in due time she married him.
Doctor Coxe indignantly denies Hawkins' statement that Händel lacked
social affection; he says that two rich pupils loved him. The first
would have married him, but her mother said she should never marry a
fiddler. After the mother's death, the father implied that all obstacles
were now removed, but too late. He never saw the girl again, and she
fell into a decline, which soon terminated her existence. The second
woman was a personage of high estate, and offered to marry Händel if he
would give up his career. But when he declined, she also declined, and
died after the fashion of the eighteenth century.
In his will Händel left money to two cousins, also to two widows, and
one other woman.
He brought many singers to London for his operas, and their romances
would fill ten volumes. There is the famous tenor, Beard, for instance,
the creator of "Samson." He created Samsonian scandal by marrying Lady
Henrietta Herbert, the only daughter of the Earl of Waldegrave; she died
fourteen years later, and he built her a fine monument. Six years later
he married the daughter of a harlequin.
Then there was the singer Senesino, and Farinelli, whose heart and brain
were real though his voice was artificial. He became finally a sort of
vocal prime minister to Spain. To start one of these romances of singers
would be like throwing a match in a fireworks factory.