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 Handel, 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 favorable 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 favorite 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 afterward 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 Otto-boni, 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, patronized 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, afterward written for the Duke of Chandos, has continued a
marked favorite 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 afterward 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 marveled at that he took the earliest opportunity of
returning to the land which he afterward 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.