Mr. George Frideric Handel is by far the most superb personage one
meets in the history of music. He alone of all the musicians lived his
life straight through in the grand manner. Spohr had dignity; Gluck
insisted upon respect being shown a man of his talent; Spontini was
sufficiently self-assertive; Beethoven treated his noble patrons as so
many handfuls of dirt. But it is impossible altogether to lose sight
of the peasant in Beethoven and Gluck; Spohr had more than a trace of
the successful shopkeeper; Spontini's assertion often became mere
insufferable bumptiousness. Besides, they all won their positions
through being the best men in the field, and they held them with a
proud consciousness of being the best men. But in Handel we have a
polished gentleman, a lord amongst lords, almost a king amongst kings;
and had his musical powers been much smaller than they were, he might
quite possibly have gained and held his position just the same. He
slighted the Elector of Hanover; and when that noble creature became
George I. of England, Handel had only to do the handsome thing, as a
handsome gentleman should, to be immediately taken back into favour.
He was educated--was, in fact, a university man of the German sort; he
could write and spell, and add up rows of figures, and had many other
accomplishments which gentlemen of the period affected a little to
despise. He had a pungent and a copious wit. He had quite a
commercial genius; he was an impresario, and had engagements to offer
other people instead of having to beg for engagements for himself; and
he was always treated by the British with all the respect they keep
for the man who has made money, or, having lost it, is fast making it
again. He fought for the lordship of opera against nearly the whole
English nobility, and they paid him the compliment of banding together
with as much ado to ruin him as if their purpose had been to drive his
royal master from the throne. He treated all opposition with a
splendid good-humoured disdain. If his theatre was empty, then the
music sounded the better. If a singer threatened to jump on the
harpsichord because Handel's accompaniments attracted more notice than
the singing, Handel asked for the date of the proposed performance
that it might be advertised, for more people would come to see the
singer jump than hear him sing. He was, in short, a most superb
person, quite the grand seigneur. Think of Bach, the little shabby
unimportant cantor, or of Beethoven, important enough but shabby, and
with a great sorrow in his eyes, and an air of weariness, almost of
defeat. Then look at the magnificent Mr. Handel in Hudson's portrait:
fashionably dressed in a great periwig and gorgeous scarlet coat,
victorious, energetic, self-possessed, self-confident, self-satisfied,
jovial, and proud as Beelzebub (to use his own comparison)--too proud
to ask for recognition were homage refused. This portrait helps us to
understand the ascendency Handel gained over his contemporaries and
over posterity.
But his lofty position was not entirely due to his overwhelming
personality. His intellect, if less vast, less comprehensive, than
Beethoven's, was less like the intellect of a great peasant: it was
swifter, keener, surer. Where Beethoven plodded, Handel leaped. And a
degree of genius which did nothing for Bach, a little for Mozart, and
all for Beethoven, did something for Handel. Without a voice worth
taking into consideration, he could, and at least on one occasion did,
sing so touchingly that the leading singer of the age dared not risk
his reputation by singing after him. He was not only the first
composer of the day, but also the first organist and the first
harpsichord player; for his only possible rival, Sebastian Bach, was
an obscure schoolmaster in a small, nearly unheard-of, German town.
And so personal force, musical genius, business talent, education, and
general brain power went to the making of a man who hobnobbed with
dukes and kings, who ruled musical England with an iron rule, who
threatened to throw distinguished soprano ladies from windows, and was
threatened with never an action for battery in return, who went
through the world with a regal gait, and was, in a word, the most
astonishing lord of music the world has seen.
That this aristocrat should come to be the musical prophet of an
evangelical bourgeoisie would be felt as a most comical irony, were it
only something less of a mystery. Handel was brought up in the bosom
of the Lutheran Church, and was religious in his way. But it was
emphatically a pagan way. Let those who doubt it turn to his setting
of "All we like sheep have gone astray," in the "Messiah," and ask
whether a religious man, whether Byrde or Palestrina, would have
painted that exciting picture on those words. Imagine how Bach would
have set them. That Handel lived an intense inner life we know, but
what that life was no man can ever know. It is only certain that it
was not a life such as Bach's; for he lived an active outer life also,
and was troubled with no illusions, no morbid introspection. He seemed
to accept the theology of the time in simple sincerity as a sufficient
explanation of the world and human existence. He had little desire to
write sacred music. He felt that his enormous force found its finest
exercise in song-making; and Italian opera, consisting nearly wholly
of songs, was his favourite form to the finish. The instinct was a
true one. It is as a song-writer he is supreme, surpassing as he does
Schubert, and sometimes even Mozart. Mozart is a prince of
song-writers; but Handel is their king. He does not get the breezy
picturesqueness of Purcell, nor the entrancing absolute beauty that
Mozart often gets; but as pieces of art, each constructed so as to
get the most out of the human voice in expressing a rich human passion
in a noble form, they stand unapproachable in their perfection. For
many reasons the English public refused to hear them in his own time,
and Handel, as a general whose business was to win the battle, not in
this or that way, but in any possible way, turned his attention to
oratorio, and in this found success and a fortune. In this lies also
our great gain, for in addition to the Italian opera songs we have the
oratorio choruses. But when we come to think of it, might not
Buononcini and Cuzzoni laugh to see how time has avenged them on their
old enemy? For Handel's best music is in the songs, which rarely find
a singer; and his fame is kept alive by performances of "Israel in
Egypt" at the Albert Hall, where (until lately) evangelical small
grocers crowded to hear the duet for two basses, "The Lord is a man of
war," which Handel did not write, massacred by a huge bass chorus.
His "Messiah" is in much the same plight as Milton's "Paradise Lost,"
the plays of Shakespeare and the source of all true religion--it
suffers from being so excessively well known and so generally accepted
as a classic that few want to hear it, and none think it worth knowing
thoroughly. A few years ago the late Sir Joseph Barnby went through
the entire work in St. James's Hall with his Guildhall students; but
such a feat had not, I believe, been accomplished previously within
living memory, and certainly it has not been attempted again since. We
constantly speak of the "Messiah" as the most popular oratorio ever
written; but even in the provinces only selections from it are sung,
and in the metropolis the selections are cut very short indeed,
frequently by the sapient device of taking out all the best numbers
and leaving only those that appeal to the religious instincts of
Clapham. I cannot resist the suspicion that but for the words of "He
was despised," "Behold, and see," and "I know that my Redeemer
liveth," Clapham would have tired of the oratorio before now, and that
but for its having become a Christmas institution, like roast beef,
plum-puddings, mince-pies, and other indigestible foods, it would no
longer be heard in the provinces. And perhaps it would be better
forgotten--perhaps Handel would rather have seen it forgotten than
regarded as it is regarded, than existing merely as an aid to
evangelical religion or an after-dinner digestive on Christmas Day.
Still, during the last hundred and fifty years, it has suffered so
many humiliations that possibly one more, even this last one, does not
so much matter. First its great domes and pillars and mighty arches
were prettily ornamented and tinted by Mozart, who surely knew not
what he did; then in England a barbarous traditional method of singing
it was evolved; later it was Costa-mongered; finally even the late
eminent Macfarren, the worst enemy music has ever had in this
country, did not disdain to prepare "a performing edition," and to
improve Mozart's improvements on Handel. One wonders whether Mozart,
when he overlaid the "Messiah" with his gay tinsel-work, dreamed that
some Costa, encouraged by Mozart's own example, and without brains
enough to guess that he had nothing like Mozart's brains, would in
like manner desecrate "Don Giovanni." Like "Don Giovanni," there the
"Messiah" lies, almost unrecognisable under its outrageous adornments,
misunderstood, its splendours largely unknown and hardly even
suspected, the best known and the least known of oratorios, a work
spoken of as fine by those who cannot hum one of its greatest themes
or in the least comprehend the plan on which its noblest choruses are
constructed.
Rightly to approach the "Messiah" or any of Handel's sacred oratorios,
to approach it in any sure hope of appreciating it, one must remember
that (as I have just said) Handel had nothing of the religious
temperament, that in temperament he was wholly secular, that he was an
eighteenth century pagan. He was perfectly satisfied with the visible
and audible world his energy and imagination created out of things;
about the why and wherefore of things he seems never to have troubled;
his soul asked no questions, and he was never driven to accept a
religious or any other explanation. It is true he went to church with
quite commendable regularity, and wished to die on Good Friday and so
meet Jesus Christ on the anniversary of the resurrection. But he was
nevertheless as completely a pagan as any old Greek; the persons of
the Trinity were to him very solid entities; if he wished to die on
Good Friday, depend upon it, he fully meant to enter heaven in his
finest scarlet coat with ample gold lace and a sword by his side, to
make a stately bow to the assembled company and then offer a few
apposite and doubtless pungent remarks on the proper method of tuning
harps. Of true devotional feeling, of the ecstatic devotional feeling
of Palestrina and of Bach, there is in no recorded saying of his a
trace, and there is not a trace of it in his music. When he was
writing the "Hallelujah Chorus" he imagined he saw God on His throne,
just as in writing "Semele" he probably imagined he saw Jupiter on his
throne; and the fact proves only with what intensity and power his
imagination was working, and how far removed he was from the genuine
devotional frame of mind. There is not the slightest difference in
style between his secular and his sacred music; he treats sacred and
secular subjects precisely alike. In music his intention was never to
reveal his own state of mind, but always to depict some object, some
scene. Now, never did he adhere with apparently greater resolution to
this plan, never therefore did he produce a more essentially secular
work, than in the "Messiah." One need only consider such numbers as
"All they that see Him" and "Behold the Lamb of God" to realise this;
though, indeed, there is not a number in the oratorio that does not
show it with sufficient clearness. But fully to understand Handel and
realise his greatness, it is not enough merely to know the spirit in
which he worked: one must know also his method of depicting things and
scenes. He was wholly an impressionist--in his youth from choice, as
when he wrote the music of "Rinaldo" faster than the librettist could
supply the words; in middle age and afterwards from necessity, as he
never had time to write save when circumstances freed him for a few
days from the active duties of an impresario. He tried to do, and
succeeded in doing, everything with a few powerful strokes, a few
splashes of colour. Of the careful elaboration of Bach, of Beethoven,
even of Mozart, there is nothing: sometimes in his impatience he
seemed to mix his colours in buckets and hurl them with the surest
artistic aim at his gigantic canvases. A comparison of the angels'
chorus "Glory to God in the highest" in Bach's "Christmas Oratorio"
with the same thing as set in the "Messiah" will show not only how
widely different were the aims of the two men, but also throws the
minute cunning of the Leipzig schoolmaster into startling contrast
with the daring recklessness of the tremendous London impresario. Of
course both men possessed wonderful contrapuntal skill; but in Bach's
case there is time and patience as well as skill, and in Handel's only
consummate audacity and intellectual grip. Handel was by far a greater
man than Bach--he appears to me, indeed, the greatest man who has yet
lived; but though he achieves miracles as a musician, his music was to
him only one of many modes of using the irresistible creative instinct
and energy within him. Any one who looks in Handel for the
characteristic complicated music of the typical German masters will be
disappointed even as the Germans are disappointed; but those who are
prepared to let Handel say what he has to say in his own chosen way
will find in his music the most admirable style ever attained to by
any musician, the most perfect fusion of manner and matter. It is a
grand, large, and broad style, because Handel had a large and grand
matter to express; and if it errs at all it errs on the right side--it
has too few rather than too many notes.
On the whole, the "Messiah" is as vigorous, rich, picturesque and
tender as the best of Handel's oratorios--even "Belshazzar" does not
beat it. There is scarcely any padding; there are many of Handel's
most perfect songs and most gorgeous choruses; and the architecture of
the work is planned with a magnificence, and executed with a lucky
completeness, attained only perhaps elsewhere in "Israel in
Egypt"--for which achievement Handel borrowed much of the bricks and
mortar from other edifices. Theological though the subject is, the
oratorio is as much a hymn to joy as the Ninth symphony; and there is
in it far more of genuine joy, of sheer delight in living. Of the
sense of sin--the most cowardly illusion ever invented by a degenerate
people--there is no sign; where Bach would have been abased in the
dust, Handel is bright, shining, confident, cocksure that all is right
with the world. Mingled with the marvellous tenderness of "Comfort ye"
there is an odd air of authority, a conviction that everything is
going well, and that no one need worry; and nothing fresher, fuller of
spring-freshness, almost of rollicking jollity, has ever been written
than "Every valley shall be exalted." "And the glory of the Lord shall
be revealed" is in rather the same vein, though a deeper note of
feeling is struck. The effect of the alto voices leading off, followed
immediately by the rest of the chorus and orchestra, is overwhelming;
and the chant of the basses at "For the mouth of the Lord" is in the
biggest Handel manner. But just as "He was despised" and "I know that
my Redeemer liveth" tower above all the other songs, so three or four
choruses tower above all the other choruses in not only the "Messiah,"
but all Handel's oratorios. "Worthy is the Lamb" stands far above the
rest, and indeed above all choruses in the world save Bach's very
best; then comes "For unto us a Child is born"; and after that "And
He shall purify," "His yoke is easy," and "Surely He hath borne our
griefs"--each distinctive, complete in itself, an absolute piece of
noble invention. "Unto us a Child is born" is written in a form
devised by Handel and used with success by no other composer since,
until in a curiously modified shape Tschaikowsky employed it for the
third movement of his Pathetic symphony. The first theme is very
simply announced, played with awhile, then the second follows--a
tremendous phrase to the words "The government shall be upon His
shoulders"; suddenly the inner parts begin to quicken into life, to
ferment, to throb and to leap, and with startling abruptness great
masses of tone are hurled at the listener to the words "Wonderful,
Counsellor." The process is then repeated in a shortened and
intensified form; then it is repeated again; and finally the principal
theme, delivered so naïvely at first, is delivered with all the pomp
and splendour of full chorus and orchestra, and "Wonderful,
Counsellor" thundered out on a corresponding scale. A scheme at once
so simple, so daring and so tremendous in effect, could have been
invented by no one but Handel with his need for working rapidly; and
it is strange that a composer so different from Handel as Tschaikowsky
should have hit upon a closely analogous form for a symphonic
movement. The forms of the other choruses are dissimilar. In "He
shall purify" there are two big climaxes; in "His yoke is easy" there
is only one, and it comes at the finish, just when one is wondering
how the splendid flow of music can be ended without an effect of
incompleteness or of anti-climax; and "Surely He hath borne our
griefs" depends upon no climactic effects, but upon the sheer
sweetness and pathos of the thing.
Handel's secular oratorios are different from anything else in the
world. They are neither oratorios, nor operas, nor cantatas; and the
plots are generally quaint.
Some years ago it occurred to me one morning that a trip by sea to
Russia might be refreshing; and that afternoon I started in a
coal-steamer from a northern seaport. A passport could hardly be
wrested from hide-bound officialdom in so short a time, and, to save
explanations in a foreign tongue at Cronstadt, the reader's most
humble servant assumed the lowly office of purser--wages, one shilling
per month. The passage was rough, the engineers were not enthusiastic
in their work, some of the seamen were sulky; and, in a word, the name
of God was frequently in the skipper's mouth. Otherwise he did not
strike one as being a particularly religious man. Nevertheless, when
Sunday evening came round he sat down and read the Bible with genuine
fervour, spelling the hard words aloud and asking how they should or
might be pronounced; and he informed me, by way of explaining his
attachment to the Book, that he had solemnly promised his wife never
to omit his weekly devotions while on the deep. Though I never shared
the literary tastes of Mr. Wilson Barrett, the captain's unfathomable
ignorance of the Gospels, Isaiah and the Psalms startled even me; but
on the other hand he had an intimate acquaintance with a number of
stories to be found only in the Apocrypha, with which he had
thoughtfully provided himself. To gratify my curiosity he read me the
tale of Susanna and the Elders. Being young, my first notion was that
I had chanced on a capital subject for an opera; and I actually
thought for ten minutes of commencing at once on a libretto. Later I
remembered the censor, and realised for the first time that in
England, when a subject is unfit for a drama, it is treated as an
oratorio. As soon as possible I bought Handel's "Susanna" instead, and
found that Handel curiously--or perhaps not curiously--had also been
before me in thinking of treating the subject operatically. In fact
"Susanna" is as much an opera as "Rinaldo," the only difference being
that a few choruses are forcibly dragged in to give colour to the
innocent pretence. Handel's librettist, whoever he was, did his work
downright badly. That he glorifies the great institution of permanent
marriage and says nothing of the corresponding great institution of
the Divorce Court, is only what might be expected of the horrible
eighteenth century--the true dark age of Europe; but surely even a
composer of Handel's powers could scarcely do himself justice with
such a choice blend of stupidity and cant religion as this--
"_Chorus_. How long, O Lord, shall Israel groan
In bondage and in pain?
Jehovah! hear Thy people moan,
And break the tyrant's chain!
"_Joachim._ Our crimes repeated have provok'd His rage,
And now He scourges a degen'rate age.
O come, my fair Susanna, come,
And from my bosom chase its gloom," etc.
Or is the abrupt third line of Joachim's speech to be regarded as a
masterstroke of characterisation? I will tell the whole story, to show
what manner of subject has been thought proper for an oratorio.
Joachim and Susanna are of course perfect monsters of fidelity; though
it is only fair to say that Joachim's virtue is not insisted on, or,
for that matter, mentioned. Joachim goes out of town--he says so:
"Awhile I'm summoned from the town away"--and Susanna, instead of
obeying his directions to entertain some friends, goes into a dark
glade, whither the Elders presently repair. She declines their
attentions; then they declare they caught her with an unknown lover,
who fled; and she is condemned to death, the populace seeing naught
but justice in the sentence. But before they begin to hurl the stones,
Daniel steps forward and by sheer eloquent impudence persuades the
people to have the case re-tried, with him for judge. He sends one
elder out of court, and asks the other under what tree Susanna
committed the indiscretion. The poor wretch, knowing no science,
foolishly makes a wild shot instead of pleading a defective education,
and says, "A verdant mastick, pride of all the grove." The other, in
response to the same question, says, "Yon tall holm-tree." Incredible
as it seems, on the strength of this error, which would merely gain a
policeman the commendation of an average London magistrate, the two
Elders are sent off to be hanged! Why, even the late Mr. Justice
Stephen never put away an innocent man or woman on less evidence! But
the chorus flatters Daniel just as the Press used to flatter Mr.
Justice Stephen; Susanna is complimented on her chastity; and all ends
with some general reflections--
"A virtuous wife shall soften fortune's frown,
She's far more precious than a golden crown."
Nothing is said about the market value of a virtuous husband. Probably
the eighteenth century regarded such a thing as out of the question.
As I have said, I tell this story to show what the British public will
put up with if you mention the word oratorio. Voltaire's dictum needs
revision thus: "Whatever is too improper to be spoken (in England) is
sung, and whatever is too improper to be sung on the stage may be sung
in a church."
Nevertheless, out of this wretched book Handel made a masterpiece. The
tale of Susanna is not one in which a man of his character might be
expected to take a profound interest; though it should always be
remembered that hardly anything is known of his relations with the
other sex save that he took a keen and lifelong interest in the
Foundling Hospital. But so strong had the habit of making masterpieces
become with him that he could not resist the temptation to create just
one more, even when he had nothing better than "Susanna" to base it
on; just as a confirmed drunkard cannot resist the temptation to get
one drink more, even if he be accustomed to the gilded chambers of the
West End, and must go for really the last to-night into the lowest
drinking-saloon of the East. Some of the choruses are of Handel's
best. The first, "How long, O Lord," shows that he could write
expressive chromatic passages as well as Purcell and Bach; the second
is surcharged with emotion; "Righteous Heaven" is picturesque and full
of splendid vigour; "Impartial Heaven" contains some of the most
gorgeous writing that even Handel achieved. But the last two choruses,
and "The Cause is decided" and "Oh, Joachim," are common, colourless,
barren; and were evidently written without delight, to maintain the
pretext that the work was an oratorio. But it stands to this day,
unmistakably an opera; and it is the songs that will certainly make it
popular some day; for some of them are on Handel's highest level, and
Handel's highest level has never been reached by any other composer.
His choruses are equalled by Bach's, his dramatic strokes by Gluck's,
his instrumental movements by Bach's and perhaps Lulli's; but the
coming of Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Weber, and Wagner has only
served to show that he is the greatest song-writer the world has known
or is likely to know. Even Mozart never quite attained that union of
miraculously balanced form, sweetness of melody, and depth of feeling
with a degree of sheer strength that keeps the expression of the main
thought lucid, and the surface of the music, so to speak, calm, when
obscurity might have been anticipated, and some roughness and storm
and stress excused. "Faith displays her rosy wing" is an absolutely
perfect instance of a Handel song. Were not the thing done, one might
believe it impossible to express with such simplicity--four sombre
minor chords and then the tremolo of the strings--the alternations of
trembling fear and fearful hope, the hope of the human soul in
extremist agony finding an exalted consolation in the thought that
this was the worst. As astounding as this is the quality of light and
freshness of atmosphere with which Handel imbues such songs as "Clouds
o'ertake the brightest day" and "Crystal streams in murmurs flowing";
and the tenderness of "Would custom bid," with the almost divine
refrain, "I then had called thee mine," might surprise us, coming as
it does from such a giant, did we not know that tenderness is always a
characteristic of the great men, of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner,
and that the pettiness, ill-conditionedness, and lack of generous
feeling observable in (say) our London composers to-day stamp them
more unmistakably than does their music as small composers. If the
poor fellows knew what they were about, they would at least conceal
the littlenesses that show they are destined never to do work of the
first order. The composer of the "Rex tremendæ" (in the Requiem) wrote
"Dove sono," Beethoven wrote both the finale of the Fifth symphony and
the slow movement of the Ninth, Wagner both the Valkyries' Ride and
the motherhood theme in "Siegfried," Handel "Worthy is the Lamb" and
"Waft her, angels"; while your little malicious musical Mimes are
absorbed in self-pity, and can no more write a melody that
irresistibly touches you than they can build a great and impressive
structure. And if Mozart is tenderest of all the musicians, Handel
comes very close to him. The world may, though not probably, tire of
all but his grandest choruses, while his songs will always be sung as
lovely expressions of the finest human feeling.
"Samson" is not his finest oratorio, though it may be his longest. It
contains no "Unto us a Child is born" nor a "Worthy is the Lamb," nor
a "Now love, that everlasting boy"; but in several places the sublime
is reached--in "Then round about the starry throne," the last page of
which is worth all the oratorios written since Handel's time save
Beethoven's "Mount of Olives"; in "Fixed is His everlasting seat,"
with that enormous opening phrase, irresistible in its strength and
energy as Handel himself; and in the first section of "O first created
beam." The pagan choruses are full of riotous excitement, though there
is not one of them to match "Ye tutelar gods" in "Belshazzar." But
there is little in "Belshazzar" to match the pathos of "Return, O God
of hosts," or "Ye sons of Israel, now lament." The latter is a notable
example of Handel's art. There is not a new phrase in it: nothing,
indeed, could be commoner than the bar at the first occurrence of
"Amongst the dead great Samson lies," and yet the effect is amazing;
and though the "for ever" is as old as Purcell, here it is newly
used--used as if it had never been used before--to utter a depth of
emotion that passes beyond the pathetic to the sublime. This very
vastness of feeling, this power of stepping outside himself and giving
a voice to the general emotions of humanity, prevents us recognising
the personal note in Handel as we recognise it in Mozart. But
occasionally the personal note may be met. The recitative "My genial
spirits fail," with those dreary long-drawn harmonies, and the
orchestral passage pressing wearily downwards at "And lay me gently
down with them that rest," seems almost like Handel's own voice in a
moment of sad depression. It serves, at anyrate, to remind us that the
all-conquering Mr. Handel was a complete man who had endured the
sickening sense of the worthlessness of a struggle that he was bound
to continue to the end. But these personal confessions are scarce.
After all, in oratorio Handel's best music is that in which he seeks
to attain the sublime. In his choruses he does attain it: he sweeps
you away with the immense rhythmical impetus of the music, or
overpowers you with huge masses of tone hurled, as it were, bodily at
you at just the right moments, or he coerces you with phrases like the
opening of "Fixed in His everlasting seat," or the last (before the
cadence) in "Then round about the starry throne." It is true that with
his unheard-of intellectual power, and a mastery of technique equal or
nearly equal to Bach's, he was often tempted to write in his
uninspired moments, and so the chorus became with him more or less of
a formula; but we may also note that even when he was most mechanical
the mere furious speed at which he wrote seemed to excite and exalt
him, so that if he began with a commonplace "Let their celestial
concerts all unite," before the end he was pouring forth glorious and
living stuff like the last twenty-seven bars. So the pace at which he
had to write in the intervals of bullying or coaxing prima donnas or
still more petulant male sopranos was not wholly a misfortune; if it
sometimes compelled him to set down mere musical arithmetic, or
rubbish like "Honour and arms," and "Go, baffled coward," it sometimes
drew his grandest music out of him. The dramatic oratorio is a hybrid
form of art--one might almost say a bastard form; it had only about
thirty years of life; but in those thirty years Handel accomplished
wonderful things with it. And the wonder of them makes Handel appear
the more astonishing man; for, when all is said, the truth is that the
man was greater, infinitely greater, than his music.