emanating from the last rehearsals greatly whetted public appetite and
on the morning of April 13 _Faulkner’s Journal_ ran the following: “This
day will be performed Mr. Handell’s new Grand Sacred Oratorio, called
the Messiah. The doors will be opened at Eleven, and the performance
begin at Twelve. The Stewards of the Charitable Musical Society request
the favor of the ladies not to come with hoops this day to the Musick
Hall in Fishamble Street. The Gentlemen are desired to come without
their swords.” Mr. Myers relates that “Handel’s ‘polite’ audience
comprised ‘Bishops, Deans, Heads of the Colledge, the most eminent
People in the Law, as well as the Flower of Ladyes of Distinction and
other People of the greatest quality.’” The audience was transported. In
some ways the heroine of the occasion was Mrs. Cibber, who sang the air
“He was despised” with such tenderness and pathos that the Reverend
Patrick Delany, who had harbored a bitter prejudice against actresses
and singers so far forgot himself that he rose and solemnly exclaimed:
“Woman, for this be all thy sins forgiven thee!”
It was late in August, 1742, before Handel returned to London. The
hostility of the English aristocracy was still strong and continued for
some years, although the forceful voice of Alexander Pope had been
raised in his favor, little as that poet is said to have known about
music. But Pope’s acknowledged belief in Handel’s “talent” did something
toward disarming the composer’s enemies. However, he was in no hurry to
let London hear “Messiah” in spite of all the great things spoken and
written about it. Not till February, 1743, did Handel plunge once more
into the eddies of music-making in the metropolis—not, indeed, with
operatic schemes as of old but with a plan for a series of subscription
concerts at Covent Garden, offering “Samson” as the first attraction.
He took his time before bringing forward “Messiah”. Even before he could
advertise it his hypocritical foes in fashionable circles began a
campaign against the “profanation” and the “pious” raised loud cries;
clergymen in particular were scandalized “at the sacrilege of converting
the Life and Passion of Christ into a theatrical entertainment.” Even
the idea of printing the word _Messiah_ on a program led Handel to the
expedient of announcing his great work simply as “A Sacred Oratorio.” At
that, the embattled clerics tried to enjoin the performance “on the
ground that Covent Garden Theatre was a place of worldly amusement and
that in any case public entertainments during Lent were sacrilegious.”
However, the “Sacred Oratorio” was at last given its first London
hearing on March 23, 1743. The composer conducted, Signora Avolio, Mrs.
Cibber, John Beard and Thomas Lowe were the chief soloists. And here let
us cite once more Robert Manson Myers’ superb study of the masterpiece:
“As the glorious strains of the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’ burst upon the awed
assemblage, thick-witted George II found himself so deeply affected by
Handel’s music (or so eager to shift his position) that he started to
his feet with all the spontaneous verve a sixty-year-old gout-ridden
monarch could muster. Instantly his phlegmatic courtiers also rose, and
since no Englishman may remain seated while his King is standing, the
audience at once followed suit, thus inaugurating a custom which
persists to the present day. Actually the King’s gesture was more a
tribute to Handel’s impressive music than an instance of exceptional
religious devotion....
“It is a curious indication of public taste that this casual Eighteenth
Century ‘fashion’ has remained for two centuries an inviolable tradition
both in England and in America. Even today thousands who can scarcely
distinguish F sharp from middle C punctiliously observe a custom
established by a stupid Hanoverian king and his worldly court two
hundred years ago.”
Thanks to bigotry and organized religiosity, however, “Messiah” had only
three performances in 1743, none in 1744, two in 1745 and none whatever
till four years later. Newman Flower recounts that the master, being
complimented on the work by a titled hearer, replied: “My lord, I should
be sorry if I only entertained people; I wished to make them better.”
Yet as late as 1756 a Miss Catherine Talbot, one of Handel’s most
devoted admirers, could say that “the playhouse is an unfit place for
such a solemn performance.” However, in the words of Robert Manson
Myers, “England’s early rejection of ‘Messiah’ may be ascribed as much
to personal resentment as to shallow musical taste.... Handel flaunted
his independence and moved with resolute determination, snapping his
fingers in the face of princely patrons and daring to defy the bluest
blood in England. What was to be done with this insufferable German
upstart, this mere musician, who despite persistent opposition succeeded
in discharging his debts to the uttermost farthing? Chosen leaders of
British ‘quality’ resolved to crush Handel at once. They devised a
systematic campaign to boycott his oratorios, and no scheme proved too
petty for the gratification of their spite.”
* * *
Vain resolve! For Handel, crushed, had a most persistent habit of rising
again. If political cabals brought him low, the tides of national
politics brought him to the top once more. “Messiah”, to be sure, was
not to become an unshakable British (shall we not rather say
Anglo-Saxon) monument till after the composer’s death; yet Handel was
able to make the most, creatively, of the great national emergencies of
his last decade. In 1743, as Composer of Music to the Chapel Royal, he
wrote a “Te Deum” and an anthem to celebrate the victory of Dettingen,
music that conquered the popular heart. To this period belongs the
charming secular oratorio, “Semele”, (source of the beloved airs
“Where’er you walk” and “O Sleep, why dost thou leave me?”) at the first
production of which Mrs. Delany found it significant that “there was no
disturbance in the playhouse.” But the old habit of launching operatic
or concert enterprises was upon him once more and again threatened to
consume his credit and his substance. Bankruptcy threatened. Other
oratorios, “Hercules”, “Belshazzar”, grand masterpieces both of them,
were given in 1745 to dwindling audiences. Handel’s health was
imperiled. Then came 1745, the Jacobite rising and the landing in
Scotland of the Pretender, Charles Edward. There was consternation which
culminated in the march of the Highlander army on London. Loyally, the
composer identified himself with the national cause; to celebrate the
early defeats of the Jacobites he wrote the “Occasional Oratorio”, a
call to Englishmen to resist the invader. But this occupies a less
considerable niche in history than “Judas Maccabaeus”, next to “Messiah”
perhaps the most popular of Handel’s oratorios, unless we choose to set
above it the earlier “Israel in Egypt”—to Robert Schumann “the model of
a choral work.”
“Judas Maccabaeus”, the text of which a certain divine, Thomas Morell,
had based on the Old Testament, was set by Handel between July 9 and
August 11, 1746, was produced by Handel at Covent Garden, April 1, 1747.
The composer was extraordinarily attuned to the emotional mood of the
moment. People saw in the heroic Judas an embodiment of the victorious
Duke of Cumberland, who had ferociously scattered the hosts of the
Pretender. And the Jews of London, proud of the glorification of their
warrior hero of old, rallied to Handel’s support and packed the theatre
in such numbers that the composer suddenly found himself with a wholly
new public at his feet, which to some degree replaced for a time to come
the aristocratic patrons he had lost.
[Illustration: HANDEL’S HOUSE, 1875.
Handel lived here—then 57 Lower Brook Street, Hanover Square—for 34
years, 1725 till his death in 1759; “Messiah” was composed within
its walls.]
In the martial, heroic score of “Judas Maccabaeus” Handel had
incorporated some music he had originally designed for other works. “See
the conquering hero comes”, probably the best known chorus in the
oratorio, had originally been a part of “Joshua”, and was not heard in
“Judas Maccabaeus” till a year after its first production. Even the
chorus “Zion now her head shall raise”, was a later addition and had not
been composed till after Handel had lost his sight.
This is the place to comment briefly on Handel’s “borrowings” about
which so much ado has been made that one writer went so far as to allude
to him as “the grand old thief.” It is altogether too easy to lay a
disproportionate stress on the practice involved, the more so as it was
a fairly legitimate custom in the Eighteenth Century. Besides Handel,
masters like Bach, Haydn, Gluck, Mozart and even Beethoven, had a way,
more or less frequently, of taking their own where they found it. Often,
indeed, they found it in their own earlier creations. In any case no
moral or ethical question was involved, for the good reason that the
_treatment_ of a theme or a melody according to the esthetic of that
period, mattered far more than the phrase in question. Handel, when told
of some passage from another composer found in his music had a way of
retorting: “The pig did not know what to do with such a theme.” Then,
too, he adapted to broader purposes music he had conceived earlier in
other connections. “Messiah”, for instance, offers many cases in point.
The chorus “His yoke is easy, His burthen is light” was adapted for
better or worse from an Italian duet composed originally to the words
“Quel fior che all’ alba ride”; the great “For unto us a Child is born”,
was a madrigal denouncing “Blind Love and Cruel Beauty” thus: “No, di
voi non vo’ fidarmi”, while “All we like sheep have gone astray” was at
first the Italian duet “So per prova i vostri inganni.” The great
ensemble, “And with His Stripes”, employs the same fugal subject which
Bach put to use in the A minor fugue of the “Well Tempered Clavier” and
is also found in the Kyrie of Mozart’s “Requiem.” But themes of this
type were “in the air” in that period and fairly recognized as general
property. It would be preposterous to labor too much the points
involved—the more so as every now and then the practice is “avenged” (if
we like!) by some awkwardness of accent or clumsiness of declamation
which results by forcing the older phrase into a newer textual
association. Such things are very different from the barefaced claim
Bononcini once made to having composed a certain work which, as it
transpired, had been written by a minor musician living in Vienna. Then
too, in the phrase of W. McNaught, “Handel did not borrow the thoughts
of others; he rescued them.” And it must never be forgotten that men
like Bach and Handel faced deadlines unthinkable to any musician of
today!
Following “Judas Maccabaeus” Handel’s fortunes rose once more and after
his conflicts with ill-will and intrigue he was the incontestable
victor. The consequence, far from rest and relaxation, was another
stream of great works not all of them, unfortunately, having become as
familiar to posterity as they undoubtedly deserve to be. Oratorios like
“Alexander Balus”, “Susanna”, “Joshua”, “Solomon” and “Jephtha”,
treasurable as they are, are known to few, probably because they are
eclipsed by the gigantic shadows cast by “Messiah”, “Judas Maccabaeus”
or “Israel in Egypt.” In 1749 he had written “Theodora”, which failed.
Its ill luck does not seem to have moved him to more than a kind of
“wise-crack” to the effect that “the Jews would not come to it because
the story was Christian and the ladies because it was virtuous.” In the
same year he composed a scene from Tobias Smollet’s “Alceste”, parts of
which he later used in his “Choice of Hercules”.
For the signing of the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748, the King
demanded a showy festival, little as there was to celebrate in the
termination of a war both unpopular and remote. Handel was commissioned
to compose music for an ostentatious show to culminate in a grand
display of fireworks in Green Park, where a vast and grotesque wooden
building, surmounted by unsightly allegorical figures, had been set up.
Twelve thousand people foregathered for a rehearsal of Handel’s music,
in Vauxhall Gardens, and traffic as a result, was desperately tangled.
At the actual celebration everything went awry, the fireworks fizzled
and to provide a humiliating climax the edifice in Green Park caught
fire. Newman Flower tells in a colorful account of the event that Handel
had “a magnificent band worthy of the occasion ... forty trumpets,
twenty horns, sixteen hautboys, sixteen bassoons, eight pair of
kettledrums; for the first time he introduced that forgotten instrument,
the serpent into his score, but took it out again.... He had for that
night as fine a band as he ever conducted.”
Handel’s contribution, indeed, was the one indisputable success of the
occasion. He gave the bright and sonorous “Fireworks Music” (a kind of
companion piece to the “Water Music”) the month after the Green Park
fiasco for the Foundling Hospital, or “The Hospital for the Maintenance
and Education of Exposed and Deserted Young Children.” The concert
brought Handel the Governorship of the institution.
The Foundling Asylum was a pride and pleasure to Handel in his declining
years. He presented it with a new organ, opened it himself with a
performance of “Messiah” on May 1, 1750, when countless persons of
distinction had to be turned away since the Asylum chapel accommodated
only 1,000. From that time on the master saw to it that the oratorio was
sung there every year and that the proceeds, always considerable, were
donated to the Hospital. Not to be behind his great associate, the
artist, Hogarth, who subsequently shared with Handel the governorship,
donated a portrait he had painted to the Hospital, raffled it off and
gave the proceeds to the Asylum.
The composer went one last time to Halle and arrived in Germany, Rolland
points out, just at the time his greatest contemporary, Bach, died in
Leipzig. His own health was deteriorating, though his mind remained
clear and his brain active. To be sure his sight had begun to trouble
him. Yet when Thomas Morell, in January, 1751, gave him a libretto,
“Jephtha”, he set to work composing it at once. He who had turned out
the sublimities of “Messiah” in four weeks and the martial grandeurs of
“Judas Maccabaeus” in even less had, however, to break off for ten days
after the opening _Largo_ of the chorus “How dark, O Lord, are Thy
ways.” And he painfully set down on the manuscript: “I reached here on
Wednesday, February 13, had to discontinue on account of the sight of my
left eye.” On his 66th birthday (February 23) he wrote “Feel a little
better. Resumed work” and set the words “Grief follows joy as night the
day.” Then he stopped for four months and did not complete the whole
score till the end of August, 1751. The last four numbers had taken him
more time than he usually spent on an entire oratorio. By that time he
had gone completely blind.
Two years later he regained control of himself, played the organ at
twelve oratorio productions he gave annually in Lent. He was, even, with
the assistance of his pupil and secretary, John Christopher Smith, son
of an old Halle school friend, to compose some more music and to remodel
his old Italian oratorio, “The Triumph of Time and Truth.” He had
submitted to the care of a notorious quack, the “opthalmiater” Chevalier
John Taylor, who then enjoyed an extensive vogue among distinguished
patients and who boasted that he had seen, on his travels, “a vast
variety of singular animals, such as dromedaries, camels, etc., and
particularly at Leipsick, where a celebrated master of musick (Bach)
already arrived to his 88th year (sic!) received his sight by my hands.”
In any case, the different physicians hid nothing from their patient.
His case was hopeless, he was afflicted with “gutta serena”. With his
sight his best source of inspiration was gone.
“This man”, said Romain Rolland, “who was neither an intellectual nor a
mystic, one who loved above all things light and nature, beautiful
pictures and the spectacular view of things, who lived more through his
eyes than most of the German musicians, was engulfed in deepest night.
From 1752 to 1759, he was overtaken by the semi-consciousness which
precedes death.” He had made his will in 1750 and at different times in
the next nine years he added codicils to it. On April 6, 1759, he played
the organ a last time at a “Messiah” performance, broke down in the
middle of a number, recovered and improvised, it was said, with his
old-time magnificence. Then he was brought home and they put him to bed.
Handel expressed a desire to be buried in Westminster Abbey; and he
said: “I want to die on Good Friday in the hope of rejoining the good
God, my sweet Lord and Saviour, on the day of His Resurrection.” On
Saturday, April 14, 1759, the _Whitehall Evening Post_, announced: “This
morning, a little before eight o’clock, died the deservedly celebrated
George Frederick Handell Esq.” And a week later: “Last night about eight
o’clock, the remains of the late great Mr. Handel were deposited at the
foot of the Duke of Argyll’s Monument in Westminster Abbey; and though
he had mentioned being privately interr’d, yet from the Respect due to
so celebrated a Man, the Bishop, Prebends, and the whole Choir attended
to pay the last Honours due to his Memory; the Bishop himself performed
the Service. A Monument is also to be erected for him, which there is no
doubt but his Works will even outlive. There was almost the greatest
Concourse of People of all Ranks ever seen upon such, or indeed upon any
other occasion.” Nevertheless, others have testified that Handel was not
“burried midst a great concourse of people.” Ironically enough, the
music performed at his obsequies was “Dr. Croft’s Funeral Anthem.”
In the Poets’ Corner a rather mediocre monument, by L. F. Roubiliac, was
later unveiled to his memory “under the patronage and in the presence of
His Most Gracious Majesty, George III.” But the lordly George Frideric
Handel might have been prouder of the monument the dying Beethoven
reared to his greatness when, pointing to Arnold’s Handelian edition by
his bed, he exclaimed: “There lies the Truth!”
COMPLETE LIST OF RECORDINGS
_by_
THE PHILHARMONIC-SYMPHONY SOCIETY
OF NEW YORK
COLUMBIA RECORDS
_Under the Direction of Dimitri Mitropoulos_
Khachaturian—Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (Oscar Levant, piano)—LP
Gould—Philharmonic Waltzes (Zino Francescatti, violin)—LP
Rabaud—La Procession Nocturne (Zino Francescatti, violin)—LP
Saint-Saens—Dance Macabre (Robert, Gaby & Jean Casadesus, pianists)—LP
Saint-Saens—Le Rouet D’Omphale (Zino Francescatti, violin)—LP
Saint-Saens—Violin Concerto, Op. 61 (Zino Francescatti, violin)—LP
Sessions—Symphony No. 2
_Under the Direction of Bruno Walter_
Barber—Symphony No. 1, Op. 9
Beethoven—Concerto for Violin, Cello, Piano and Orchestra in C major
(with J. Corigliano, L. Rose and W. Hendl)—LP
Beethoven—Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major (“Emperor”) (with Rudolf
Serkin, piano)—LP
Beethoven—Concerto in D major for Violin and Orchestra (with Joseph
Szigeti)—LP
Beethoven—Symphony No. 1 in C major. Op. 21—LP
Beethoven—Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major (“Eroica”)—LP
Beethoven—Symphony No. 5 in C minor—LP
Beethoven—Symphony No. 8 in F major—LP
Beethoven—Symphony No. 9 in D minor (“Choral”) (with Elena Nikolaidi,
contralto and Raoul Jobin, tenor)—LP
Brahms—Song of Destiny (with Westminster Choir)—LP
Dvorak—Slavonic Dance No. 1
Dvorak—Symphony No. 4 in G major—LP
Mahler—Symphony No. 4 in G major (with Desi Halban, soprano)—LP
Mahler—Symphony No. 5 in C-sharp minor
Mendelssohn—Concerto in E minor (with Nathan Milstein, violin)—LP
Mendelssohn—Scherzo (from Midsummer Night’s Dream) (Nathan Milstein,
violin)
Mozart—Cosi fan Tutti—Overture
Mozart—Symphony No. 41 in C major (“Jupiter”), K. 551—LP
Schubert—Symphony No. 7 in C major—LP
Schumann, R.—Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major (“Rhenish”)—LP
Smetana—The Moldau (“Vltava”)—LP
Strauss, J.—Emperor Waltz
_Under the Direction of Leopold Stokowski_
Copland—Billy the Kid (2 parts)
Griffes—“The White Peacock”. Op. 7, No. 1—LP 7″
Ippolitow—“In the Village” from Caucassian Sketches (W. Lincer and M.
Nazzi, soloists)
Khachaturian—“Masquerade Suite”—LP
Messiaen—“L’Ascension”—LP
Sibelius—“Maiden with the Roses”—LP
Schoenberg—Stein-Lied Der Waldtaure sus Gurrelieder (Martha Lipton,
soloist)—LP
Tschaikowsky—Francesca da Rimini, Op. 32—LP
Tschaikowsky—Overture Fantasy—Romeo and Juliet—LP
Vaughan-Williams—Greensleeves
Vaughan-Williams—Symphony No. 6 in E minor—LP
Wagner—Die Walkure—Wotan Farewell and Magic Fire Music (Act III—Scene
3)
Wagner—Siegfried’s Rhine Journey and Siegfried’s Funeral March—(“Die
Götterdämmerung”)—LP
Wagner—Overture “Rienzi”
_Under the Direction of Efrem Kurtz_
Chopin—Les Sylphides—LP
Glinka—Mazurka—“Life of the Czar”—LP 7″
Grieg—Concerto in A minor for Piano and Orchestra, Op. 16 (with Oscar
Levant, piano)—LP
Herold—Zampa—Overture
Kabalevsky—“The Comedians”, Op. 26—LP
Khachaturian—Gayne—Ballet Suite No. 1—LP
Khachaturian—Gayne—Ballet Suite No. 2—LP
Lecoq—Mme. Angot Suite—LP
Prokofieff—March, Op. 99—LP
Rimsky-Korsakov—The Flight of the Bumble Bee—LP 7″
Shostakovich—Polka No. 3, “The Age of Gold”—LP 7″
Shostakovich—Symphony No. 9—LP
Shostakovich—Valse from “Les Monts D’Or”—LP
Villa-Lobos—Uirapuru—LP
Wieniawski—Concerto No. 2 in D Minor for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 22
(with Isaac Stern, violin)—LP
_Under the Direction of Charles Münch_
D’Indy—Symphony on a French Mountain Air for Orchestra and Piano
(Robert Casadesus, piano)—LP
Milhaud—Suite Francaise—LP
Mozart—Concerto No. 21 for Piano and Orchestra in C major (Robert
Casadesus, piano)—LP
Saint-Saens—Symphony in C minor. No. 3 for Orchestra, Organ and Piano.
Op. 78—LP
_Under the Direction of Artur Rodzinski_
Bizet—Carmen—Entr’acte (Prelude to Act III)
Bizet—Symphony in C major—LP
Brahms—Symphony No. 1 in C minor—LP
Brahms—Symphony No. 2 in D major—LP
Copland—A Lincoln Portrait (with Kenneth Spencer, Narrator)—LP
Enesco—Roumanian Rhapsody—A major, No. 1—LP
Gershwin—An American in Paris—LP
Gould—“Spirituals” for Orchestra—LP
Ibert—“Escales” (Port of Call)—LP
Liszt—Mephisto Waltz—LP
Moussorgsky—Gopack (The Fair at Sorotchinski)—LP
Moussorgsky-Ravel—Pictures at an Exhibition—LP
Prokofieff—Symphony No. 5—LP
Rachmaninoff—Concerto No. 2 in C minor for Piano and Orchestra (with
Gygory Sandor, piano)
Rachmaninoff—Symphony No. 2 in E minor
Saint-Saens—Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 4 in C minor (with
Robert Casadesus)—LP
Sibelius—Symphony No. 4 in A minor
Tschaikowsky—Nutcracker Suite—LP
Tschaikowsky—Suite “Mozartiana”—LP
Tschaikowsky—Symphony No. 6 in B minor (“Pathetique”)—LP
Wagner—Lohengrin—Bridal Chamber Scene (Act III—Scene 2) (with Helen
Traubel, soprano and Kurt Baum, tenor)—LP
Wagner—Lohengrin—Elsa’s Dream (Act I, Scene 2) (with Helen Traubel,
soprano)
Wagner—Siegfried Idyll—LP
Wagner—Tristan und Isolde—Excerpts (with Helen Traubel, soprano)
Wagner—Die Walkure—Act III (Complete) (with Helen Traubel, soprano and
Herbert Janssen, baritone)—LP
Wagner—Die Walkure—Duet (Act I, Scene 3) (with Helen Traubel, soprano
and Emery Darcy, tenor)—LP
Wolf-Ferrari—“Secret of Suzanne”, Overture
_Under the Direction of Igor Stravinsky_
Stravinsky—Firebird Suite—LP
Stravinsky—Fireworks (Feu d’Artifice)—LP
Stravinsky—Four Norwegian Moods
Stravinsky—Le Sacre du Printemps (The Consecration of the Spring)—LP
Stravinsky—Scenes de Ballet—LP
Stravinsky—Suite from “Petrouchka”—LP
Stravinsky—Symphony in Three Movements—LP
_Under the Direction of John Barbirolli_