Life.
English musical composer, German by origin, was born at Halle in Lower
Saxony, on the 23rd of February 1685. His name was Handel, but, like
most 18th-century musicians who travelled, he compromised with its
pronunciation by foreigners, and when in Italy spelt it Hendel, and in
England (where he became naturalized) accepted the version Handel, which
is therefore correct for English writers, while Handel remains the
correct version in Germany. His father was a barber-surgeon, who
disapproved of music, and wished George Frederick to become a lawyer. A
friend smuggled a clavichord into the attic, and on this instrument,
which is inaudible behind a closed door, the little boy practised
secretly. Before he was eight his father went to visit a son by a former
marriage who was a valet-de-chambre to the duke of Saxe-Weissenfels. The
little boy begged in vain to go also, and at last ran after the carriage
on foot so far that he had to be taken. He made acquaintance with the
court musicians and contrived to practise on the organ when he could be
overheard by the duke, who, immediately recognizing his talent, spoke
seriously to the father, who had to yield to his arguments. On returning
to Halle Handel became a pupil of Zachau, the cathedral organist, who
gave him a thorough training as a composer and as a performer on keyed
instruments, the oboe and the violin. Six very good trios for two oboes
and bass, which Handel wrote at the age of ten, are extant; and when he
himself was shown them by an English admirer who had discovered them, he
was much amused and remarked, "I wrote like the devil in those days,
and chiefly for the oboe, which was my favourite instrument." His master
also of course made him write an enormous amount of vocal music, and he
had to produce a motet every week. By the time he was twelve Zachau
thought he could teach him no more, and accordingly the boy was sent to
Berlin, where he made a great impression at the court.
His father, however, thought fit to decline the proposal of the elector
of Brandenburg, afterwards King Frederick I. of Prussia, to send the boy
to Italy in order afterwards to attach him to the court at Berlin.
German court musicians, as late as the time of Mozart, had hardly enough
freedom to satisfy a man of independent character, and the elder Handel
had not yet given up hope of his son's becoming a lawyer. Young Handel,
therefore, returned to Halle and resumed his work with Zachau. In 1697
his father died, but the boy showed great filial piety in finishing the
ordinary course of his education, both general and musical, and even
entering the university of Halle in 1702 as a law student. But in that
year he succeeded to the post of organist at the cathedral, and after
his "probation" year in that capacity he departed to Hamburg, where the
only German opera worthy of the name was flourishing under the direction
of its founder, Reinhold Keiser. Here he became friends with Matheson, a
prolific composer and writer on music. On one occasion they set out
together to go to Lubeck, where a successor was to be appointed to the
post left vacant by the great organist Buxtehude, who was retiring on
account of his extreme age. Handel and Matheson made much music on this
occasion, but did not compete, because they found that the successful
candidate was required to accept the hand of the elderly daughter of the
retiring organist.
Another adventure might have had still more serious consequences. At a
performance of Matheson's opera _Cleopatra_ at Hamburg, Handel refused
to give up the conductor's seat to the composer when the latter returned
to his usual post at the harpsichord after singing the part of Antony on
the stage. The dispute led to a duel outside the theatre, and, but for a
large button on Handel's coat which intercepted Matheson's sword, there
would have been no _Messiah_ or _Israel in Egypt_. But the young men
remained friends, and Matheson's writings are full of the most valuable
facts for Handel's biography. He relates in his _Ehrenpforte_ that his
friend at that time used to compose "interminable cantatas" of no great
merit; but of these no traces now remain, unless we assume that a
_Passion according to St John_, the manuscript of which is in the royal
library at Berlin, is among the works alluded to. But its authenticity,
while strongly upheld by Chrysander, has recently been as strongly
assailed on internal evidence.
On the 8th of January 1705, Handel's first opera, _Almira_, was
performed at Hamburg with great success, and was followed a few weeks
later by another work, entitled _Nero_. _Nero_ is lost, but _Almira_,
with its mixture of Italian and German language and form, remains as a
valuable example of the tendencies of the time and of Handel's eclectic
methods. It contains many themes used by Handel in well-known later
works; but the current statement that the famous aria in _Rinaldo_,
"Lascia ch'io pianga," comes from a saraband in _Almira_, is based upon
nothing more definite than the inevitable resemblance between the
simplest possible forms of saraband-rhythm.
In 1706 Handel left Hamburg for Italy, where he remained for three
years, rapidly acquiring the smooth Italian vocal style which hereafter
always characterized his work. He had before this refused offers from
noble patrons to send him there, but had now saved enough money, not
only to support his mother at home, but to travel as his own master. He
divided his time in Italy between Florence, Rome, Naples and Venice; and
many anecdotes are preserved of his meetings with Corelli, Lotti,
Alessandro Scarlatti and Domenico Scarlatti, whose wonderful harpsichord
technique still has a direct bearing on some of the most modern features
of pianoforte style. Handel soon became famous as _Il Sassone_ ("the
Saxon"), and it is said that Domenico on first hearing him play
incognito exclaimed, "It is either the devil or the Saxon!" Then there
is a story of Corelli's coming to grief over a passage in Handel's
overture to _Il Trionfo del tempo_, in which the violins went up to A in
altissimo. Handel impatiently snatched the violin to show Corelli how
the passage ought to be played, and Corelli, who had never written or
played beyond the third position in his life (this passage being in the
seventh), said gently, "My dear Saxon, this music is in the French
style, which I do not understand." In Italy Handel produced two operas,
_Rodrigo_ and _Agrippina_, the latter a very important work, of which
the splendid overture was remodelled forty-four years afterwards as that
of his last original oratorio, _Jephtha_. He also produced two
oratorios, _La Resurrezione_, and _Il Trionfo del tempo_. This,
forty-six years afterwards, formed the basis of his last work. _The
Triumph of Time and Truth_, which contains no original matter. All
Handel's early works contain material that he used often with very
little alteration later on, and, though the famous "Lascia ch'io pianga"
does not occur in Almira, it occurs note for note in _Agrippina_ and the
two Italian oratorios. On the other hand the cantata _Aci, Galattea e
Polifemo_ has nothing in common with _Acis and Galatea_. Besides these
larger works there are several choral and solo cantatas of which the
earliest, such as the great _Dixit Dominus_, show in their extravagant
vocal difficulty how radical was the change which Handel's Italian
experience so rapidly effected in his methods.
Handel's success in Italy established his fame and led to his receiving
at Venice in 1709 the offer of the post of Kapellmeister to the elector
of Hanover, transmitted to him by Baron Kielmansegge, his patron and
staunch friend of later years. Handel at the time contemplated a visit
to England, and he accepted this offer on condition of leave of absence
being granted to him for that purpose. To England accordingly Handel
journeyed after a short stay at Hanover, arriving in London towards the
close of 1710. He came as a composer of Italian opera, and earned his
first success at the Haymarket with _Rinaldo_, composed, to the
consternation of the hurried librettist, in a fortnight, and first
performed on the 24th of February 1711. In this opera the aria "Lascia
ch'io pianga" found its final home. The work was produced with the
utmost magnificence, and Addison's delightful reviews of it in the
_Spectator_ poked fun at it from an unmusical point of view in a way
that sometimes curiously foreshadows the criticisms that Gluck might
have made on such things at a later period. The success was so great,
especially for Walsh the publisher, that Handel proposed that Walsh
should compose the next opera, and that he should publish it. He
returned to Hanover at the close of the opera season, and composed a
good deal of vocal chamber music for the princess Caroline, the
step-daughter of the elector, besides the instrumental works known to us
as the oboe concertos. In 1712 Handel returned to London and spent a
year with Andrews, a rich musical amateur, in Barn Elms, Surrey. Three
more years were spent in Burlington, in the neighbourhood of London. He
evidently was but little inclined to return to Hanover, in spite of his
duties to the court there. Two Italian operas and the _Utrecht Te Deum_
written by the command of Queen Anne are the principal works of this
period. It was somewhat awkward for the composer when his deserted
master came to London in 1714 as George I. of England. For some time
Handel did not venture to appear at court, and it was only at the
intercession of Baron Kielmansegge that his pardon was obtained. By his
advice Handel wrote the _Water Music_ which was performed at a royal
water party on the Thames, and it so pleased the king that he at once
received the composer into his good graces and granted him a salary of
L400 a year. Later Handel became music master to the little princesses
and was given an additional L200 by the princess Caroline. In 1716 he
followed the king to Germany, where he wrote a second German Passion to
the popular poem of Brockes, a text which, divested of its worst
features, forms the basis of several of the arias in Bach's _Passion
according to St John_. This was Handel's last work to a German text.
On his return to England he entered the service of the duke of Chandos
as conductor of his concerts, receiving a thousand pounds for his first
oratorio _Esther_. The music which Handel wrote for performance at
"Cannons," the duke of Chandos's residence at Edgware, is comprised in
the first version of _Esther, Acis and Galatea_, and the twelve _Chandos
Anthems_, which are compositions approximately in the same form as
Bach's church cantatas but without any systematic use of chorale tunes.
The fashionable Londoner would travel 9 miles in those days to the
little chapel of Whitchurch to hear Handel's music, and all that now
remains of the magnificent scene of these visits is the church, which is
the parish church of Edgware. In 1720 Handel appeared again in a public
capacity as impresario of the Italian opera at the Haymarket theatre,
which he managed for the institution called the Royal Academy of Music.
Senesino, a famous singer, to engage whom Handel especially journeyed to
Dresden, was the mainstay of the enterprise, which opened with a highly
successful performance of Handel's opera _Radamisto_. To this time
belongs the famous rivalry between Handel and Buononcini, a melodious
Italian composer whom many thought to be the greater of the two. The
controversy has been perpetuated in John Byrom's lines:
"Some say, compared to Buononcini
That Mynheer Handel's but a ninny;
Others aver that he to Handel
Is scarcely fit to hold a candle.
Strange all this difference should be
Twixt tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee."
It must be remembered that at this time Handel had not yet asserted his
greatness as a choral writer; the fashionable ideas of music and
musicianship were based entirely upon success in Italian opera, and the
contest between the rival composers was waged on the basis of works
which have fallen into almost as complete an oblivion in Handel's case
as in Buononcini's. None of Handel's forty-odd Italian operas can be
said to survive, except in some two or three detached arias out of each
opera; arias which reveal their essential qualities far better in
isolation than when performed in groups of between twenty and thirty on
the stage, as interruptions to the action of a classical drama to which
nobody paid the slightest attention. But even within these limits
Handel's artistic resources were too great to leave the issue in doubt;
and when Handel wrote the third act of an opera _Muzio Scevola_, of
which Buononcini and Ariosti[1] wrote the other two, his triumph was
decisive, especially as Buononcini soon got into discredit by failing to
defend himself against the charge of producing as a prize-madrigal of
his own a composition which proved to be by Lotti. At all events
Buononcini left London, and Handel for the next ten years was without a
rival in his ventures as an operatic composer. He was not, however,
without a rival as an impresario; and the hostile competition of a rival
company which obtained the services of the great Farinelli and also
induced Senesino to desert him, led to his bankruptcy in 1737, and to an
attack of paralysis caused by anxiety and overwork. The rival company
also had to be dissolved from want of support, so that Handel's
misfortunes must not be attributed to any failure to maintain his
position in the musical world. Handel's artistic conscience was that of
the most easy-going opportunist, or he would never have continued till
1741 to work in a field that gave so little scope for his genius. But
the public seemed to want operas, and, if opera had no scope for his
genius, at all events he could supply better operas with greater
rapidity and ease than any three other living composers working
together. And this he naturally continued to do so long as it seemed to
be the best way to keep up his reputation. But with all this artistic
opportunism he was not a man of tact, and there are numerous stories of
the type of his holding the great primadonna donna Cuzzoni at
arm's-length out of a window and threatening to drop her unless she
consented to sing a song which she had declared unsuitable to her style.
Already before his last opera, _Deidamia_, produced in 1741, Handel had
been making a growing impression with his oratorios. In these, freed
from the restrictions of the stage, he was able to give scope to his
genius for choral writing, and so to develop, or rather revive, that art
of chorus singing which is the normal outlet for English musical talent.
In 1726 Handel had become a naturalized Englishman, and in 1733 he began
his public career as a composer of English texts by producing the second
and larger version of _Esther_ at the King's theatre. This was followed
early in the same year by _Deborah_, in which the share of the chorus is
much greater. In July he produced _Athalia_ at Oxford, the first work in
which his characteristic double choruses appear. The share of the chorus
increases in _Saul_ (1738); and _Israel in Egypt_ (also 1738) is
practically entirely a choral work, the solo movements, in spite of
their fame, being as perfunctory in character as they are few in number.
It was not unnatural that the public, who still considered Italian opera
the highest, because the most modern form of musical art, obliged Handel
at subsequent performances of this gigantic work to insert more solos.
The _Messiah_ was produced at Dublin on the 13th of April 1742. _Samson_
(which Handel preferred to the _Messiah_) appeared at Covent Garden on
the 2nd of March 1744; _Belshazzar_ at the King's theatre, 27th of March
1745; the _Occasional Oratorio_ (chiefly a compilation of the earlier
oratorios, but with a few important new numbers), on the 14th of
February 1746 at Covent Garden, where all his later oratorios were
produced; _Judas Maccabaeus_ on the 1st of April 1747; _Joshua_ on the
9th of March 1748; _Alexander Balus_ on the 23rd of March 1748; Solomon
on the 17th of March 1749; _Susanna_, spring of 1749; _Theodora_, a
great favourite of Handel's, who was much disappointed by its cold
reception, on the 16th of March 1750; _Jephtha_ (strictly speaking, his
last work) on the 26th of February 1752, and _The Triumph of Time and
Truth_ (transcribed from _Il Trionfo del tempo_ with the addition of
many later favourite numbers), 1757. Other important works,
indistinguishable in artistic form from oratorios, but on secular
subjects, are _Alexander's Feast_, 1736; _Ode for St Cecilia's Day_
(words by Dryden); _L'Allegro, il pensieroso ed il moderato_ (the words
of the third part by Jennens), 1740; _Semele_, 1744; _Hercules_, 1745;
and _The Choice of Hercules_, 1751.
By degrees the enmity against Handel died away, though he had many
troubles. In 1745 he had again become bankrupt; for, although he had no
rival as a composer of choral music it was possible for his enemies to
give balls and banquets on the nights of his oratorio performances. As
with his first bankruptcy, so in his later years, he showed scrupulous
sense of honour in discharging his debts, and he continued to work hard
to the end of his life. He had not only completely recovered his
financial position by the year 1750, but he must have made a good deal
of money, for he then presented an organ to the Foundling Hospital, and
opened it with a performance of the _Messiah_ on the 15th of May. In
1751 his sight began to trouble him; and the autograph of _Jephtha_,
published in facsimile by the _Handelgesellschaft_, shows pathetic
traces of this in his handwriting,[2] and so affords a most valuable
evidence of his methods of composition, all the accompaniments,
recitatives, and less essential portions of the work being evidently
filled in long after the rest. He underwent unsuccessful operations, one
of them by the same surgeon who had operated on Bach's eyes. There is
evidence that he was able to see at intervals during his last years, but
his sight practically never returned after May 1752. He continued
superintending performances of his works and writing new arias for them,
or inserting revised old ones, and he attended a performance of the
_Messiah_ a week before his death, which took place, according to the
_Public Advertiser_ of the 16th of April, not on Good Friday, the 13th
of April, according to his own pious wish and according to common
report, but on the 14th of April 1759. He was buried in Westminster
Abbey; and his monument is by L. F. Roubilliac, the same sculptor who
modelled the marble statue erected in 1739 in Vauxhall Gardens, where
his works had been frequently performed.
Handel was a man of high character and intelligence, and his interest
was not confined to his own art exclusively. He liked the society of
politicians and literary men, and he was also a collector of pictures
and articles of _vertu_. His power of work was enormous, and the
_Handelgesellschaft's_ edition of his complete works fills one hundred
volumes, forming a total bulk almost equal to the works of Bach and
Beethoven together. (F. H.; D. F. T.)
Handel as composer.
No one has more successfully popularized the greatest artistic ideals
than Handel; no artist is more disconcerting to critics who imagine that
a great man's mental development is easy to follow. Not even Wagner
effected a greater transformation in the possibilities of dramatic music
than Handel effected in oratorio, yet we have seen that Handel was the
very opposite of a reformer. He was not even conservative, and he hardly
took the pains to ascertain what an art-form was, so long as something
externally like it would convey his idea. But he never failed to convey
his idea, and, if the hybrid forms in which he conveyed it had no
historic influence and no typical character, they were none the less
accurate in each individual case. The same aptness and the same absence
of method are conspicuous in his style. The popular idea that Handel's
style is easily recognizable comes from the fact that he overshadows all
his predecessors and contemporaries, except Bach, and so makes us regard
typical 18th-century Italian and English style as Handelian, instead of
regarding Handel's style as typical Italian 18th-century. Nothing in
music requires more minute expert knowledge than the sifting of the real
peculiarities of Handel's style from the mass of contemporary formulae
which in his inspired pages he absorbed, and which in his uninspired
pages absorbed him.
His easy mastery was acquired, like Mozart's, in childhood. The later
sonatas for two oboes and bass which he wrote in his eleventh year are,
except in their diffuseness and an occasional slip in grammar,
indistinguishable from his later works, and they show a boyish
inventiveness worthy of Mozart's work at the same age. Such early choral
works, as the _Dixit Dominus_ (1707), show the ill-regulated power of
his choral writing before he assimilated Italian influences. Its
practical difficulties are at least as extravagant as Bach's, while they
are not accounted for by any corresponding originality and necessity of
idea; but the grandeur of the scheme and nobility of thought is already
that for which Handel so often in later years found the simplest and
easiest adequate means of expression that music has ever attained. His
eminently practical genius soon formed his vocal style, and long before
the period of his great oratorios, such works as _The Birthday Ode for
Queen Anne_ (1713) and the _Utrecht Te Deum_ show not a trace of German
extravagance. The only drawback to his practical genius was that it led
him to bury perhaps half of his finest melodies, and nearly all the
secular features of interest in his treatment of instruments and of the
aria forms, in that deplorable limbo of vanity, the 18th-century Italian
opera. It is not true, as has been alleged against him, that his operas
are in no way superior to those of his contemporaries; but neither is it
true that he stirred a finger to improve the condition of dramatic
musical art. He was no slave to singers, as is amply testified by many
anecdotes. Nor was he bound by the operatic conventions of the time. In
_Teseo_ he not only wrote an opera in five acts when custom prescribed
three, but also broke a much more plausible rule in arranging that each
character should have two arias in succession. He also showed a feeling
for expression and style which led him to write arias of types which
singers might not expect. But he never made any innovation which had the
slightest bearing upon the stage-craft of opera, for he never concerned
himself with any artistic question beyond the matter in hand; and the
matter in hand was not to make dramatic music, or to make the story
interesting or intelligible, but simply to provide a concert of between
some twenty and thirty Italian arias and duets, wherein singers could
display their abilities and spectators find distraction from the
monotony of so large a dose of the aria form (which was then the only
possibility for solo vocal music) in the gorgeousness of the dresses and
scenery.
When the question arose how a musical entertainment of this kind could
be managed in Lent without protests from the bishop of London, Handelian
oratorio came into being as a matter of course. But though Handel was an
opportunist he was not shallow. His artistic sense seized upon the
natural possibilities which arose as soon as the music was transferred
from the stage to the concert platform; and his first English oratorio,
_Esther_ (1720), beautifully shows the transition. The subject is as
nearly secular as any that can be extracted from the Bible, and the
treatment was based on Racine's _Esther_, which was much discussed at
the time. Handel's oratorio was reproduced in an enlarged version in
1732 at the King's theatre: the princess royal wished for scenery and
action, but the bishop of London protested. And the choruses, of which
in the first version there are already no less than ten, are on the one
hand operatic and unecclesiastical in expression, until the last, where
polyphonic work on a large scale first appears; but on the other hand
they are all much too long to be sung by heart, as is necessary in
operas. In fact, the turning-point in Handel's development is the
emancipation of the chorus from theatrical limitations. This had as
great effect upon his few but important secular English works as upon
his other oratorios. _Acis and Galatea_, _Semele_ and _Hercules_, are in
fact secular oratorios; the choral music in them is not ecclesiastical,
but it is large, independent and polyphonic.
We must remember, then, that Handel's scheme of oratorio is operatic in
its origin and has no historic connexion with such principles as might
have been generalized from the practice of the German Passion music of
the time; and it is sufficiently astonishing that the chorus should have
so readily assumed its proper place in a scheme which the public
certainly regarded as a sort of Lenten biblical opera. And, although the
chorus owes its freedom of development to the disappearance of
theatrical necessities, it becomes no less powerful as a means of
dramatic expression (as opposed to dramatic action) than as a purely
musical resource. Already in _Athalia_ the "Hallelujah" chorus at the
end of the first act is a marvel of dramatic truth. It is sung by
Israelites almost in despair beneath usurping tyranny; and accordingly
it is a severe double fugue in a minor key, expressive of devout courage
at a moment of depression. On purely musical grounds it is no less
powerful in throwing into the highest possible relief the ecstatic
solemnity of the psalm with which the second act opens. Now this sombre
"Hallelujah" chorus is a very convenient illustration of Handel's
originality, and the point in which his creative power really lies. It
was not originally written for its situation in _Athalia_, but it was
chosen for it. It was originally the last chorus of the second version
of the anthem, _As pants the Hart_, from the autograph of which it is
missing because Handel cut out the last pages in order to insert them
into the manuscript of _Athalia_. The inspiration in _Athalia_ thus lies
not in the creation of the chorus itself, but in the choice of it.
In choral music Handel made no more innovation than he made in arias.
His sense of fitness in expression was of little use to him in opera,
because opera could not become dramatic until musical form became
capable of developing and blending emotions in all degrees of climax in
a way that may be described as pictorial and not merely decorative (see
MUSIC; SONATA-FORMS; and INSTRUMENTATION). But in oratorio there was not
the least necessity for reforming any art-forms. The ordinary choral
resources of the time had perfect expressive possibilities where there
were no actors to keep waiting, and where no dresses and scenery need
distract the attention of the listener. When lastly, ordinary decorum
dictated an attitude of reverent attention towards the subject of the
oratorio, then the man of genius could find such a scope for his real
sense of dramatic fitness as would make his work immortal.
In estimating Handel's greatness we must think away all orthodox musical
and progressive prejudices, and learn to apply the lessons critics of
architecture and some critics of literature seem to know by nature.
Originality, in music as in other arts, lies in the whole, and in a
sense of the true meaning of every part. When Handel wrote a normal
double fugue in a minor key on the word "Hallelujah" he showed that he
at all events knew what a vigorous and dignified thing an 18th-century
double fugue could be. In putting it at the end of a melancholy psalm he
showed his sense of the value of the minor mode. When he put it in its
situation in _Athalia_ he showed as perfect a sense of dramatic and
musical fitness as could well be found in art. Now it is obvious that in
works like oratorios (which are dramatic schemes vigorously but loosely
organized by the putting together of some twenty or thirty complete
pieces of music) the proper conception of originality will be very
different from that which animates the composer of modern lyric,
operatic or symphonic music. When we add to this the characteristics of
a method like Handel's, in which musical technique has become a masterly
automatism, it becomes evident that our conception of originality must
be at least as broad as that which we would apply in the criticism of
architecture. The disadvantages of the want of such a conception have
been aggravated by the dearth of general knowledge of the structure of
musical art; a knowledge which shows that the parallel we have suggested
between music and architecture, as regards the nature of originality, is
no mere figure of speech.
In every art there is an antithesis between form and matter, which
becomes reconciled only when the work of art is perfect in its
execution. And, whatever this perfection, the antithesis must always
remain in the mind of the artist and critic to this extent, that some
part of the material seems to be the special subject of technical rule
rather than another. In the plastic and literary arts one type of this
antithesis is more or less permanently maintained in the relation
between subject and treatment. The mere fact that these arts express
themselves by representing things that have some previous independent
existence, helps us to look for originality rather in the things that
make for perfection of treatment than in novelty of subject. But in
music we have no permanent means of deciding which of many aspects we
shall call the subject and which the treatment. In the 16th century the
a priori form existed mainly in the practice of basing almost every
melodic detail of the work on phrases of Gregorian chant or popular
song, treated for the most part in terms of very definitely regulated
polyphonic design, and on harmonic principles regulated in almost every
detail by the relation between the melodic aspects of the church modes
and the necessity for occasional alterations of the strict mode to
secure finality at the close. In modern music such a relation between
form and matter, prescribing as it does for every aspect at every moment
both of the shape and the texture of the music, would exclude the
element of invention altogether. In 16th-century music it by no means
had that effect. An inventive 16th-century composer is as clearly
distinguishable from a dull one as a good architect from a bad. The
originality of the composer resides, in 16th-century music as in all
art, in his whole work; but naturally his conception of property and
ideas will not extend to themes or isolated passages. That man is
entitled to an idea who can show what it means, or who can make it mean
what he likes. Let him wear the giant's robe if it fits him. And it is
merely a local difference in point of view which makes us think that
there is property in themes and no property in forms. Nowadays we happen
to regard the shape of a whole composition as its form, and its theme as
its matter. And, as artistic organization becomes more complex and
heterogeneous, the need of the broadest and most forcible possible
outline of design is more pressingly felt; so that in what we choose to
call form we are willing to sacrifice all conception of originality for
the sake of general intelligibility, while we insist upon complete
originality in those thematic details which we are pleased to call
matter. But, if this explains, it does not excuse our setting up a
criterion for musical originality which can be accepted by no
intelligent critics of other arts, and which is completely upset by the
study of any music earlier than the beginning of the 19th century.
The difficulty many writers have found in explaining the subject of
Handel's "plagiarisms" is not entirely accounted for by mere lack of
these considerations; but the grossest confusion of ideas as to the
difference between cases in point prevails to this day, and many
discussions which have been raised in regard to the ethical aspect of
the question are frankly absurd.[3] It has been argued, for instance,
that great injustice was done to Buononcini over his unfortunate affair
with the prize madrigal, while his great rival was allowed the credit of
_Israel in Egypt_, which contains a considerable number of entire
choruses (besides hosts of themes) by earlier Italian and German
writers. But the very idea of Handelian oratorio is that of some three
hours of music, religious or secular, arranged, like opera, in the form
of a colossal entertainment, and with high dramatic and emotional
interest imparted to it, if not by the telling of a story, at all events
by the nature and development of the subject. It seems, moreover, to be
entirely overlooked that the age was an age of _pasticcios_. Nothing was
more common than the organization of some such solemn entertainment by
the skilful grouping of favourite pieces. Handel himself never revived
one of his oratorios without inserting in it favourite pieces from his
other works as well as several new numbers; and the story is well known
that the turning point in Gluck's career was his perception of the true
possibilities of dramatic music from the failure of a _pasticcio_ in
which he had reset some rather definitely expressive music to situations
for which it was not originally designed. The success of an oratorio was
due to the appropriateness of its contrasts, together of course with the
mastery of its detail, whether that detail were new or old; and there
are many gradations between a rechauffe of an early work like _The
Triumph of Time and Truth_, or a _pasticcio_ with a few original numbers
like the _Occasional Oratorio_, and such works as _Samson_, which was
entirely new except that the "Dead March" first written for it was
immediately replaced by the more famous one imported from _Saul_. That
the idea of the _pasticcio_ was extremely familiar to the age is shown
by the practice of announcing an oratorio as "new and original," a term
which would obviously be meaningless if it were as much a matter of
course as it is at the present day, and which, if used at all, must
obviously so apply to the whole work without forbidding the composer
from gratifying the public with the reproduction of one or two favourite
arias. But of course the question of originality becomes more serious
when the imported numbers are not the composer's own. And here it is
very noticeable that Handel derived no credit, either with his own
public or with us, from whole movements that are not of his own
designing. In _Israel in Egypt_, the choruses "Egypt was glad when they
departed," "And I will exalt Him," "Thou sentest forth Thy Wrath" and
"The Earth swallowed them," are without exception the most colourless
and unattractive pieces of severe counterpoint to be found among
Handel's works; and it is very difficult to fathom his motive in copying
them from obscure pieces by Erba and Kaspar Kerl, unless it be that he
wished to train his audiences to a better understanding of a polyphonic
style. He certainly felt that the greatest possibilities of music lay in
the higher choral polyphony, and so in _Israel in Egypt_ he designed a
work consisting almost entirely of choruses, and may have wished in
these instances for severe contrapuntal movements which he had not time
to write, though he could have done them far better himself. Be this as
it may, these choruses have certainly added nothing to the popularity
of a work of which the public from the outset complained that there was
not enough solo music; and what effect they have is merely to throw
Handel's own style into relief. To draw any parallel between the theft
of such unattractive details in the grand and intensely Handelian scheme
of _Israel in Egypt_ and Buononcini's alleged theft of a prize madrigal
is merely ridiculous. Handel himself, if he had any suspicion that
contemporaries did not take a sane architect's view of the originality
of large musical schemes,[4] probably gave himself no more trouble about
their scruples on this matter than about other forms of musical
banality.
The _History of Music_ by Burney, the cleverest and most refined musical
critic of the age, shows in the very freshness of its musical
scholarship how completely unscholarly were the musical ideas of the
time. Burney was incapable of regarding choral music as other than a
highly improving academic exercise in which he himself was proficient;
and for him Handel is the great opera-writer whose choral music will
reward the study of the curious. If Handel had attempted to explain his
methods to the musicians of his age, he would probably have found
himself alone in his opinions as to the property of musical ideas. He
did not trouble to explain, but he made no concealment of his sources.
He left his whole musical library to his copyist, and it was from this
that the sources of his work were discovered. And when the whole series
of plagiarisms is studied, the fact forces itself upon us that nothing
except themes and forms which are common property in all 18th-century
music, has yet been discovered as the source of any work of Handel's
which is not felt as part of a larger design. Operatic arias were never
felt as parts of a whole. The opera was a concert on the stage, and it
stood or fell, not by a dramatic propriety which it notoriously
neglected to consider at all, but by the popularity of its arias. There
is no aria in Handel's operas which is traceable to another composer.
Even in the oratorios there is no solo number in which more than the
themes are pilfered, for in oratorios the solo work still appealed to
the popular criterion of novelty and individual attractiveness. And when
we leave the question of copying of whole movements and come to that of
the adaptation of passages, and still more of themes, Handel shows
himself to be simply on a line with Mozart. Jahn compares the opening of
Mozart's _Requiem_ with that of the first chorus in Handel's _Funeral
Anthem_. Mozart recreates at least as much from Handel's already perfect
framework as Handel ever idealized from the inorganic fragments of
earlier writers. The double counterpoint of the Kyrie in Mozart's
_Requiem_ is still more indisputably identical with that of the last
chorus of Handel's _Joseph_, and if the themes are common property their
combination certainly is not. But the true plagiarist is the man who
does not know the meaning of the ideas he copies, and the true creator
is he in whose hands they remain or become true ideas. The theme "He led
them forth like sheep" in the chorus "But as for his people" is one of
the most beautiful in Handel's works, and the bare statement that it
comes from a serenata by Stradella seems at first rather shocking. But,
to any one who knew Stradella's treatment of it first, Handel's would
come as a revelation actually greater than if he had never heard the
theme before. Stradella makes nothing more of it, and therefore
presumably sees nothing more in it than an agreeable and essentially
frivolous little tune which lends itself to comic dramatic purpose by a
wearisome repetition throughout eight pages of patchy aria and
instrumental ritornello at an ever-increasing pace. What Handel sees in
it is what he makes of it, one of the most solemn and poetic things in
music. Again, it may be very shocking to discover that the famous
opening of the "Hailstone chorus" comes from the patchy and facetious
overture to this same serenata, with which it is identical for ten bars
all in the tonic chord (representing, according to Stradella, someone
knocking at a door). And it is no doubt yet more shocking that the
chorus "He spake the word, and there came all manner of flies" contains
no idea of Handel's own except the realistic swarming violin-passages,
the general structure, and the vocal colouring; whereas the rhythmic and
melodic figures of the voice parts come from an equally patchy _sinfonia
concertata_ in Stradella's work. The real interest of these things ought
not to be denied either by the misstatement that the materials adapted
are mere common property, nor by the calumny that Handel was
uninventive.
The effects of Handel's original inspiration upon foreign material are
really the best indication of the range of his style. The comic meaning
of the broken rhythm of Stradella's overture becomes indeed Handel's
inspiration in the light of the gigantic tone-picture of the "Hailstone
chorus." In the theme of "He led them forth like sheep" we have already
cited a particular case where Handel perceived great solemnity in a
theme originally intended to be frivolous. The converse process is
equally instructive. In the short Carillon choruses in Saul where the
Israelitish women welcome David after his victory over Goliath, Handel
uses a delightful instrumental tune which stands at the beginning of a
_Te Deum_ by Urio, from which he borrowed an enormous amount of material
in _Saul, L'Allegro_, the _Dettingen Te Deum_ and other works. Urio's
idea is first to make a jubilant and melodious noise from the lower
register of the strings, and then to bring out a flourish of high
trumpets as a contrast. He has no other use for his beautiful tune,
which indeed would not bear more elaborate treatment than he gives it.
The ritornello falls into statement and counterstatement, and the
counterstatement secures one repetition of the tune, after which no more
is heard of it. It has none of the solemnity of church music, and its
value as a contrast to the flourish of trumpets depends, not upon
itself, but upon its position in the orchestra. Handel did not see in it
a fine opening for a great ecclesiastical work, but he saw in it an
admirable expression of popular jubilation, and he understood how to
bring out its character with the liveliest sense of climax and dramatic
interest by taking it at its own value as a popular tune. So he uses it
as an instrumental interlude accompanied with a jingle of carillons,
while the daughters of Israel sing to a square-cut tune those praises of
David which aroused the jealousy of Saul. But now turn to the opening of
the _Dettingen Te Deum_ and see what splendid use is made of the other
side of Urio's idea, the contrast between a jubilant noise in the lowest
part of the scale and the blaze of trumpets at an extreme height. In the
fourth bar of the _Dettingen Te Deum_ we find the same florid trumpet
figures as we find in the fifth bar of Urio's, but at the first moment
they are on oboes. The first four bars beat a tattoo on the tonic and
dominant, with the whole orchestra, including trumpets and drums, in the
lowest possible position and in a stirring rhythm with a boldness and
simplicity characteristic only of a stroke of genius. Then the oboes
appear with Urio's trumpet flourishes; the momentary contrast is at
least as brilliant as Urio's; and as the oboes are immediately followed
by the same figures on the trumpets themselves the contrast gains
incalculably in subtlety and climax. Moreover, these flourishes are more
melodious than the broad and massive opening, instead of being, as in
Urio's scheme, incomparably less so. Lastly, Handel's primitive opening
rhythmic figures inevitably underlie every subsequent inner part and
bass that occurs at every half close and full close throughout the
movement, especially where the trumpets are used. And thus every detail
of his scheme is rendered alive with a rhythmic significance which the
elementary nature of the theme prevents from ever becoming obtrusive.
No other great composer has ever so overcrowded his life with occasional
and mechanical work as Handel, and in no other artist are the qualities
that make the difference between inspired and uninspired pages more
difficult to analyse. The libretti of his oratorios are full of
absurdities, except when they are derived in every detail from
Scripture, as in the _Messiah_ and _Israel in Egypt_, or from the
classics of English literature, as in _Samson_ and _L'Allegro_. These
absurdities, and the obvious fact that in every oratorio Handel writes
many more numbers than are desirable for one performance, and that he
was continually in later performances adding, transferring and cutting
out solo numbers and often choruses as well--all this may seem at first
sight to militate seriously against the view that Handel's originality
and greatness consists in his grasp of the works as wholes, but in
reality it strengthens that view. These things militate against the
perfection of the whole, but they would have been absolutely fatal to a
work of which the whole is not (as in all true art) greater than the sum
of its parts. That they are felt as absurdities and defects already
shows that Handel created in English oratorio a true art-form on the
largest possible scale.
There never has been a time when Handel has been overrated, except in so
far as other composers have been neglected. But no composer has suffered
so much from pious misinterpretation and the popular admiration of
misleading externals. It is not the place here to dilate upon the burial
of Handel's art beneath the "mammoth" performances of the Handel
Festivals at the Crystal Palace; nor can we give more than a passing
reference to the effects of "additional accompaniments" in the style of
an altogether later age, started most unfortunately by Mozart (whose
share in the work has been very much misinterpreted and corrupted) and
continued in the middle of the 19th century by musicians of every degree
of intelligence and refinement, until all sense of unity of style has
been lost and does not seem likely to be recovered as a general element
in the popular appreciation of Handel for some time to come. But in
spite of this, Handel will never cease to be revered and loved as one of
the greatest of composers, if we value the criteria of architectonic
power, a perfect sense of style, and the power to rise to the most
sublime height of musical climax by the simplest means.
Handel's important works have all been mentioned above with their
dates, and a separate detailed list does not seem necessary. He was an
extremely rapid worker, and his later works are dated almost day by
day as they proceed. From this we learn that the _Messiah_ was
sketched and scored within twenty-one days, and that even _Jephtha_,
with an interruption of nearly four months besides several other
delays caused by Handel's failing sight, was begun and finished within
seven months, representing hardly five weeks' actual writing. Handel's
extant works may be roughly summarized from the edition of the
_Handelgesellschaft_ as 41 Italian operas, 2 Italian oratorios, 2
German Passions, 18 English oratorios, 4 English secular oratorios, 4
English secular cantatas, and a few other small works, English and
Italian, of the type of oratorio or incidental dramatic music; 3 Latin
settings of the _Te Deum_; the (English) _Dettingen Te Deum_ and
_Utrecht Te Deum and Jubilate_; 4 coronation anthems; 3 volumes of
English anthems (_Chandos Anthems_); 1 volume of Latin church music; 3
volumes of Italian vocal chamber-music; 1 volume of clavier works; 37
instrumental duets and trios (sonatas), and 4 volumes of orchestral
music and organ concertos (about 40 works). Precise figures are
impossible as there is no means of drawing the line between
_pasticcios_ and original works. The instrumental pieces especially
are used again and again as overtures to operas and oratorios and
anthems.
The complete edition of the German _Handelgesellschaft_ suffers from
being the work of one man who would not recognize that his task was
beyond any single man's power. The best arrangements of the vocal
scores are undoubtedly those published by Novello that are not based
on "additional accompaniments." None is absolutely trustworthy, and
those of the editor of the German _Handelgesellschaft_ are sad proofs
of the uselessness of expert library-scholarship without a sound
musical training. Yet Chrysander's services in the restoration of
Handel are beyond praise. We need only mention his discovery of
authentic trombone parts in _Israel in Egypt_ as one among many of his
priceless contributions to musical history and aesthetics.
(D. F. T.)