does Handel use all styles, but how well does he blend the voices with
the instruments in those airs of great brilliance and free
virtuosity![307] With what predilection does he ply all these beautiful
and learned contrapuntal tissues, as in the _Cara sposa_ from _Rinaldo_
or the _Ombra cara_ from _Radamisto_; but he ever seeks new combinations
for the old form. He was one of the first to adopt the little Airs _da
capo_, which with Bononcini seems to have been so much the fashion at
the commencement of the eighteenth century, and of which _Agrippina_ and
_Ottone_ furnish such delightful examples.[308] To the second part of
the air he gave a different character and movement from that of the
first part.[309] Still further, in either of the parts several
movements were combined.[310] Sometimes the second part was
recitative,[311] or it was extremely condensed.[312] When Handel had
choruses at his disposal in his oratorios, he often entrusted the _Da
Capo_ to the Chorus.[313] He went further: in _Samson_, after Micah has
sung in the second act the first two parts of the air "Return, O God of
Hosts," the chorus takes up the second part at the same time as Micah
returns to the first part. Finally he attempts to divide the _Da Capo_
between two characters, thus in the second act of _Saul_, Jonathan's
solo "Sin not, O King, against the youth," is followed by Saul's solo,
then appearing note for note.
But the most glorious feat of Handel in vocal solos is the "recitative
scene."
It was Keiser who taught him the art of those moving _recitative-ariosi_
with orchestra, which he had already used in _Almira_, and of which,
later on, J. S. Bach was to take from him the style. He never ceased to
employ it in his London operas, and he gave the form a superb amplitude.
They are not merely isolated recitatives or preambles to an extended
solo.[314] The story of Caesar in the third act of _Giulio Cesare,
Dall'ondoso periglio_ is one large musical picture, which expresses in
its frame a symphonic prelude, a recitative, the two first parts of an
air over the symphonic accompaniment of the opening, a second
recitative, then the _Da Capo_. The scene of Bajazet's death in the last
act of _Tamerlano_ is composed of a series of recitatives with
orchestra, and of airs joined together, and passes through all the
nuances of feeling, forming from one stage to the other a veritable
ladder of life. The scene of Admetes' agony at the opening of the opera
of the same name equals in profundity, emotion, and dramatic liberty,
the finest recitative scenes of Gluck. The "mad scene" in
_Orlando_,[315] and that of Dejanira's despair in the third act of
_Hercules_, surpasses them in boldness of realism, and frenetic passion.
In the first, burlesque and tragic elements commingle with a truly
Shakespearean art. The second is a mighty foaming river, raging with
fury and grief. Neither of these two scenes have any analogy in the
whole of the musical theatre of the eighteenth century. And _Teseo_,
_Rodelinda_, _Alessandro_, _Alcina_, _Semele_, _Joseph_, _Alexander
Balus_, _Jephtha_, all present recitative scenes, or combinations in the
same scene of recitatives and very free airs, with instrumental
interludes, no less original. Finally a sort of presentiment of the
_leit-motiv_, and its psychological employment in _Belshazzar_, should
be noticed, where certain instrumental phrases and recitatives seem
attached to the character of Nitocris.[316]
* * * * *
The study of Handel's recitatives and airs raises perhaps the greatest
problem of artistic interpretation--that of vocal ornamentation.
We know that Handelian singers used to decorate his melodies with graces
and melismatic figures, and cadenzas (often very considerable) which
have disappeared for the greater part. Chrysander, in editing Handel's
works, found them given as alternatives, and either suppressed them
(those which were false to the historic sense of the text) or else
rewrote them himself. It was in this last point that he stopped short of
all possible guarantees of exactness, or at least of true resemblance.
But his revisions found few supporters, and a discussion on his
treatment of this subject has been recently raised amongst German
musical writers.[317] This debate, the examination of which cannot be
entered into in this volume, authorised, it seems, the following
conclusions:
(1) The vocal ornaments were not improvised and left to the fancy
of the singer, as is often asserted, but they were marked with
precise indications in the singer's parts, and also in the score of
the accompanying clavecinist:[318]
(2) They were not mere caprices of empty virtuosity but the result
of a reflective virtuosity, and subject to the general style of the
piece. They served to accentuate more deeply the expression of the
principal melodic lines.[319]
Yet what would be the advantage of restoring these ornaments? Our taste
has changed since then, and a stricter reverence forbids us to risk
tampering with works of the past by following slavishly such details of
tradition and habit which have become meaningless and old-fashioned. Is
it better to impose on the public of to-day the older works with all
their marks of age improved away by the learning of later
generations--or to adapt them soberly in the manner of true feeling, so
as to enable them to continue to exercise on us their elevating power?
Both sides have been well supported.[320] For myself I consider the
first proposition bears on the publication of the scores, and the second
on the musical renderings. The mind ought to seek and find out exactly
what used to be the case, but when this is done the living are justified
in claiming their rights, and by being allowed to reject ancient usages,
only preserving such as render these works of genius truly vital.
* * * * *
The vocal ensemble pieces hold a much humbler place in Italian Opera,
and Handel has made fewer innovations on this ground than in the vocal
solo. However, one finds some very interesting experiments here. His
duets are often written in an imitative style, serious and rather sad,
in the old Italian school of Provenzale and Steffani,[321] or in the
Lully style, where the two voices mingle together note by note with
exactitude.[322] But _Atalanta_ and _Poro_ furnish us also with duets of
an alluring freedom and uncommon artistry. And in the duet in the third
act of _Orlando_, Handel attempts to differentiate the characters of the
weeping Angelica and the furious Roland.--Similarly with the trios
written in the strict style of imitation, like that in _Alcina_, Act
III, the trio in _Acis and Galatea_ carefully defines the couple of
lovers from the colossal figure of Polyphemus, the trio in _Tamerlano_
contrasts the exasperated Tamerlano with Bajazet and with Asteria, who
aggravated him, and the trio in the judgment of Solomon distinguishes
the three diverse characters: the calm power of Solomon, the aggressive
cries of the wicked mother, and the sorrowful supplications of the good
mother. The trio from _Susanna_ is no less free, but in the humorous
style: one of the two old men madrigalises whilst the other menaces. The
_ensemble_ forms altogether a most vivid little scene which Mozart
himself would not have disowned.[323] Quartets are rare. There are two
little ones in the _Triumph of Time_, written in Rome. In _Radamisto_
Handel made the attempt at a dramatic quartet, but rather clumsily, and
with repeated _Da Capo_.[324] The most moving quartet is found in the
second act of _Jephtha_. It is in _Jephtha_ also, Act III, where the
only quintet which he wrote is to be found.
The choruses in the Italian opera of the eighteenth century[325] were
reduced to a rudimentary stage, and they consist merely of the union of
the voices of soloists at the end of a piece, with certain banal and
brilliant acclamations during the course of the action. Notwithstanding
this, Handel wrote some stronger ones in _Alcina_; those of _Giulio
Cesare_, _Ariodante_, and _Atalanta_, were also exceptional in the
operas of his time. So with the final choruses Handel arranged after a
fashion to escape from the current banality: that of _Tamerlano_ is
written in a melancholy dramatic vein; that of _Orlando_ strives to
preserve the individual character of their personality; that of _Giulio
Cesare_ is tacked on to a duet. There are also choruses of people; the
Matelots in _Giustino_; that of the hunters in _Deidamia_, where the
choruses take up the refrain from the air announced by the solo voice.
It is the same in _Alessandro_, where the soldiers' chorus repeats
Alessandro's hymn, slightly curtailed.
Finally, Handel frequently attempted to build up great musical
architecture, raising it by successive stages from solos to ensemble
pieces, and then to choruses. At the end of the first act of
_Ariodante_, a duet (gavotte style) is taken up by the chorus, then
danced without voices; finally sung and danced. The close of Act III
from the same opera gives us a chain of processions, dances, and
choruses. The final scenes of _Alessandro_ constitute a veritable opera
_finale_, 2 duets and a trio running into a chorus.
But it is in his oratorios that Handel attempted these ensemble vocal
combinations on the larger scale, and principally that mixture of
movements where the powerful contrasts of soli and chorus are grouped
together in the same picture.
One sees what a variety of forms and styles he used. Handel was too
universal and too objective to believe that one kind of art only was the
true one. He believed in two kinds of music only, the good and the bad.
Apart from that he appreciated all styles. Thus he has left masterpieces
in every style, but he did not open any new way in opera for the simple
reason that he went a long way in nearly all paths already opened up.
Constantly he experimented, invented, and always with his singularly
sure touch. He seemed to have an extraordinary penetrating knowledge in
invention, and consequently few artistic regions remained for him to
conquer. He made as masterly a use of the recitative as Gluck, or of the
_arioso_ as Mozart, writing the acts of _Tamerlano_, which are the
closest and most heartrending dramas, in the manner of _Iphigenie en
Tauride_, the most moving and passionate scenes in music such as certain
pages of _Admeto_ and _Orlando_, where the humorous and tragic are
intermingled in the manner of _Don Giovanni_. He has experimented very
happily here in new rhythms.[326] There were new forms, the dramatic
duet or quartet, the descriptive symphony opening the opera,[327]
refined orchestration,[328] choruses and dances.[329] Nothing seems to
have obsessed him. In the following opera we find him returning to the
ordinary forms of the Italian or German opera of his time.
* * * * *
Still less can we say that he held to a rigid form with his operas,
which were continually adapted to the changing tastes of the theatre
public of his age, and of the singers which he had at his disposal, but
when he left the opera for the oratorio he varied no less. It was a
perpetual experiment of new forms in the vast framework of the free
theatre (_theatre en liberte_) of the concert drama; and the sort of
instinctive ebb and flow in creation seems to have caused his works to
succeed one another in groups of analogous or related compositions, each
work in a nearly opposite style of feeling and form. In each one Handel
indulged momentarily in a certain side of his feelings, and when that
was finished he found himself in the possession of other feelings which
had been accumulating whilst he was drawing on his first. He thus kept
up a perpetual balance, which is like the pulsation of life itself.
After the realistic _Saul_ comes the impersonal epic of _Israel in
Egypt_. After this colossal monument appear the two little _genre_
pictures, _The Ode to Cecilia_ and _L'Allegro ed Penseroso_. After the
Herculean _Samson_, an heroic and popular tragic comedy sprang forth,
the charming flower of _Semele_, an opera of romanticism and gallantry.
But if the oratorios are so wonderfully varied they have one
characteristic in common even more than the operas, they are musical
dramas. It was not that religious thought turned Handel to this choice
of Biblical subjects, but as Kretzschmar has well shown, it was on
account of the stories of the Bible heroes being a part of the very
life-blood of the people whom he addressed. They were known to all,
whilst the ancient romantic stories could only interest a society of
refined and spoilt _dilettanti_. Without doubt, these oratorios were not
made for representation, did not seek scenic effects, with rare
exceptions, as for instance the scene of the orgy of _Belshazzar_, where
one feels that Handel had drawn on the direct vision of theatrical
representation, but passions, spirits, and personalities were
represented always in a dramatic fashion. Handel is a great painter of
characters, and the Delilah in _Samson_, the Nitocris in _Belshazzar_,
the Cleopatra in _Alexander Balus_, the mother in _Solomon_, the
Dejanira in _Hercules_, the beautiful Theodora, all bear witness to the
suppleness and the profundity of his psychological genius. If in the
course of the action, and the depicting of the ordinary sentiments, he
abandoned himself freely to the flow of pure music, in the moments of
passionate crises he is the equal of the greatest masters in musical
drama. Is it necessary to mention the terrible scenes in the third act
of _Hercules_, the beautiful scenes of _Alexander Balus_, the Dream of
_Belshazzar_, the scenes of _Juno_ and the death of _Semele_, the
recognition of Joseph and his brothers, the destruction of the temple in
Samson, the second act of _Jephtha_, the prison scenes in _Theodora_, or
in the first act of _Saul_, and dominating all, like great pictures,
certain of the choruses in _Israel in Egypt_, in _Esther_, and in
_Joshua_, and in the _Chandos Anthems_, which seem veritable tempests of
passion, great upheavals of overpowering effect? It is by these choruses
that the oratorio is essentially distinguished from the opera. It is in
the first place a choral tragedy. These choruses, which are nearly
eliminated in Italian Opera during the time of the Barberini, held a
very important place in French Opera, but their _role_ was limited to
that of commentator or else merely decorative. In the oratorio of Handel
they became the very life and soul of the work. Sometimes they took the
part of the ancient classical chorus, which exposed the thought of the
drama when the hidden fates led on the heroes to their destinies--as in
_Saul_, _Hercules_, _Alexander Balus_, _Susanna_. Sometimes they added
to the shock of human passions the powerful appeal of religion, and
crowned the human drama with a supernatural aureole, as in _Theodora_
and _Jephtha_. Or finally they became the actual actors themselves, or
the enemy-people and the God who guided them. It is remarkable that in
his very first oratorio _Esther_, Handel had this stroke of genius. In
the choruses there we see the drama of an oppressed people and their God
who led them by his voice superbly depicted. In _Deborah_ and _Athaliah_
also, two nations are in evidence. In _Belshazzar_ there are three, but
in his chief work of this kind, _Israel in Egypt_, the greatest choral
epic which exists, is entirely occupied by Jehovah and His people.
The choruses are in the most diverse styles. Some are in the church
style, and a little antiquated;[330] others tend towards the opera--even
the _opera bouffe_;[331] some exhale the perfume of the madrigals at the
end of the sixteenth century,[332] and the Academy of Ancient Music in
London sought to sustain this art in honour. On the other hand, Handel
has frequently used them in the form of a chorale, simple or
varied,[333] above all, he employs the choral double fugue in a most
astounding manner,[334] and he carries everything on with that
impetuosity of genius which drew to him the admiration of the sternest
critics of his time, such as Mattheson. His instinct as a great
constructor loved to alternate homophonic music with fugal
choruses,[335] the massive columns of musical harmony with the moving
contrapuntal in superimposed strata, very cleverly framing his dramatic
choruses in a most imposing architecture of decorative and impersonal
character. His choruses are sometimes tragic scenes,[336] or comedy (see
the _Vaudeville_),[337] sometimes _genre_ pictures.[338] Handel knew
most admirably how to weave in popular motives,[339] or to mingle the
dance with the song.[340]
But what belongs chiefly to him--not that he invented it, but made the
happiest use of it--is the musical architecture of solo and chorus
alternating and intermingled. Purcell and the French composers had given
him this idea. He attempted it in his earliest religious works,
especially in his _Birthday Ode for Queen Anne_, 1713, where nearly
every solo air is taken up again by the following chorus.[341] He had a
great feeling for light and pleased himself by introducing in the middle
of his choral masses, solo songs which soared up into the air like
birds.[342] His dramatic genius knew, when required, how to draw from
this combination the most astounding effects. Thus in the _Passion after
Brockes_, 1716, where the dialogue of the Daughter of Sion and the
chorus _Eilt ihr angefochten Seelen_, with its questions, its responses,
its AEschylian interjections, served as Bach's model for his St. Matthew
Passion. At the end of _Israel in Egypt_, after those great choral
mountains of sounds, by an ingenious contrast a female voice is heard
alone without accompaniment, and then a hymn alternating with the chorus
which repeats it. It is the same again at the end of the little short
_Ode to St. Cecilia_.
In the _Occasional Oratorio_ a duet for Soprano and Alto alternates with
the choruses, but it is in _Judas Maccabaeus_ where he best achieves this
combination of solos and the chorus. In this victorious epic of an
invaded people, who rose up and overcame their oppressors, the
individualities are scarcely distinguished from the heroic soul of the
nation, and the chiefs of the people are only the choralists, whose
songs set dancing the enormous ensembles which unfold themselves in
powerful and irresistible progressions, like a giant's procession up a
triumphal staircase.
It follows then that when the orchestra is added to the dialogue of
solos and of choruses, the third element enters into the psychological
drama, sometimes in apparent opposition to the two others. Thus in the
second act of _Judas Maccabaeus_ the orchestra which sounds the battle
calls makes a vivid contrast to the somewhat funereal choruses on which
they are interposed: _We hear the pleasing dreadful call_, or to put it
better, they complete them, and fill in the picture. After Death--Glory.
The oratorio being a "free theatre," it becomes necessary for the music
to supply the place of the scenery. Thus its picturesque and descriptive
_role_ is strongly developed and it is by this above all that Handel's
genius so struck the English public. Camille Saint-Saens wrote in an
interesting letter to C. Bellaigue,[343] "I have come to the conclusion
that it is the picturesque and descriptive side, until then novel and
unreached, whereby Handel achieved the astonishing favour which he
enjoyed. This masterly way of writing choruses, of treating the fugue,
had been done by others. What really counts with him is the colour--that
modern element which we no longer hear in him.... He knew nothing of
exotism. But look at _Alexander's Feast_, _Israel in Egypt_, and
especially _L'Allegro ed Penseroso_, and try to forget all that has been
done since. You find at every turn a striving for the picturesque, for
an effect of imitation. It is real and very intense for the medium in
which it is produced, and it seems to have been unknown hitherto."
Perhaps Saint-Saens lays too much weight on the "masterly way of writing
his choruses," which was not so common in England, even with Purcell.
Perhaps he accentuates too much also the real influence of the French in
matters of picturesque and descriptive music and the influence which it
exerted on Handel.[344] Finally, it is not necessary to represent these
descriptive tendencies of Handel as exceptional in his time. A great
breath of nature passed over German music, and pushed it towards
tone-painting. Telemann was, even more than Handel, a painter in music,
and was more celebrated than Handel for his realistic effects. But the
England of the eighteenth century had remained very conservative in
music, and had devoted itself to cultivating the masters of the past.
Handel's art was then more striking to them on account of "its colour"
and "its imitative effects." I will not say with Saint-Saens that "there
was no question of exotism with him," for Handel seems to have sought
this very thing more than once; notably in the orchestration of certain
scenes for the two Cleopatras, of _Giulio Cesare_, and of _Alexander
Balus_. But that which was constantly with him was tone-painting, the
reproduction through passages of music of natural impressions, a
painting very characterised, and, as Beethoven put it, "more an
expression of feelings than of painting," a poetic evocation of the
raging tempests, of the tranquillity of the sea, of the dark shades of
night, of the twilight which envelops the English country, of the parks
by moonlight, of the sunrise in springtime, and of the awakening of
birds. _Acis and Galatea_, _Israel in Egypt_, _Allegro_, _The Messiah_,
_Semele_, _Joseph_, _Solomon_, _Susanna_, all offer a wondrous picture
gallery of nature, carefully noted by Handel with the sure stroke of a
Flemish painter, and of a romantic poet at the same time. This
romanticism struck powerfully on his time with a strength which would
not be denied. It drew upon him both admiration and violent criticism. A
letter of 1751 depicts him as a Berlioz or Wagner, raising storms by
his orchestra and chorus.
"He cannot give people pleasure after the proper fashion," writes this
anonymous author in his letter, "and his evil genius will not allow him
to do this. He imagines a new _grandioso_ kind of music, and in order to
make more noise he has it executed by the greatest number of voices and
instruments which one has ever heard before in a theatre. He thinks thus
to rival not only the god of musicians, but even all the other gods,
like Ioele, Neptune, and Jupiter: for either I expected that the house
would be brought down by his tempest, or that the sea would engulf the
whole. But more unbearable still was his thunder. Never have such
terrible rumblings fallen on my head."[345]
Similarly Goethe, irritated and upset, said, after having heard the
first movement of the Beethoven C Minor symphony, "It is meaningless.
One expected the house to fall about one's ears."
It is not by chance that I couple the names of Handel and Beethoven.
Handel is a kind of Beethoven in chains. He had the unapproachable
manner like the great Italian artists who surrounded him: the Porporas,
the Hasses, and between him and them there was a whole world.[346]
Under the classic ideal with which he covered himself burned a romantic
genius, precursor of the _Sturm und Drang_ period; and sometimes this
hidden demon broke out in brusque fits of passion--perhaps despite
himself.
* * * * *
Handel's instrumental music deserves very close notice: for it is nearly
always wrongly assessed by historians, and badly understood by artists,
who treat it for the most part as a merely formal art.
Its chief characteristic is that of a perpetual improvisation. If it was
published, it was more in spite of Handel than at his instigation.[347]
It was not made to be played and judged coldly, but to be produced at
white heat to the public. They were free sketches, in which the form was
never completely tightened up, but remained always moving and living,
modifying itself at the concert, as the two sensibilities--the artist
and the public--came into touch with one another.[348] It is necessary
then to preserve in this music a certain measure of the character of
living improvisation. What we too often do, on the contrary, is to
petrify them. One cannot say that they are a caricature of the work of
Handel. They are rather a negation of it. When one studies with a minute
care every detail of the work, when one has attained from the orchestra
a precision of attack, an ensemble, a justness, an irreproachable
finish, we have yet done nothing more than raise up the mere figure of
this genial improvisator.