Chapter IV: Introduction: By the Editor (3)

On July 23 he commenced _Saul_; on August 8 he had written two acts of it; by September 27 the work was finished. On October 7 he began _Israel in Egypt_; by October 28 the work was achieved. Still pushing strenuously forward, on October 4 he launched the first volume of his organ concertos with the publisher Walsh, and on the 7th he took to him his _Seven Trios or Sonatas in two parts, with bass_, Opus 5. For those who know these joyful works, which dominate like two Colossi the two oratorios of victory, this superhuman effort had the effect of a force of Nature, like a field which breaks into flower in a single night of springtime.

_Saul_ is a great epic drama, flowing and powerful, where the humorous and the tragic intermingle. _Israel_ is one immense chorale, the most gigantic effort which has ever been made in oratorio, not only with a single but with combined choirs.[237] The audacious originality of the conception and its austere grandeur almost stunned the public of his day. The living Handel breathes throughout the work.

The hopes which Handel had founded on England caused him fresh uneasiness. Times were hard. Since the winter of 1739, theatrical performances, and even concerts, were suspended for several months on account of the war, and the extreme cold. Handel, to keep himself warm, wrote in eight days the little _Ode to St. Cecilia_ (November 29, 1739); in sixteen days _L'Allegro_, _Il Penseroso_, _ed Il Moderato_ of Milton (January-February, 1740); in a month the _Concerti Grossi_, Opus 6.[238] But the success of these charming works, graven out with loving care, into which Handel had perhaps put more than into any other his own personal feelings, his poetic and humorous reproductions of nature,[239] was hardly sufficient yet to establish his affairs, at one time so embarrassed. Once more, as in the time of _Deborah_ and _Arianna_, he was attacked by a coalition of fashionable people. One does not know how Handel had wounded them,[240] but they were resolved on his downfall. They avoided his concerts. They even paid men to pull down his placards in the streets. Handel, tired and disheartened, suddenly threw up the combat.[241] He decided to leave England, where he had lived for nearly thirty years, and where he had increased his fame so much. He announced his last concert for April 8, 1741.[242]

* * * * *

It is a remarkable thing that often in the lives of the great men, just at the moment when all seems lost, or things are at their lowest ebb, they are nearest to the fulfilment of their destiny. Handel appeared vanquished. Just at that very hour he wrote a work which was destined to establish permanently his immortality.

He left London.[243] The Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland invited him to Dublin to direct some concerts. Thus it was, so he said, "in order to offer this generous and polished nation something new" that he composed _The Messiah_ on a poem by his friend Jennens.[244] They had already given many of his religious works in Dublin for charitable concerts.[245] Handel was received enthusiastically. The letter which he wrote on December 29 to Jennens bubbles over with joy. The time which he passed in Dublin was, together with his early years in Italy, the happiest in his life. From December 23, 1741, to April 7, 1742, he gave two series of six concerts, and always with the same success. Finally, on April 12, the first hearing of _The Messiah_ took place in Dublin. The proceeds of the concert were devoted to charitable objects, and the success was very considerable.[246]

Eight days after having finished The _Messiah_ (that is to say, before he had yet arrived in Ireland) Handel had commenced _Samson_, which was finished in five weeks, from the end of September to the end of October, 1741. However, he did not give it in Dublin. Doubtless he could not find the interpreters which he desired for this colossal drama, rich in choral scenes and in difficult _roles_.[247] Perhaps also he reserved the work for the following season in Dublin, when he hoped to return, but the expected invitation which he awaited in London did not come, and it was in London that _Samson_ reached its first hearing on February 18, 1743.

To this heroic oratorio, based on the sublime _Samson Agonistes_ of Milton,[248] succeeded a light opera, which bore, nevertheless, the name of oratorio, the libretto of which was based on a poem by Congreve: _Semele_ (June 3 to July 4, 1743). It afforded a relief for him between these two Herculean works. In the same month in which he finished _Semele_, Handel wrote his monumental _Dettingen Te Deum_, to celebrate the victory of the Duke of Cumberland over the French.[249] _Joseph_, written in August and September of the same year, on a very touching poem by James Miller, reveals a sweet yet melancholy fancy, a little insipid, on which, however, the strong portrait of Simeon projects itself forcibly.

1744 was one of Handel's most glorious years from the creative point of view, but one of the most miserable in outward success. He wrote nearly simultaneously his two most tragic oratorios, the great Shakespearian drama of _Belshazzar_ (July-October, 1744), the rich poem of which was furnished for him by his friend Jennens;[250] and the sublime tragedy of the ancient _Hercules_, a musical drama,[251] which marks the culmination of the Handelian musical drama, and indeed one might say of the whole musical theatre before Gluck.

Never was the hostility of the English public more roused against him. The same hateful cabal which had already thrice threatened to bring about his downfall again rose against him. They invited the fashionable world in London to their _fetes_, specially organised on the days when the performances of his oratorios were to have taken place, with the object of robbing him of his audience. Bolingbroke and Smollett both speak of the plots of certain ladies to ruin Handel. Horace Walpole says that it was the fashion to go to the Italian Opera when Handel directed his oratorio concerts. Handel, whose force of energy and genius had weakened since his first failure of 1735, was involved afresh in bankruptcy at the beginning of 1745. His griefs and troubles, and the prodigious expenditure of force which he made, seemed again on the point of turning his brain. He fell into extreme bodily prostration and lowness of spirit, similar to that of 1737, and this lasted for the space of eight months, from March to October, 1745.[252] By a miracle he was able to rise out of this abyss, and by unforeseen events, where music was his only aid, he became more popular than he ever was before.

The Pretender, Charles Edward, landed in Scotland; the country rose up. An army of Highlanders marched on London. The city was in consternation. A great national movement arose in England, Handel associated himself with it. On November 14, 1745, he brought to light at Drury Lane his _Song made for the Gentlemen Volunteers of the City of London_,[253] and he wrote two oratorios, which were, so to speak, immense national hymns: the _Occasional Oratorio_,[254] where Handel called the English to rise up against invasion, and _Judas Maccabaeus_[255] (July 9 to August 11, 1746), the Hymn of Victory, written after the rout of the rebels at Culloden Moor, and for the _fete_ on the return of the conqueror, the ferocious Duke of Cumberland, to whom the poem was dedicated.

These two patriotic oratorios, where Handel's heart beat with that of England, and of which the second, _Judas Maccabaeus_, has retained even to our own day its great popularity, thanks to its broad style and the spirit which animates it,[256] brought more fortune to Handel than all the rest of his works together. After thirty-five years of continuous struggle, plot and counterplot, he had at last obtained a decisive victory. He became by the force of events _the national musician of England_.

* * * * *

Freed from material cares, which had embittered his life,[257] Handel took up the work of his composition again, with more tranquillity, and in the following years came many of his happiest works. _Alexander Balus_ (June 1 to July 4, 1747)[258] is, like _Semele_, a concert opera, well developed; the orchestration being exceptionally rich and subtle. _Joshua_ (July 30 to August 18, 1747)[259] is a somewhat pale _replica_ of _Judas Maccabaeus_. A gentle love idyll blossoms amidst the pompous choruses. _Solomon_ (June, 1748)[260] is a musical festival, radiating poetry and gladness. _Susanna_ (July 11, 1724, to August, 1748), grave and gay by turns, realistic yet lyric, is a hybrid kind of work, but very original.

Finally, in the spring of 1749, which marks, so it seems, the end of Handel's good fortune, he wrote his brilliant Firework Music--a model for popular open-air _fetes_--produced on April 27, 1749, by a monster orchestra of trumpets, horns, oboes, and bassoons, without stringed instruments, on the occasion of the Firework display given in Green Park to celebrate the Peace of Aix la Chapelle.[261]

More solemn works followed these gay pieces. At this moment of his life the spirit of melancholy raised its grey head before the robust old man, who seemed to be obsessed by the presentiment of some coming ill fortune.

On May 27, 1749, he conducted at the Foundling Hospital[262] for the benefit of waifs and strays, his beautiful _Anthem for the Foundling Hospital_,[263] which was inspired by his great pity for these little unfortunates. From June 28 to July 31 he wrote a pure masterpiece, _Theodora_, his most intimate musical tragedy, his only Christian tragedy besides _The Messiah_[264]. From the end of that same year dates also his music for a scene from Tobias Smollett's Alceste, which was never played, and from which Handel took the essential parts for his _Choice of Hercules_.[265] A little time after he made his last voyage to Halle. He arrived on German soil at the moment when Bach died, July 28, 1750. Indeed he nearly ended his life there himself in the same week by a carriage accident.[266]

He recovered quickly, and on January 21, 1751, when he commenced the score of _Jephtha_, he appeared to be in robust health, despite his sixty-six years. He wrote the first act at a stretch in thirteen days. In eleven days more he had arrived at the last scene but one of Act II. Here he had to break off. Already in the preceding pages he only progressed with difficulty; his writing, so clear and firm at the commencement, became sticky, confused, and trembling.[267] He had started on the final chorus of Act II: "How dark, O Lord, are Thy Ways." Hardly had he written the opening _Largo_ than he had to stop working. He wrote:

"_I reached here on Wednesday, February 13, had to discontinue on account of the sight of my left eye._"[268]

The work was broken off for ten days. On February 23 (which was his birthday) he wrote in:

"_Feel a little better. Resumed work_";

and he wrote the music to those foreboding words:

"_Grief follows joy as night the day._"

He took hardly five days to finish this chorus, which is really sublime. He stopped then for four months.[269] On June 18 he resumed the third act. He was again interrupted in the middle.[270] The last four airs and the final chorus took more time than a whole oratorio usually occupied. He did not finish it until August 30, 1751. His sight was then gone.

* * * * *

After that, all was ended. Handel's eyes were closed for ever.[271] The sun was blotted out, "_Total eclipse_...." The world was effaced.

He had never suffered so much as in the first year of his illness, when he was not yet completely blind. In 1752 he was unable to play the organ at the productions of his oratorios, and the public, moved by sympathy, saw him tremble and blanch in listening to the admirable complaint of his blind Samson. But in 1753, when the evil was incurable, Handel regained his self-possession. He played the organ again at the twelve performances of oratorios which he gave each year in Lent, and he kept up this custom until his death.

But with his vanished sight he had lost the best source of his inspiration. This man, 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 only wrote in 1758 a duet and chorus for _Judas Maccabaeus_, "Zion now her head shall raise," and reviving in that the happy times of other days he took up a work of his youth, the _Trionfo del Tempo_,[272] which he now gave in a new version in March, 1757: _The Triumph of Time and Truth_.[273]

(_In the "Poets' Corner."_)]

On April 6, 1759, he again took the organ at a production of _The Messiah_. His powers failed him in the middle of a movement. He soon recovered himself and improvised (it is said) with his habitual grandeur. Returned home he took to bed. On April 11 he added a last codicil to his will,[274] bequeathing munificently L1000 sterling to the Society for the Maintenance of Poor Musicians, and expressing, with tranquillity, his desire of being buried in Westminster Abbey. 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." His wish was accomplished. On Holy Saturday, April 14, at eight in the morning, the sweet singer of _The Messiah_ slept with his Lord.

* * * * *

His glory spread after his death. On April 20 he was interred in Westminster Abbey, as he had requested.[275] The annual performances of his oratorios continued in Lent under the direction of his friend, Christopher Smith. Popular performances of them were soon given. The great festival of his Commemoration celebrated at Westminster Abbey and in the Pantheon, from May 26 to June 5, 1784, for the centenary of his birth,[276] was observed all over Europe. New festivals took place in London in 1785, 1786, 1787, 1790, and 1791. On the last occasion more than a thousand executants[277] took part. Haydn was present, and he said, through his tears, "He is master of us all."

The English performances attracted the attention of Germany. Two years after the Commemoration, Johann Adam Hiller produced _The Messiah_ in the Cathedral Church at Berlin, then at Leipzig, and then at Breslau. Three years later, in 1789, Mozart made his arrangements of _The Messiah_, of _Acis and Galatea_, of the _Ode to St. Cecilia_, and of _Alexander's Feast_.[278] The first complete edition of Handel was commenced in 1786. A strong feeling of emulation made itself felt in Germany to imitate the English festivals, and to restore choral singing, and to found the _Singakademien_ for the preservation of the national glories.[279] The rendering of Handel's oratorios inspired Haydn to write _The Creation_. Beethoven at the end of his life said of Handel: "See there is the truth."[280] Poets also vied equally in rendering him homage. Goethe admired him, and Herder devoted a chapter to him in his _Adrastea_ of 1802. The wars of Independence gave an access of favour to the oratorio of freedom, to _Judas Maccabaeus_.

With romanticism the feeling for the genius of Handel was lost. Berlioz, who, if he had but known him truly, and had found a model for that grand popular style which he sought, never understood him. Of all other musicians, those who approached to the spirit of Handel nearest were Schumann and Liszt,[281] but they were exceptional in the lucidity of their perception, and their generous sympathies. It might be said that Handel's art, distorted by the editions and false renderings--quite as much those in Germany as the ridiculously colossal representations in England--would have been completely lost except for the foundation in 1856 of the Handel Society, which devoted itself to the object of publishing an exact and complete edition of the works of the master. Gervinus was the promoter and Friedrich Chrysander alone accomplished the task. It did not aim at being a critical edition of his works. His ardent apostle sought simply to revive them in their pristine force.[282] He was seconded by the choral societies of north Germany, particularly by the Berlin _Singakademien_, which from 1830 to 1860 never ceased to perform all the oratorios of Handel. On the contrary, Austria remained a long way behind. In 1873, Brahms conducted the first production of _Saul_ in Vienna, but the veritable awakening of Handel's art in Germany only dates back about half a score years. One recognized his grandeur, and did not doubt that he had lived. It was chiefly (so it seems) at the first Handel Festival of Mayence in 1895, where _Hercules and Deborah_ were given, that his astounding dramatic genius was first truly felt there.

To us in France we still await the full revelation of the living scenes of this great and luminous tragic art, so akin to the aims of Ancient Greece.[283]

HIS TECHNIQUE AND WORKS

No great musician is more impossible to include in the limits of one definition, or even of several, than Handel. It is a fact that he reached the complete mastery of his style very early (much earlier than J. S. Bach), although it was never really fixed, and he never devoted himself to any one form of art. It is even difficult to see a conscious and a logical evolution in him. His genius is not of the kind which follows a single path, and forges right ahead until it reaches its object. For his aim is none other than to do well whatever he undertook. All ways are good to him--from his early steps at the crossing of the ways, he dominated the country, and shed his light on all sides, without laying siege to any particular part. He is not one of those who impose on life and art a voluntary idealism, either violent or patient; nor is he one of those who inscribe in the book of life the formula of their campaign. He is of the kind who drink in the life universal, assimilating it to themselves. His artistic will is mainly objective. His genius adapts itself to a thousand images of passing events, to the nation, to the times in which he lived, even to the fashions of his day. It accommodates itself to the various influences, ignoring all obstacles. It weighs other styles and other thoughts, but such is the power of assimilation and the prevailing equilibrium of his nature that he never feels submerged and overweighted by the mass of these strange elements. Everything is duly absorbed, controlled, and classified. This immense soul is like the sea itself, into which all the rivers of the world pour themselves without troubling its serenity.

The German geniuses have often had this power of absorbing thoughts and strange forms,[284] but it is excessively rare to find amongst them the grand objectivism, and this superior impersonality, which is, so to speak, the hall-mark of Handel. Their sentimental lyricism is better fitted to sing songs, to voice the thoughts of the universe in song, than to paint the universe in living forms and vital rhythms. Handel is very different, and approaches much more nearly than any other in Germany the genius of the South, the Homeric genius of which Goethe received the sudden revelation on his arrival at Naples.[285] This capacious mind looks out on the whole universe, and on the way the universe depicts itself, as a picture is reflected in calm and clear water. He owes much of this objectivism to Italy, where he spent many years, and the fascination of which never effaced itself from his mind, and he owes even more to that, sturdy England, which guards its emotions with so tight a rein, and which eschews those sentimental and effervescing effusions, so often displayed in the pious German art; but that he had all the germs of his art in himself, is already shown in his early works at Hamburg.

From his infancy at Halle, Zachau had trained him not in one style, but in all the styles of the different nations, leading him to understand not only the spirit of each great composer, but to assimilate the styles by writing in various manners. This education, essentially cosmopolitan, was completed by his three tours in Italy, and his sojourn of half a century in England. Above all he never ceased to follow up the lessons learnt at Halle, always appropriating to himself the best from all artists and their works. If he was never in France (it is not absolutely proved), he knew her nevertheless. He was anxious to master their language and musical style. We have proofs of that in his manuscripts,[286] and in the accusations made against him by certain French critics.[287] Wherever he passed, he gathered some musical souvenir, buying and collecting foreign works, copying them, or rather (for he had not the careful patience of J. S. Bach, who scrupulously wrote out in his own hand the entire scores of the French organists and the Italian violinists) copying down in hasty and often inexact expressions any idea which struck him in the course of his reading. This vast collection of European thoughts, which only remains in remnants at the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge, was the reservoir, so to speak, from which his creative genius continually fed itself. Profoundly German in race and character, he had become a world citizen, like his compatriot Leibnitz, whom he had known at Hanover, a European with a tendency for the Latin culture. The great Germans at the end of that century, Goethe and Herder, were never more free, or more universal, than this great Saxon in music, saturated as he was with all the artistic thoughts of the West.

He drew not only from the sources of learned and refined music--the music of musicians; but also drank deeply from the founts of popular music--that of the most simple and rustic folk.[288] He loved the latter. One finds noted down in his manuscripts the street cries of London, and he once told a friend that he received many inspirations for his best airs from them.[289] Certain of his oratorios, like _L'Allegro ed Il Penseroso_, are threaded with remembrances of his walks in the English country, and who can ignore the _Pifferari_ (Italian peasant's pipe) in _The Messiah_, the Flemish carillon in _Saul_, the joyous popular Italian songs in _Hercules_, and in _Alexander Balus_? Handel was not an artist lost in introspection. He watched all around him, he listened, and observed. Sight was for him a source of inspiration, hardly of less importance than hearing. I do not know any great German musician who has been as much a visual as Handel. Like Hasse and Corelli, he had a veritable passion for beautiful pictures. He hardly ever went out without going to a theatre or to a picture sale. He was a connoisseur, and he made a collection, in which some Rembrandts[290] were found after his death. It has been remarked that his blindness (which should have rendered his hearing still more sensitive, his creative powers translating everything into sonorous dreams) soon paralysed his hearing when its principal source of renewal was withdrawn.

Thus, saturated in all the European music of his time, impregnated with the music of musicians, and the still richer music which flows in all Nature herself, which is specially diffused in the vibrations of light and shade, that song of the rivers, of the forest, of the birds, in which all his works abound, and which have inspired some of his most picturesque pages with a semi-romantic colour,[291] he wrote as one speaks, he composed as one breathes. He never sketched out on paper in order to prepare his definite work. He wrote straight off as he improvised, and in truth he seems to have been the greatest improviser that ever was. Whether extemporising on the organ at the midday services in St. Paul's Cathedral, or playing the _capriccios_ during the _entr'actes_ of his oratorios at Covent Garden--or improvising on the clavier in the orchestra at the opera, at Hamburg or in London, or "when he accompanied the singers in a most marvellous fashion, adapting himself to their temperament and virtuosity, without having any written notes," he astounded the connoisseurs of his time; and Mattheson, who may hardly be suspected of any indulgence towards him, proclaimed that he had no equal in this. One can truly say that "he improvised every minute of his life." He wrote his music with such an impetuosity of feeling, and such a wealth of ideas, that his hand was constantly lagging behind his thoughts, and in order to keep pace with them at all he had to note them down in an abbreviated manner.[292] But (and this seems contradictory) he had at the same time an exquisite sense of form. No German surpassed him in the art of writing beautiful, melodic lines. Mozart and Hasse alone were his equals in this. It was to this love of perfection that we attribute that habit which, despite his fertility of invention, causes him to use time after time, the same phrases (those most important, and dearest to him) each time introducing an imperceptible change, a light stroke of the pencil, which renders them more perfect. The examination of these kinds of musical _eaux-fortes_ in their successive states is very instructive for the musician who is interested in plastic beauty.[293] It shows also how certain melodies, once written down, continued to slumber in Handel's mind for many years, until they had penetrated his subconscious nature, were applied at first, by following the chances of his inspiration, to a certain situation, which suited them moderately well. They are, so to speak, in search of a body where they can reincarnate themselves, seeking the true situation, the real sentiment of which they are but the latent expression; and once having found it, they expand themselves with ease.[294]

Handel worked no less with the music of other composers than with his own. If one had the time to study here what superficial readers have called his plagiarisms, particularly taking, for example, _Israel in Egypt_, where the most barefaced of these cases occur, one would see with what genius and insight Handel has evoked from the very depths of these musical phrases, their secret soul, of which the first creators had not even a presentiment. It needed his eye, or his ear, to discover in the serenade of Stradella its Biblical cataclysms. Each read and heard a work of art as it is, and yet not as it is; and one may conclude that it is not always the creator himself who has the most fertile idea of it. The example of Handel well proves this. Not only did he create music, but very often he created that of others for them. Stradella and Erba were only for him (however humiliating the comparison) the flames of fire, and the cracks in the wall, through which Leonardo saw the living figures. Handel heard great storms passing through the gentle quivering of Stradella's guitar.[295]

This evocatory character of Handel's genius should never be forgotten. He who is satisfied with listening to this music without _seeing_ what it expresses--who judges this art as a purely formal art, who does not feel his expressive and suggestive power, occasionally so far as hallucination, will never understand it. It is a music which paints emotions, souls, and situations, to see the epochs and the places, which are the framework of the emotions, and which tint them with their own peculiar moral tone. In a word, his is an art essentially picturesque and dramatic. It is scarcely twenty to thirty years since the key to it was found in Germany, thanks to the Handel Musical Festivals. As Heuss says, concerning a recent performance at Leipzig, "For a proper comprehension no master more than Handel has greater need of being performed, and _well_ performed. One can study J. S. Bach at home, and enjoy it even more than at a good concert, but he who has never heard Handel well performed can with difficulty imagine what he really is, for really good performances of Handel are excessively rare." The intimate sense of his works was falsified in the century which followed his death by the English interpretations, strengthened further still in Germany by those of Mendelssohn, and his numerous following. By the exclusion of and systematic contempt for all the operas of Handel, by an elimination of nearly all the dramatic oratorios, the most powerful and the freshest, by a narrow choice more and more restrained to the four or five oratorios, and even here, by giving an exaggerated supremacy to _The Messiah_, by the interpretation finally of these works, and notably of _The Messiah_ in a pompous, rigid, and stolid manner, with an orchestra and choir far too numerous and badly balanced, with singers frightfully correct and pious, without any feeling or intimacy, there has been established that tradition which makes Handel a church musician after the style of Louis XIV, all decoration--pompous columns, noble and cold statues, and pictures by Le Brun. It is not surprising that this has reduced works executed on such principles, and degraded them to a monumental tiresomeness similar to that which emanates from the bewigged Alexanders, and the very conventional Christs of Le Brun.

It is necessary to turn back. Handel was never a church musician, and he hardly ever wrote for the church. Apart from his _Psalms_ and his _Te Deum_, composed for the private chapels, and for exceptional events, he only wrote instrumental music for concerts and for open-air _fetes_, for operas, and for those so-called oratorios, which were really written for the theatre. The first oratorios he composed were really acted: _Acis and Galatea_ in May, 1732, at the Haymarket Theatre, with scenery, decoration, and costumes, under the title of _English Pastoral Opera--Esther_, in February, 1732, at the Academy of Ancient Music after the manner of the Grecian tragedy, the chorus being placed behind the stage and the orchestra. And if Handel resolutely abstained from theatrical representation[296]--which alone gives the full value to certain scenes, such as the orgie and the dream of Belshazzar, expressly conceived for acting--on the other hand he stood out firmly for having his oratorios at the theatre and not in the church. There were not wanting churches any less than dissenting chapels in which he could give his works, and by not doing so he turned against him the opinion of religious people who considered it sacrilegious to carry pious subjects on to the stage,[297] but he continued to affirm that he did not write compositions for the church, but worked for the theatre--a free theatre.[298]

This briefly dramatic character of Handel's works has been well comprehended by the German historians who have studied him during recent times. Chrysander compares him to Shakespeare,[299] Kretzschmar calls him the reformer of musical drama, Volbach and A. Heuss see in him a dramatic musician, and claim for the performance of his oratorios dramatic singers. Richard Strauss, in his introduction to Berlioz's _Treatise of Orchestration_, opposes the great polyphonic and symphonic stream issuing from J. S. Bach with that homophonic and dramatic one which comes from Handel. We hope that the readers of this little book have found here in nearly all these pages a confirmation of these ideas.

* * * * *

It remains for us, after having attempted to indicate the general characteristics of Handel's art, to sketch the technique of the different styles in which he worked.

To speak truly, it is difficult to speak of the opera or of the oratorio of Handel. It is necessary to say: _of the operas or of the oratorios_, for we do not find that they point back to any single type. We can verify here what we said at the commencement of this chapter, about the magnificent vitality of Handel in choosing amongst his art forms the different directions of the music of his times.

All the European tendencies at that time are reflected in his operas: the model of Keiser in his early works, the Venetian model in his _Agrippina_, the model of Scarlatti and Steffani in his first early operas; in the London works he soon introduces English influences, particularly in the rhythms. Then it was Bononcini whom he rivalled. Again, those great attempts of genius to create a new musical drama, _Giulio Cesare_, _Tamerlano_, _Orlando_; later on, those charming ballet-operas inspired by France, _Ariodante_, _Alcina_; later still, those operas which point towards the _opera comique_ and the light style of the second half of the century, _Serse Deidamia_.... Handel continued to try every other style, without making any permanent choice as did Gluck, with whom alone he can be compared.

Without doubt (and it is his greatest fault in the theatre) he was constrained by the conventions of the Italian Opera at tunes and by the composition of his troupe of singers to overlook his choruses, and to write operas for solo voices, of which the principal _roles_ were cast for the Prima Donna and for the contralto,[300] but whenever he could, he wrote his operas with choruses, like _Ariodante_, _Alcina_, and he only owed it to himself that he did not give to the tenor or to the bass their place in the concert of voices.[301] If it was not possible to break the uniformity of the solo voices by the addition of choruses, still he enlivened these solos by the flexibility and the variety of his instrumental accompaniments. Such of his most celebrated airs, as the Garden scene in _Rinaldo_, "_Augelletti che cantate_," are only in truth an orchestral tone picture. The voice mingles itself only as an instrument,[302] and with what art Handel always decides his melodies in disengaging the beautiful lines, drawing all the parts possible in pure tone colours from single instruments, and from the voice isolated,--then united,--and what of his silences!

The appeal of his melodies is much more varied than one usually believes. If the _Da Capo_ form abounds in his works,[303] it is necessary to admit that it was practically the only one of that period. In _Almira_, Handel uses the form of a little strophic song, very happily. For this, Keiser supplied him with models, and he never renounces the use of these little melodies, so simple and touching, almost bare, which speak direct to the soul. He seems to return to them even with special predilection in his last operas, _Atalanta_, _Giustina_, _Serse_, _Deidamia_.[304] He gives also to Hasse and to Graun the model of his six cavatinas, airs in two parts,[305] which they later on brought into prominence. We find his dramatic airs also have the second part and the repeat.[306]

Even in the _Da Capo_, however, he gives us a variety of forms! Not only 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.