Second visit to London—Italian opera—George I and the Water Music—visit to Germany—Canons and the Duke of Chandos—establishment of the Royal Academy of Music.

For the greater part of the nineteenth century the Handelian type of opera was the laughingstock of musical critics; they wondered how any audiences could have endured to sit through it, and why the fashionable society of London should have neglected native music for what Dr. Johnson defined as "an exotic and irrational entertainment." The modern reader's impression of an Italian opera of Handel's days is a story about some ancient or mediaeval hero whose very name is often to most people unknown; if he happens to be someone as famous as Julius Caesar, the familiar episodes of his life are sacrificed to some imaginary and complicated intrigue presented in the form of long and elaborate songs, thinly accompanied, and separated by stretches of dreary recitative. But in those days persons of culture, in England as well as in Italy, were perhaps more interested in ancient history and in the history of the later Roman Empire than they are now; it is significant that Gibbon's Decline and Fall made its appearance just when the fashion for operas on subjects which might have been taken from its pages was coming to an end.

The conventional treatment of those subjects, which makes all the operas seem exactly alike, was the result of a certain literary reform which had tended to standardise opera libretti under the influence of Racine, and it was really a movement towards dignity and dramatic unity after the monstrous confusion of the earlier Venetian operas. As to the conventionality of the music, and its forms of air and recitative, it can only be said that all serious Italian music was written in these forms; it was simply the normal musical style of the period, and must have been as natural to its own audiences as the style of Puccini or Richard Strauss at the present day. Handelian opera has often been described as a concert in costume, and Dr. Burney, writing as late as 1789, both admits this description and defends it.

"An opera, at the worst, is still better than a concert merely for the ear, or a pantomime entertainment for the eye. Supposing the articulation to be wholly unintelligible, we have an excellent union of melody and harmony, vocal as well as instrumental, for the ear. And, according to Sir Richard Steele's account of Nicolini's action, 'it was so significant, that a deaf man might go along with him in the sense of the part he acted.'

"No one will dispute but that understanding Italian would render our entertainment at an opera more rational and more complete; but without that advantage, let it be remembered by the lovers of Music, that an opera is the completest concert to which they can go; with this advantage over those in still life, that to the most perfect singing, and effects of a powerful and well-disciplined band, are frequently added excellent acting, splendid scenes and decorations, with such dancing as a playhouse, from its inferior prices, is seldom able to furnish."

Orchestral concerts in those days did not exist; concerts of any kind were rare, and the best were to be heard in that historic room over Thomas Britton's small coal shop, in Clerkenwell, where Handel himself sometimes played on a chamber-organ for the genuine musical enthusiasts of London society. It was no wonder that Italian opera became fashionable. Italian singers have always been unrivalled in popular favour, and in Handel's days they were not only something new to England, but were the exponents of a vocal art which admittedly has never been surpassed. The theatre was new and sumptuous; society was wealthy and at the same time exclusive; at the opera the great world met together as in a sort of club. People went to talk and to be seen as well as to see and hear; they do so in certain opera-houses still. And the Queen's Theatre in the Haymarket possessed the greatest opera-composer living, a greater even than Scarlatti himself.

It was a period when there was still a considerable tradition of musicianship among the amateurs of English society. Old Countess Granville, known to her younger relatives as "the Dragon," who had lived all through the age of Locke and Purcell, wrote, at the age of eighty, to her cousin Mrs. Pendarves—Handel's child friend Mary Granville—in 1734: "There is, I think, no accomplishment so great for a lady as music, for it tunes the mind." There were plenty of people in the great houses capable of appreciating the merits of Handel, or at any rate of constituting themselves his enemies.

Handel must have arrived in England at least as early as the beginning of October 1712, for the manuscript of Il Pastor Fido, the first new opera which he produced, is dated, at the end, "Londres, ce 24 Octobre." The opera-house was now under the management of Owen MacSwiney, who seems to have been both incompetent and unreliable. Il Pastor Fido did not attract the public, and was withdrawn after six performances, but Handel soon had another opera ready to take its place. Teseo was finished on December 19, and brought out on January 10, 1713; it was a romantic-heroic opera, closely modelled on Rinaldo, with an abundance of scenic effects. After the second performance MacSwiney disappeared, leaving the singers unpaid as well as the scene-painters and costume-makers. The company carried on the season undeterred, and the management was taken over by Heidegger. Handel's opera was performed twelve times—on the last night for the composer's benefit; between the acts he gave a performance himself on the harpsichord.

For the moment, however, the operatic situation was not encouraging, and Handel turned his thoughts in other directions. He had stayed first at the London house of a Mr. Andrews of Barn Elms in Surrey, but he soon transferred himself to the house of Lord Burlington in Piccadilly. Lord Burlington was only seventeen years of age, but he and his mother made Burlington House an artistic and literary centre comparable with the palaces of Cardinal Ottoboni and Prince Ruspoli at Rome. As the libretto of Teseo is dedicated to him, he must have taken Handel under his patronage soon after his arrival in England, but the precise date at which Handel went to live with him is uncertain. According to Hawkins, he stayed at Burlington House for three years, meeting Pope, Gay, and Dr. Arbuthnot, as well as many other "men of the first eminence for genius." But Gay does not seem to have met Lord Burlington until 1715, and Pope mentions him first in 1718. It is thought that Handel's little opera, Silla, may have been written for a private performance at Burlington House in 1714, and the dedication of Amadigi, Handel's next opera (1715), indicates that the music was composed within his patron's own walls.

One of Handel's favourite haunts in London was St. Paul's Cathedral, where Brind the organist often persuaded him to play the organ after evening service, to the great delight of the congregation. He appears to have made Brind's acquaintance first through young Maurice Greene, then aged seventeen, who had been a chorister of St. Paul's, and, after his voice broke in 1710, was articled to Brind as a pupil. After service was over, Handel, Greene, and some of the members of the choir would repair to the Queen's Arms Tavern close by for an evening of music and musical conversation.

This friendly association with St. Paul's was no doubt of great value to Handel in his next musical undertakings—the Birthday Ode for Queen Anne, and the Te Deum which celebrated the Peace of Utrecht in 1713. The Queen's patronage may very likely have been obtained for him by Lady Burlington, as she was one of the Ladies of the Bedchamber. These two works are important landmarks in Handel's career, as they were his first compositions to English words, and his first compositions for English ceremonial occasions. They marked him out as the natural successor to Purcell, and it is evident that in each case he took Purcell's similar composition as his model. Up till now he had been a foreigner engaged to provide Italian opera for the amusement of fashionable society; with the Birthday Ode he became a court musician to the Queen of England, and with the Te Deum his music entered St. Paul's.

The practical result of the Ode was a pension of £200 a year conferred on him by Queen Anne. It is clear that he now regarded England as his permanent home, regardless of the fact that he was officially the servant of the Elector of Hanover and had undertaken to return thither "within a reasonable time." But on August 1, 1714, the Queen died, and the Elector was proclaimed King of England. When George I came over to his new country, Handel did not dare to show himself at court, and all efforts on the part of his friends to effect a reconciliation with the King were in vain. The King went to see his new opera, Amadigi, which came out late in the season of 1715, but refused to pardon him, until Handel's old Venetian acquaintance, Baron Kielmansegge, now Master of the Horse, devised an ingenious expedient for surprising the King into clemency.

One of the favourite amusements of London society was to make up a water-party on the Thames, with a band of musicians in attendance. Mrs. Pendarves describes a party of this kind in July 1722; they rowed up to Richmond, where they had supper, and "were entertained all the time by very good music [for wind instruments] in another barge." Baron Kielmansegge arranged that the King should go for an excursion of this kind, and that, without his knowledge, Handel should conduct appropriate music of his own in a barge that followed the King's. As the Baron was often in charge of the music for such occasions, this can have been a matter of no great difficulty; in any case it achieved the desired result. The King was enchanted with the music, and restored Handel to favour. As Mainwaring tells this story just before speaking of Amadigi, it has generally been assumed that this episode took place in the summer of 1715, but more recently it has been ascribed to 1717, on the strength of a long account of a royal water-party, with music by Handel, given in the Daily Courant, a newspaper of the period. This account was copied by the Envoy of Brandenburg at the court of St. James's and despatched by him to Berlin; the discovery of this document has led certain writers to cast doubt on Mainwaring's story. Streatfeild is probably right in suggesting that Mainwaring's story refers to an earlier water-party, and that Handel contributed music frequently for such occasions. He also points out that the celebrated Water Music was not published until 1740, and that it may quite well have been collected from various aquatic programmes.

Hawkins relates the story of the Water Music, evidently copying from Mainwaring; but Hawkins had known Handel personally, and had been supplied by him with certain reminiscences, one of which was unknown to Mainwaring. According to this anecdote, recorded by Hawkins, the reconciliation with George I was due to the violinist Geminiani, who had composed a set of sonatas dedicated to Baron Kielmansegge; Geminiani was a notoriously difficult player to accompany, and insisted on Handel, and no other, taking the harpsichord when he went to play the sonatas to the King.

Mr. Flower, in his life of Handel, refuses all credit to Mainwaring's well-known tale, and takes the view that the King never had any quarrel with Handel at all. In any case it seems certain that he confirmed the pension granted to him by Queen Anne, and added a further £200 a year of his own. A few years later, Handel received yet another £200 a year—from Caroline of Ansbach, now Princess of Wales, for teaching her daughters the harpsichord, so that he enjoyed a settled income of £600 a year for the rest of his life.

Amadigi, produced May 25, 1715, did not have many performances, as the season ended on July 9, but it attracted considerable attention, partly because that old favourite, Nicolini, sang in it again, and also on account of its elaborate staging. "There is more enchantment and machinery in this opera," says Dr. Burney, "than I have ever found to be announced in any other musical drama performed in England."

During the following season, which did not begin until February 1716, both Rinaldo and Amadigi were revived, but Handel produced no new opera. The King seems to have wished to see Nicolini in his older parts; Pyrrhus and Demetrius was revived, as well as other operas of the days before Handel's first arrival in England. In July, at the end of the season, George I returned to Hanover, where he remained until the end of the year. Handel accompanied him, but seems to have had freedom to travel, for he visited Hamburg, where he avoided meeting his old friend Mattheson, though he corresponded with him from a safe distance. He also went to Halle, where his mother was still living; Zachow, however, was dead, and had left his widow in straitened circumstances, with an idle and intemperate son. Handel helped the widow, and continued to send her money in later years, but he eventually came to the conclusion that it was useless to do anything for the son. From Halle he went on to Ansbach, no doubt on some commission from the Princess of Wales. At Ansbach he found an old friend from the University of Halle, Johann Christoph Schmidt, who was established in a woollen business. Although Schmidt was married and had a family, he was persuaded by Handel to leave these behind at Ansbach and to travel with him to London, where he spent the rest of his life as Handel's faithful secretary and copyist. His son came over later on, and, after Handel had provided for his education, assisted his father in looking after Handel during his old age.

During these six months in Germany, Handel reverted for a moment to German music; he set what is known as the Brockes Passion, a sacred cantata in verse by the Hamburg poet Brockes, which had already been set once by Keiser. Later on it was set to music again by two of Handel's former friends, first by Telemann, and then by Mattheson. Little is known about the composition of this work; Handel apparently had a copy made after his return to England and sent this to Mattheson, and it was performed at Hamburg in 1717. Handel does not seem to have had it performed in England; he used up the music afterwards for other works. Chrysander attributed to 1716 a set of nine German songs with violin obbligato to semi-sacred words by Brockes; but there is some difficulty about accepting this date, for, although eight of the poems had already been printed by Brockes, there is one which is found only in the second edition of the book, printed in 1724.

The King came back to London in January 1717, and it is supposed that Handel came with him. The opera was on the verge of collapse. Rinaldo and Amadigi were once more revived for Nicolini, but Handel contributed no new work, and, after the season came to an end in July, there was no more Italian opera in London until 1720. It was during this period that Handel became musical director to the Duke of Chandos, for whom he composed works of a character new both to England and to himself.

James Brydges, first Duke of Chandos, had built himself an Italian palace at Canons, near Edgware, in which he must have outdone even the magnificent Lord Burlington in sumptuousness and ostentation. Like a German princeling, he kept his choir and his band of musicians, though there seems to be no evidence that he was himself genuinely musical. The chapel of the house, a florid Italian baroque building with frescoes in the appropriate style by Italian painters, was opened in 1720, and the anthem for the occasion was no doubt one of Handel's. It is not known what music of Handel's was performed at the Duke's private concerts, but for the services of the chapel he composed the famous Chandos Te Deum and the twelve Chandos Anthems. Here again Purcell was his model, but the style was Handel's own, a style indeed so appropriate to the formal stateliness of the Duke's establishment that these works have never become part of the ordinary cathedral repertory. It was to Purcell, and to some extent to Scarlatti too, that Handel owed the general plan of the anthems with their orchestral accompaniments, but even Purcell's anthems with orchestra had by that time been found too elaborate for general use.

To the Chandos period belongs also a work which is still one of Handel's most popular compositions, the English Acis and Galatea, to words by John Gay. It was not a revision of the serenata which he wrote at Naples, but an entirely new work. More important as a landmark in Handel's development is the masque of Esther, originally called Haman and Mordecai. About the early history of these works little is known; both were intended to be acted on the stage, and they were very probably performed in this way at Canons. The words of Esther were adapted from Racine's play of the same name, and it has been suggested that Pope was the author.

Handel's residence at Canons gave rise to two legends about him which are still so often repeated that their absurdity must be mentioned here, although they have been known for many years to be baseless. One is perpetuated by an inscription on the organ in the church at Whitchurch, to the effect that Handel composed the oratorio of Esther on this instrument. Handel was never organist at Whitchurch; the church existed in his day, but it was an entirely separate building from the private chapel of the Duke of Chandos which was pulled down with the house. The organ of that chapel is now at Gosport. It need hardly be said that in any case it was not Handel's practice to compose his works on an organ. The other, and even more popular, legend is that of "The Harmonious Blacksmith." It was during the Canons period that Handel published his Suites de PiÈces pour le Clavecin (1720) which had probably been composed for the daughters of the Princess of Wales, and one of these suites contains the air and variations known by that familiar title. But the air was never called by this name before 1820; about that time a young music-seller at Bath, who had previously been a blacksmith's apprentice, earned the nickname of "the harmonious blacksmith" because he was always singing that particular tune. Somehow the name got transferred from the singer to the song, and in 1835 the story of Handel's having been inspired to compose the tune after hearing a blacksmith at Edgware produce musical notes from his anvil was first put into print in a letter to The Times. Not long afterwards an imaginary blacksmith of Edgware was invented, and his alleged anvil sold by auction.

Whether the air is Handel's own composition at all is a matter of uncertainty; there would be nothing in the least unusual about any composer taking another man's air as a theme for variations, and it has been suggested, with some plausibility, that the tune is that of an old French song.

On August 8, 1718, Handel's sister Dorothea Sophia died of consumption at Halle. She was not more than thirty years of age; the other sister, Johanna, had died in 1709. The sermon preached at Dorothea's funeral on August 11, 1718, has been preserved, and tells us that one of her favourite texts from the Bible, which she was often in the habit of quoting, was, "I know that my Redeemer liveth." Chrysander suggested, and we may well believe, that the setting of these words in Messiah, given to a female voice, owed its inspiration to the memory of Dorothea Sophia. Handel was evidently much attached to her. To attend her funeral was impossible, and it was some months before Handel could visit Halle again; but on February 20, 1719, he wrote a letter to his brother-in-law, thanking him for all the kindness which he had shown to his sister, and promising to come to Halle as soon as his engagements permitted.

Handel's inability to leave London before February 1719 was due to the fact that a new scheme for the promotion of opera in London was on foot. The first idea was probably suggested in the circle of the Duke of Chandos towards the end of 1718. It was the moment of the South Sea Bubble, and speculation had become the universal fashion. To revive the Italian opera a company was formed among members of the nobility; a capital of £50,000 was raised in shares of £100 each, and the King himself contributed £1,000. The new venture was called the Royal Academy of Music, in imitation of the AcadÉmie Royale de Musique, under which name the Paris opera was officially known. The French designation was obviously suggested by the Italian "academies," or literary and musical societies of the period; the expression accademia di musica is still occasionally used in Italy to signify a concert. The directors engaged Nicolo Haym and Paolo Rolli as poets to provide libretti; for the music they naturally secured Handel, but also invited Buononcini over from Rome, and Attilio Ariosti from Berlin. Handel was sent at once to Dresden to select singers; on February 21 he is stated to have left London for that purpose, but it is possible that he may actually have started later, for in his letter to his brother-in-law, dated February 20, he says, "I beg you will not judge of my desire to see you by the delay of my departure, for to my great regret I find myself detained here by important business on which I may say my fortune depends, and it has dragged on longer than I expected.... I hope I shall be at the end of it in a month from now."

Handel's exact itinerary is difficult to establish. We know that he went to DÜsseldorf, where he engaged the singer Baldassari, but whether this was on the outward journey or later in the year is uncertain. From the letter to Michaelsen we should imagine that he went to Halle as soon as possible; the only authentic document which gives us any date is a letter from Count Flemming, a court functionary at Dresden, to Melusine von Schulenburg, daughter of George I's mistress the Duchess of Kendal, who in 1733 married Lord Chesterfield. Melusine was a pupil of Handel in London. The letter is dated from Dresden, October 6, 1719; the Count seems to have been much offended by Handel's behaviour, and suggests that he was "a little mad" (un peu fol). Count Flemming was evidently vain of his own musicianship, and this made him feel all the more hurt at Handel's obstinate refusal to accept his invitations. The Electoral Prince of Saxony was married about this time to an Austrian Archduchess, and the Elector had invited several of the most famous Italian singers, headed by the composer Lotti, to Dresden to grace the occasion, hoping to make contracts with them for the winter season. Handel's object in Dresden was to tempt these celebrities to London by the offer of English guineas, so that he was naturally obliged to be extremely discreet in his relations with the officials of the court.

He certainly played the harpsichord at court, for in the following February (1720) a sum of 100 ducats was paid to him; this however cannot indicate that he was actually in Dresden at that date, and may easily have been a delayed payment for earlier services. Handel's negotiations with the singers were only moderately successful, for he was unable to secure anyone except Signora Durastanti for the opening of the London opera, even though that was delayed until April 1720. The others remained at Dresden, but it is probable that Handel's offers had not been without their attractions, for the Italian singers at Dresden gave so much trouble to the management that the Elector suddenly dismissed the whole crew in February 1720; none of them, however, appeared in London before the autumn season.

Handel's visit to Halle this year is of peculiar interest because of the attempt made by J. S. Bach to become acquainted with him. Forkel's biography of Bach (1802) is the only authority for this story. Bach in 1719 was in the service of the Prince of Anhalt-CÖthen; hearing that Handel was in the neighbourhood, he went over to Halle, a distance of about twenty miles, but found that Handel had already departed for London. The exact date of Handel's return is not known, but as there was a meeting of the shareholders of the opera on November 6, 1719, he may have been in England by that time. He was not himself one of the actual directors of the company; the only professional member of the board was Heidegger. Burney suggests that the affairs of the company were none too prosperous even before the season began; and it is strange that so long a delay took place between the first initiation of the scheme in the winter of 1718 and the first rise of the curtain on April 2, 1720. Handel, at any rate, must have felt his own position to be secure, for it was about this time that he took the house at what was then 57 Lower Brook Street, Grosvenor Square, where he resided for the rest of his life. His name appears first in 1725 among the ratepayers of the parish of St. George's, Hanover Square, but not long ago a lead cistern was found in the house, bearing his initials and the date 1721. On what terms he took the house is not known; it is not mentioned in his will.