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 fÊtes, 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.

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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 opÉra 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 rÔles 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 CÆsar 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]

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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:

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.

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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 IphigÉnie 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.

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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 libertÉ) 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 rÔle 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 opÉra 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 Æschylian 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 MaccabÆus 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 MaccabÆus 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 rÔle is strongly developed and it is by this above all that Handel’s genius so struck the English public. Camille Saint-SaËns 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-SaËns 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-SaËns 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 IÖle, 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.

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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.

Further, there is with his instrumental music, as with his vocal music, nearly always an intimate and picturesque expression. For Handel, as with his friend Geminiani, “the aim of instrumental music is not only to please the ear, but to express the sentiments, the emotions, to paint the feelings.”[349] It reflects not only the interior world, but it also turns to the actual spectacle of things.[350] It is a precise poetry, and if one cannot define the sources of his inspiration, one can often find in certain of his instrumental works the souvenir of days and journeys, and of scenes visited and experienced by Handel. It was here that he was visibly inspired by Nature.[351]

Others have a relationship with vocal and dramatic works. Certain of the heroic fugues in the fourth book of the Clavier pieces published in 1735 were taken up again by Handel in his Israel in Egypt and clothed with words which agreed precisely with their hidden feeling. The first Allegro from the Fourth Organ Concerto (the first book appeared in 1738) soon became shortly afterwards one of the prettiest of the choruses in Alcina. The second and monumental concerto for two horns in F Major[352] is a reincarnation of some of the finest pages from Esther. It was quite evident to the public of his time that the instrumental works had an expressive meaning, or that as Geminiani wrote, “all good music ought to be an imitation of a fine discourse.” Thus the publisher Walsh was justified in issuing his six volumes of Favourite Airs from Handel’s operas and oratorios, arranged as Sonatas for the flute, violin, and harpsichord, and Handel himself, or his pupil, W. Babell, arranged excellently for the clavier, some suites of airs from the operas, binding them together with preludes, interludes, and variations.—It is necessary always to keep in view this intimate relation of the instrumental works of Handel with the rest of his music. It ought to draw our attention more and more to the expressive contents of these works.

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The instrumental music of Handel divides itself into three classes: firstly—music for the clavier (the clavecin and organ); secondly—chamber music (sonatas and trios); thirdly—orchestral music. The compositions for clavier are the most popular works of any that Handel wrote, and these have achieved the greatest number of European editions. Although they comprise three volumes, yet there is only one, the first, which represents him properly, for it is the only one which he prepared himself, and supervised. The others, more or less fraudulently published, misrepresent him.

This First Volume, published in November, 1720, under the French title Suites, etc., affords us the means of appreciating the two most striking of Handel’s traits: his precocious maturity, which hardly developed at all in the course of time; and the European universality of character which distinguished his art even at an epoch when the great artists were less national than they are to-day. For the first trait one would remark in fine that these Clavier Pieces published in 1720 had already been written some time, certainly before 1700. One discovers a part of them in the Jugendbuch of the Lennard Collection.[353] Others come from Almira, 1705. Naturally Handel enlarged and revised, and carefully grouped all these pieces in his edition of 1720. The interest of the Jugendbuch is chiefly that it shows us the first sketches of the pieces, and how Handel perfected them. Side by side with the oldest pieces there are others more recent, composed, it may be, in Italy or in England.[354] One can trace in these pages the course of the different influences. Seiffert and Fleischer have noted some of them,[355] German influences, French, and Italian.[356] In England even, sometimes Italian elements, sometimes German, predominated with him.[357] The order of the dances varies in each Suite, and also the central point, the kernel of the work. The introductory pieces are sometimes preludes, sometimes fugues, overtures, etc. The dances and the airs are sometimes related to one another, and sometimes independent, and nevertheless the prevailing impression of the work, so varied in its texture, is its complete unity. The personality of Handel holds it all together and welds the most diverse elements—polyphony and richness of German harmony, Italian homophony, and Scarlattian technique, the French rhythm and ornamentation[358] with English directness and practicability. Thus the work made its impression on the times. Before this time, there had perhaps been more original volumes of pieces for the clavier, but their inspiration was nearly always very much circumscribed by the limits of their national art. Handel was the first of the great German classics of the eighteenth century. He did for music what the French writers and philosophers of the eighteenth century did for literature. He wrote for all and sundry, and his volume took the place on the day of its publication which it has held since, that of a European classic.

The following volumes are less interesting for the reasons I have given. The Second Volume published in 1733 by Walsh, unknown to Handel, and in a very faulty manner, gives us little pieces which we find in the Jugendbuch, and which date from the time of Hamburg and Halle.[359] They lack the setting which Handel had certainly planned for them: preludes and fugues.

This arrangement was ready; and Handel, frustrated by this publisher, resigned himself to publishing them later on, as an Appendix to the preceding work: Six Fugues or Voluntaries for the Organ or Harpsichord, 1735, Opus 3. These fugues date from the time when Handel was at Canons before 1720, the second in G Major was from the period of his first sojourn in England. They became celebrated at once, and were much circulated in manuscript even in Germany.[360] Handel had trained himself in fugue in the school of Kuhnau, and specially with Johann Krieger.[361] Like them he gave his Fugues an essentially melodic character. They are so suited for singing that two of them, as we have said, afterwards served for two choruses in the first part of Israel,[362] but Handel’s compositions possess a far different vitality from that of his German forerunners. They have a charming intrepidity, a fury, a passion, a fire which belongs only to him. In other words they live. “All the notes talk,” says Mattheson. These fugues have the character of happy improvisations, and in truth they were improvised. Handel calls them Voluntaries, that is fanciful and learned caprices. He made frequent use of double fugues with a masterly development. “Such an art rejoices the hearer and warms the heart towards the composer and towards the executant,” says Mattheson again, who, after having heard J. S. Bach, found Handel the greater in the composition of the double fugue and in improvisation. This habit of Handel—one might say almost a craving—for improvising, was the origin of the grand Organ Concertos. After the fashion of his time, Handel conducted his operas and oratorios from the clavier. He accompanied the singers with a marvellous art, blending himself to their fancy, and when the singer had done, he delivered his version.[363] From the interludes on the clavier in his operas, he passed to the fantasies or caprices on the organ in the entr’actes of his oratorios, and his success was so great that he never again abandoned this custom. One might say that the public were drawn to his oratorios more by his improvisations on the organ than by the oratorios themselves. Two volumes of the Organ Concertos were published during the lifetime of Handel, in 1738 and in 1740; the third a little after his death, in 1760.[364] To judge them properly it is necessary to bear in mind that they were destined for the theatre. It would be absurd to expect works in the strict, vigorous, and involved style of J. S. Bach. They were brilliant divertissements, of which the style, somewhat commonplace yet luminous and pompous, preserves the character of oratorio improvisations, finding their immediate effect on the great audience. “When he gave a concerto,” says Hawkins, “his method in general was to introduce it with a voluntary movement on the diapasons, which stole on the ear in a slow and solemn progression; the harmony close wrought, and as full as could possibly be expressed; the passages concatenated with stupendous art, the whole at the same time being perfectly intelligible, and carrying the appearance of great simplicity. This kind of prelude was succeeded by the concerto itself, which he executed with a degree of spirit and firmness that no one can ever pretend to equal.” Even at the height of the cabal which was organised against Handel, the Grub Street Journal published an enthusiastic poem on Handel’s Organ Concertos.[365]

It is necessary then to view these Organ Concertos in the proper sense of magnificent concerts for a huge public.[366] Great shadows, great lights, strong and joyous contrasts, all are conceived in view of a colossal effect. The orchestra usually consists of two oboes, two violins, viola, and basses (violoncellos, bassoons, and cembalo), occasionally two flutes, some contrabassos and a harp.[367] The concertos are in three or four movements, which are generally connected in pairs. Usually they open with a pomposo, or a staccato, in the style of the French overture,[368] often an allegro in the same style follows. For the conclusion, an allegro moderato, or an andante, somewhat animated, sometimes some dances. The adagio in the middle is often missing, and is left to be improvised on the organ. The form has a certain relation with that of the sonata in three movements, allegro-adagio-allegro, preceded by an introduction. The first pieces of these two first concertos published in Volume XLVIII of the Complete Edition (second volume) are in a picturesque and descriptive style. The long Concerto in F Major in the same volume has the swing of festival music, very closely allied to the open-air style. Finally, one must notice the beautiful experiment, unfortunately not continued, of the Concerto for two organs,[369] and that, more astonishing still, of a Concerto for Organ terminated by a Chorus,[370] thus opening the way for Beethoven’s fine Symphony, and to his successors, Berlioz, Liszt, and Mahler.[371]

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The chamber music of Handel proves to be of the same precocious maturity as his clavier music.

Six Sonatas in Trio for two oboes and harpsichord[372] appear to date from about 1696, when he was eleven years old, and while he was still at Halle, where he wrote as he said, “like the devil,” above all for the oboe, his favourite instrument. They are in four movements: adagio, allegro, adagio, allegro. The slow movements are often very short, and the second between them is sometimes a mere transition. The Sonata for Viola da Gamba, and Cembalo Concertato in C Major[373] probably belongs to 1705, when Handel was at Hamburg. It is the only one of its kind in the works of Handel, which shows him as a forerunner of Bach. The sonata is in trio form. The clavier plays a second obbligato besides the bass part, as Seiffert notes: “Ten years before Bach worked at his Sonatas with accompaniment for cembalo obbligato, Handel had already a clear perception of their value.”

Three Sonatas for Flute and Bass,[374] of an elegiac grace, also perhaps date from the Halle period, and according to Chrysander seem to have been continued up to 1710 at Hanover.

But the chief instrumental chamber works written by Handel were published in London between 1732 and 1740, and they comprise three volumes:[375]

The first volume contains very old pieces, of which some date from the time when Handel was at Burlington and Chandos. Others might have been intended for the Prince of Wales, whose violin teacher, John Dubourg, was a friend of Handel, as they date from about 1730. The second volume appeared at first in Amsterdam, afterwards in London with Walsh, under a French title[376] in 1733.

The third volume was composed in 1738, and published about the beginning of 1739.[377]

The first feature to notice in general is the want of definition in the choice of instruments for which this music was written. Following the same abstract Æsthetic of his time, the composer left it to the players to choose the instruments. However, there was no doubt that in the first conception of Handel certain of these pieces were made for the flute, others for the violin, and others for the oboe.

In the volume Op. 1 of the solo sonatas (for the flute or oboe, or violin) with bass (harpsichord or violoncello), the usual form is generally in four movements:[378] adagio, allegro, adagio, allegro. The slow pieces are very short. Several are inspired by the airs of Italian cantatas and operas. Some of the pieces are joined together.[379] The harmony is often thin, and requires to be filled in.

The second and third volumes have a much greater value, containing trios or sonatas in two parts (for two violins, or two oboes, or two flauti-traversi) with Bass (harpsichord or violoncello). All the sonatas in the second volume, with only one exception,[380] have four movements, two slow and two fast alternatively, as in the Opus 1. Sometimes they are inspired by the airs of the operas, or of the oratorios; at other times they have furnished a brief sketch for them. The elegiac Largo which opens the First Sonata is found again in Alessandro, the allegro which finishes the Third Sonata forms one of the movements in the overture of Athaliah, the larghetto of the Fourth serves for the second movement of the Esther overture. Other pieces have been transferred to the clavier or other instrumental works, where they are joined to other movements. The finest of these Trios are the First and the Ninth, both of enchanting poetry. In the second movement of the Ninth Trio, Handel has utilised very happily a popular English theme.

The Seven Trios from the third volume afford a much greater variety in the style and in the number[381] of the pieces. Dances occupy a great part.[382] They are indeed veritable Suites. They were composed in the years when Handel was attracted by the form of ballet-opera. The Musette and the Allegro of the Second Sonata come from Ariodante. Some of the other slow and pompous movements are borrowed from his oratorios. The two Allegri which open the Fourth Sonata are taken from the Overture of Athaliah. On the other hand, Handel inserts in the final movement of Belshazzar the beautiful Andante which opens his First Sonata.

Whoever wishes to judge these works historically or from the intellectual point of view, will find, like Chrysander, that Handel has not invented here any new forms, and, as he advanced, he returned to the form of the Suite, which already belonged to the past, instead of continuing on his way towards the future Sonata. But those who will judge them artistically, for their own personal charm, will find in them some of the purest creations of Handel, and those which best retain their freshness. Their beautiful Italian lines, their delicate expression, their aristocratic simplicity, are refreshing alike to the mind and to the heart. Our own epoch, tired of the post-Beethoven and post-Wagnerian art, can find here, as in the chamber music of Mozart, a safe haven, where it can escape the sterile agitation of the present and find again quiet peace and sanity.

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The orchestral music of Handel comprises twelve Concerti Grossi (1740), the six Oboe Concertos (1734), the Symphonies from his operas, oratorios, and his open-air music—Water-Music (1715 or 1717), Firework Music (1749),—and Concerti for two horns.

Although Handel was in art a visualist, and though his music had a highly descriptive and evocatory power, he only made a very restrained use of instrumental tone-colour.[383] However, he showed on occasion a refined intelligence in its use. The two oratorios written at Rome when he found himself in the society of the Cardinal Ottoboni, and his great virtuoso works, The Triumph of Time and The Resurrection of 1708, have a fine and well-varied orchestration.[384] In London he was one of the first to introduce the use of the horn into the orchestra of the opera.[385] “He was the first,” says Volbach, “to assert the expressive personality of the violoncello.”[386] From the viola he knew how to secure many curious effects of indefinite and disquieting half-tones,[387] he gave to the bassoons a lugubrious and fantastic character,[388] he experimented with new instruments, small[389] and great,[390] he used the drum (tambour) solo in a dramatic fashion for Jupiter’s oath in Semele. For special situations, by instrumental tone-colours, he secures effects not only of dramatic expression, but also of exotism and local colour. It is so in the two scenes from the two Cleopatras, Giulio Cesare (1724)[391] and Alexander Balus (1748).

But great painter as Handel was he did not work so much through the brilliancy, variety, and novelty of his tone-colours as by the beauty of his designs, and his effects of light and shade. With a voluntarily restrained palette, and by satisfying himself with the sober colours of the strings, he yet was able to produce surprising and thrilling effects. Volbach has shown[392] that he had less recourse to the contrast and mixing of instruments than to the division of the same family of instruments into different groups. In the introductory piece movement to his second Esther (1732) the violins are divided into five groups;[393] in The Resurrection (1708), into four divisions;[394] the violas are sometimes divided into two, the second being reinforced by the third violin, or by the violoncellos.[395] On the other hand, Handel, when he considered it advisable, reduced his instrumental forces by suppressing the viola and the second violin, whose places were taken by the clavecin. All his orchestral art is in the true instinct of balance and economy, which, with the most restricted means in managing a few colours, yet knows how to obtain as powerful impressions as our musicians of to-day, with their crowded palette.[396] Nothing, then, is more important, if we wish to render this music truly, than the avoidance of upsetting the equilibrium of the various sections of the orchestra under the pretext of enriching it and bringing it up to date. The worse fault is to deprive it, by a useless surplus of tone-colours, of that suppleness and subtlety of nuance which is its principal charm.

One is prone to accept too readily the idea, that expressive nuance is a privilege of the modern musical art, and that Handel’s orchestra knew only the great theatrical contrasts between force and sweetness, or loudness and softness. It is nothing of the kind. The range of Handel’s nuances is extremely varied. One finds with him the pianissimo, the piano, the mezzo piano, the mezzo forte, un poco piÙ F, un poco F, forte, fortissimo. We never find the orchestral crescendo and decrescendo, which hardly appears marked expressly until the time of Jommelli,[397] and the school of Mannheim; but there is no doubt that it was practised long before it was marked in the music.[398] The President of Brosses wrote in 1739 from Rome: “The voices, like the violins, used with light and shade, with unconscious swelling of sound, which augments the force from note to note, even to a very high degree, since its use as a nuance is extremely sweet and touching.” And endless examples occur in Handel of long crescendi and diminuendi without its expression being marked in the scores.[399] Another kind of crescendo and diminuendo on the same note was very common in the time of Handel, and his friend, Geminiani, helped to set the fashion. Volbach, and with him Hugo Riemann,[400] has shown that Geminiani used in the later editions of his first Violin Sonatas in 1739, and in his Violin School in 1751, the two following signs:

Swelling the sound [\]

Diminishing (falling) the sound [/]

musical notation

As Geminiani explains it, “The sound ought to commence softly, and should swell out in a gradual fashion to about half its value, then it should diminish to the end. The movement of the bow should continue without interruption.”

It happens thus, that by a refinement of expression, which became a mannerism of the Mannheim school, but which also became a source of powerful contrast with the Beethovenians, the swelling stopped short of its aim, and was followed instead by a sudden piano, as in the following example from the Trio Sonatas of Geminiani.

musical notation

It is more than probable that the virtuoso players of Handel’s orchestra also used this means of expression,[401] though we need not assume that Handel used them as abundantly as Geminiani or as the Mannheim players, whose taste had become doubtless a little affected and exaggerated. But what is certain is that with him, as with Geminiani, and indeed with all the great artists of his time, especially with the Italians and their followers, music was a real discourse, and ought to be rendered with inflections as free and as varied as natural speech.[402]

HANDEL DIRECTING AN ORATORIO. Handel is seen (on the left) seated at a cembalo with two keyboards in the midst of his musicians. At his right hand he has the “concertino” group (consisting of the ’cellist, two violinists and two flautists). On his near left (quite close to the cembalo) are the vocal soloists. The rest of the instrumentalists are out of his sight. HANDEL DIRECTING AN ORATORIO.
Handel is seen (on the left) seated at a cembalo with two keyboards in the midst of his musicians. At his right hand he has the “concertino” group (consisting of the ’cellist, two violinists and two flautists). On his near left (quite close to the cembalo) are the vocal soloists. The rest of the instrumentalists are out of his sight.

How was it possible to realise all the suppleness and subtleties of elocution on the orchestra? To understand this it is necessary to examine the disposition and placing of the orchestra of that time. It was not, as with us, centralised under the control of a single conductor. Thus, as Seiffert tells us,[403] in Handel’s time it was the principle of decentralisation which ruled. The choruses had their leaders, who listened to the organ, from which they took their cue, and so sustained the voices. The orchestra was divided into three sections, after the Italian method. Firstly, the Concertino, comprising a first and a second violin, and a solo violoncello; secondly, the Concerto Grosso, comprising the instrumental choir; thirdly, the Ripienists strengthening the Grosso.[404]

A picture in the British Museum, representing Handel in the midst of his musicians, depicts the composer seated at the clavier (a cembalo with two keyboards, of which the lid is raised). He is surrounded by the violoncellist (placed at his right-hand side), two violins and two flutes, which are placed just before him, under his eye. The solo singers are also near him, on his left, quite close to the clavecin. The rest of the instrumentalists are behind him, out of his sight. Thus his directions and his glances would control the Concertino, who would transmit in their turn the chief conductor’s wishes to the Concerto Grosso, and they in their turn to the Ripienists. In place of the quasi-military discipline of modern orchestras, controlled under the baton of a chief conductor, the different bodies of the Handelian orchestra governed one another with elasticity, and it was the incisive rhythm of the little Cembalo which put the whole mass into motion. Such a method avoided the mechanical stiffness of our performances. The danger was rather a certain wobbling without the powerful and infectious will-power of a chief such as Handel, and without the close sympathy of thought which was established between him and his capable sub-conductors of the Concertino and of the Grosso.

It is this elasticity which should be aimed at in the instrumental works of Handel when they are executed nowadays.[405]

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We will first take his Concerti Grossi.[406] None of his works are more celebrated and less understood. Handel attached to them a particular value, for he published them himself by subscription, a means which was usual in his day, but which he himself never adopted except under exceptional circumstances.

One knows that the kind of Concerti Grossi, which consists chiefly in a dialogue between a group of solo instrumentalists (the Concertino) and the full body of instruments (Concerto Grosso), to which is added the cembalo,[407] was, if not invented, at least carried to its perfection and rendered classical by Corelli.[408] The works of Corelli, aided by the efforts of his followers, had become widely known in Europe. Geminiani introduced them into England,[409] and without doubt Handel did not hesitate to profit by the example of Geminiani, who was his friend;[410] but it is much more natural to think that he learnt the Concerto Grosso, at its source at Rome, from Corelli himself during his sojourn there in 1708. Several of his Concertos in his Opus 3[411] date from 1710, 1716, 1722. The same feature shows itself right up to the time of his apprenticeship at Hamburg: in any case he might have already known the Corellian style, thanks to the propaganda of George Muffat, who spread this style very early in Germany.[412] After Corelli, Locatelli,[413] and especially Vivaldi,[414] have singularly transformed the Concerto Grosso by giving it the free character of programme music[415] and by turning it resolutely towards the form of the Sonata in three parts. But when the works of Vivaldi were played in London in 1723, and the works which aroused such a general enthusiasm became thoroughly known to Handel, it was always to Corelli that he gave the preference, and he was very conservative in certain ways even about him. The form of his Concerto, of which the principal movements varied from four to six, oscillated between the Suite and the Sonata, and even glanced towards the symphonic overture. It is this for which the theorists blame him, and it is this for which I praise him. For he does not seek to impose a uniform cast on his thoughts, but leaves it open to himself to fashion the form as he requires, and the framework varies accordingly, following his inclinations from day to day. The spontaneity of his thought, which has already been shown by the extreme rapidity with which the Concerti were composed—each in a single day at a single sitting, and many each week[416]—constitutes the great charm of these works. They are, in the words of Kretzschmar, grand impression pictures, translated into a form, at the same time precise and supple, in which the least change of emotion can make itself easily felt. Truly they are not all of equal value. Their conception itself, which depended in a way on mere momentary inspiration, is the explanation of this extreme inequality. One ought to acknowledge here that the Seventh Concerto, for example (the one in B flat major), and the last three have but a moderate interest.[417] They are amongst those least played; but to be quite just we must pay homage to these masterpieces, and especially to the Second Concerto in F major, which is like a Beethovenian concerto: for we find there some of the spirit of the Bonn master. For Kretzschmar the ensemble calls to mind a beautiful autumn day—the morning, where the rising sun pierces its way through the clouds—the afternoon, the joyful walk, the rest in the forest, and finally the happy and belated return. It is difficult in fact not to have natural scenes brought before one’s eyes in hearing these works. The first Andante Larghetto, which predicts, at times, the Pastoral Symphony of Beethoven, is a reverie on a beautiful summer’s day. The spirit lulls itself with nature’s murmur, becomes intoxicated with it, and goes to rest. The tonality rocks between F major to B flat major and G minor. To render this piece well it is necessary to give the time plenty of play, often retarding it, and following the composer’s reverie in a spirit of soft leisurely abandon.

Andante larghetto

Andante larghetto

The Allegro in D minor which follows is a spirited and delicate little play, a dialogue leaping from the two solo violins of the Concerto, then on to the Concertino and the Grosso in turn. There, also, certain passages in the Bass, robust, rollicking, and rustic, again bring to mind the Pastoral Symphony.

Allegro

The third movement, a Largo in B flat major, is one of the most intimate of Handel’s instrumental pages. After seven bars of Largo, in which the Concertino alternates dreamily with the Tutti,

Largo

two bars adagio, languorously drawn out, cause the reverie to glide into a sort of ecstasy,

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then a larghetto andante e piano breathes out a tender and melancholy song.

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The Largo is resumed. There is in this little poem a melancholy which seems to revive Handel’s personal remembrances.—The allegro ma non troppo with which it finishes is, on the contrary, of a jovial feeling, entirely Beethovenish; it sings joyfully as it bounds along in well-marked three-four time, with a pizzicato-like rhythm.

Allegro ma non troppo

In the middle of this march a phrase occurs on the two violins of the Concertino which is like a hymn of reverent and tender gratitude.

musical notation

musical notation

The Fourth Concerto in A minor is not less intimate with its Larghetto affettuoso, which ought to be played with the rubato, rallentando and short pauses—its allegro fugue, which spreads out and over-shadows all by its powerful tread—and after a Largo of antique graveness the allegro three-four which finishes is the veritable last movement of the Beethoven sonata, romantic, capricious, passionate, and more and more unrestrained as it approaches the end, accelerando nearly prestissimo,—inebriated.[418]

Allegro

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But one ought to know especially the Sixth Concerto in G minor, the most celebrated of all on account of its magnificent Musette. It opens with a beautiful Larghetto, full of that melancholy which is one of the dominant sentiments with Handel, and one of the least observed by most people: melancholy that is, in the sense of the Malinconia of DÜrer, or of Beethoven—less agitated, but still profound. We have already encountered it in the Second, in the Third, and in the Fourth Concerto.[419] Here it is found in an elegiac monologue, punctuated by pedal points;

Largo affettuoso

then in the dialogues of the Concertino and of the Tutti responding, like the groups of the ancient classical chorus. The allegro ma non troppo fugue which follows it, on a twisting chromatic theme, is of the same sombre colour. But it is the lusty march of the disciplined fugue which dispels the fantastic shadows.

Allegro ma non troppo

Then comes the Larghetto, three-four time in E flat major, which Handel calls a Musette, and which is one of the most delightful dreams of pastoral happiness.[420] A whole day of poetic and capricious events gradually unrolls itself over the beautiful echoing refrain,

Larghetto

then the movement slackens, nearly going to sleep, then presses forward again, acquiring a strong, joyous rhythm, a pulsating dance of robust youths, full of bounding life.

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In the midst of this picture an episode, rustic and frolicsome, is introduced.

musical notation

musical notation

Then the broad subject of the Introduction recurs with its refrain of quiet joy, nature’s own smile.[421]

Such works are truly pictures in music. To understand them it does not suffice to have quick ears; it is necessary to have the eyes to see, and the heart to feel.[422]

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The Symphonies of the operas and oratorios of Handel are extremely varied. Still, the Lully form predominates.[423] This form consists, as is well known, of a first slow movement, grave, pompous, and majestic, followed by a second (quick) movement, full of life, and usually in fugal style, with a return to the slow movement for conclusion. It appears in the Almira of 1705, and Handel uses it with variations in all the most celebrated works of his maturity, such as in the Messiah, and Judas MaccabÆus, and even has recourse to it again in his last work of all, The Triumph of Time (1757), but he does not confine himself entirely to this form alone. The Symphonia of Roderigo (1707) adds to the Lully-like overture a Balletto in the Italian style, a veritable Suite of Dances: Jig, Sarabande, Matelot, Minuet, BourrÉe, Minuet, Grand Passacaille. The Overture to The Triumph of Time of 1708 is a brilliant Concerto, where the Concertino and the Grosso converse in a most entertaining and graceful fashion. The Overture to Il Pastor Fido, 1712, is a Suite in eight movements. That of Teseo, 1713, contains two Largos, each followed by a playful movement of imitation. That of the Passion after Brockes, 1716, consists of a single fugued allegro,[424] which is joined to the first chorus by the link of a declamatory solo on the oboe.[425] The Overture to Acis and Galatea, 1720, is also a single movement. The Overture to Giulio Cesare, 1724, is joined on to the first chorus, which is in the form of the third movement, the Minuet. The Overture to Atalanta, 1736, has a charming sprightliness, similar to an instrumental suite for a fÊte, like the Firework Music, of which we shall speak later. The Overture to Saul, 1738, is a veritable Concerto for organ and orchestra, and the sonata form is adopted in the first movement.—We see then a very marked effort on the part of Handel, particularly in his youth, to vary the form of his Overture from one work to another.

Even when he uses the Lully type of Overture (and he seems to turn towards it more and more in his maturity) he transforms it by the spirit which animates it. He never allows its character to be purely decorative. He introduces therein always expressive and dramatic ideas.[426] If one cannot exactly call the splendid Overture to Agrippina, 1709, a Concert Overture of programme music, one cannot deny its dramatic power. The second movement bubbles with life. It is no longer an erudite divertissement, a movement foreign to the action, but it has a tragic character, and the response of the fugue is apparent in the severe and slightly restless subject of the first piece. For conclusion the slow movement is recalled by a solo on the oboe, which announces it out in the pathetic manner made so well known in certain recitatives of J. S. Bach.

Adagio

Many people have seen in the three movements[427] of the Overture to Esther, 1720, a complete programme, which Chrysander gives thus in detail: firstly, the wickedness of Haman; secondly, the complaints of Israel; thirdly, the deliverance. I will content myself by saying that the ensemble of this symphony is thoroughly in the colour and spirit of the tragedy itself—but it is not possible to doubt that, with the Overture of Deborah and with that of Belshazzar that Handel wished to work to a complete programme; for of the four movements of the Deborah Overture, the second is repeated later on as the Chorus of the Israelites, and the fourth as the Chorus of Baal’s priests. Thus in his very first pages he places in miniature in the Overture the duality of the nations, whose antagonism forms the subject of the drama.[428] It seems also true that the Overture to Belshazzar aims at painting the orgy of the feast of Sesach, and the apparition of the Divine Hand which wrote the mystic words of fire on the wall. In every case dramatic intentions are very evident; by the three repeats; the interrupted flow of the orchestra is intersected by three short chords, piano; and, then after the sudden silence, three bars of solemn and soft music are heard like a religious song.[429]

Allegro

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We now come to our last class of Handel’s instrumental music, to which historians have given far too little attention, and in which Handel shows himself a precursor, and at the same time a model. I refer to the open-air music.

This took a prominent place in the English life. The environs of London were full of gardens, where, Pepys tells us, “vocal and instrumental concerts vied with the voices of the birds.” Concerts were given at Vauxhall; at South Lambeth Palace on the Thames; at Ranelagh, near Chelsea, about two miles from the city; at Marylebone Garden; and Handel was always welcome there. From 1738 the proprietor of Vauxhall, Jonathan Tyer, erected in its gardens a statue of Handel, and this was hardly done when the Concerti Grossi became the favourite pieces at the concerts of Marylebone, Vauxhall, and Ranelagh. Burney tells us that he often heard them played by numerous orchestras. Handel wrote pieces especially intended for these garden concerts. Generally speaking, he attached little importance to them. They were little symphonies or unpretentious dances, like the Hornpipe, composed for the concert at Vauxhall in 1740.[430] An anecdote related by Pohl and also by Chrysander, shows Handel pleasantly engaged on this music, which gave him no trouble at all.

But he composed on these lines some works tending towards a much vaster scale: from 1715 or 1717 the famous Water Music, written for the royal procession of barges on the Thames,[431] and the Firework Music made to illustrate the firework display given in Green Park on April 27, 1749, in celebration of the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle.[432]

The Water Music has a grand Serenade in the form of a suite comprising more than twenty movements. It opens with a pompous Opera-overture; then come some dialogues, with echoes of horns and drums, where the brass and the rest of the orchestra, which are arranged in two sections, respond. Then follow happy and soothing songs, dances, a BourrÉe, a Hornpipe, Minuets, popular songs, which alternate and contrast with the joyful and powerful fanfares. The orchestra is very nearly the same as in his usual symphonies, except that considerable importance is given to the brass. One even finds in this work certain pieces written in the chamber-music style, or in the theatrical manner.

With the Firework Music the character of open-air music is even more definitely asserted, quite as much by the broad style of the piece as by the orchestration, which is confined entirely to the wind instruments.[433] The composition is divided into two parts: an Overture which was to be played before the grand firework display, and a number of little pieces to be played during the display, and which corresponded to certain allegorical set pieces. The Overture is a sort of stately march in D major, and has some resemblance to the Overture of the Ritterballet (Huntsman’s Dance) of Beethoven, and which is, like it, joyful, equestrian, and very sonorous. The shorter movements comprise a BourrÉe, a Largo a la Siciliana, entitled Peace,[434] of a beautiful heroic grace, which lulls itself to sleep; a very sprightly Allegro entitled The Rejoicing, and two Minuets for conclusion. It is an interesting work for the organisers of our popular fÊtes and open-air spectacles to study.[435] If we have said that after 1740 Handel wrote hardly any other instrumental music than the Firework Music, and the two monumental concertos, a due cori (for two horns) we have the feeling that the last evolution of his thought and instrumental style led him in the direction of music conceived for great masses, wide spaces, and huge audiences. He had always in him a popular vein of thought. I immediately call to mind the many popular inspirations with which his memory was stored, and which vivify the pages of his oratorios. His art, which renewed itself perpetually at this rustic source, had in his time an astonishing popularity. Certain airs from Ottone, Scipione, Arianna, Berenice, and such other of his operas, were circulated and vulgarised not only in England,[436] but abroad, and even in France (generally so unyielding to outside influences).[437]

It is not only of this popularity, a little banal, of which I wish to speak, which one could not ignore—for it is only a stupid pride and a small heart which denies great value to the art which pleases humble people;—what I wish to notice chiefly in the popular character of Handel’s music is that it is always truly conceived for the people, and not for an Élite dilettanti as was the French Opera between Lully and Gluck. Without ever departing from his sovereign ideas of beautiful form, in which he gave no concession to the crowd, he reproduced in a language immediately “understanded of the people” those feelings in which all could share. This genial improvisor, compelled during the whole of his life (a half-century of creative power) to address from the stage a mixed public, for whom it was necessary to understand immediately, was like the orators of old, who had the cult of style and instinct for immediate and vital effect. Our epoch has lost the feeling of this type of art and men: pure artists who speak to the people and for the people, not for themselves or for their confrÈres. To-day the pure artists lock themselves within themselves, and those who speak to the people are most often mountebanks. The free England of the nineteenth century was in a certain measure related to the Roman republic, and indeed Handel’s eloquence was not without relation to that of the epic orators, who sustained in the form their highly finished and passionate discourses, who left their mark on the shuddering crowd of loiterers. This eloquence did on occasion actually thrust itself into the soul of the nation as in the days of the Jacobite invasion, where Judas MaccabÆus incarnated the public feeling. In the first performances of Israel in Egypt some of the auditors praised the heroic virtues of this music, which could raise up the populace and lead armies to victory.

By this power of popular appeal, as by all the other aspects of his genius, Handel was in the robust line of Cavalli and of Gluck, but he surpassed them. Alone, Beethoven has walked in these broader paths, and followed along the road which Handel had opened.