January 18, 1833. SIR, I read the communication of your correspondent, Honorius, in your number for December, 1832, with considerable interest, as it referred to a subject which I had long desired to see touched upon—the faults of the great Handel. There are, however, one or two points in his letter upon which I beg leave to offer a few observations. Your correspondent treats as a fallacy the first of Dr. Brown’s objections, which imputes to Handel ‘too much musical division upon single syllables, to the neglect of the true sense and meaning of the song.’ I must say, that I think there are not a few instances in Handel which directly corroborate this charge. In the song in Saul, ‘O Lord, whose mercies numberless,’ we have the word ‘fail’ in the first verse, and ‘soul’ in the second, most unnaturally tortured: the singer has, positively, two or three rests placed in the midst of his laborious enunciation of these words, in order to allow him to take breath between; in consequence whereof, the continuity of the air is broken, and the close of the song materially injured in effect. How can it possibly be said that such divisions ‘increase the meaning of the words on which they are employed?’ In the duet, ‘Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness,’ there are again instances of words most unpleasingly drawled out into long uninteresting passages; one part imitating the other, almost to the entire exclusion of meaning and expression. Upon the second charge I have nothing to say; but surely the instance in the third movement of the Dettingen Te Deum is almost ludicrously gross. The latter part of the third charge I admit, as exposing what I have always considered as the most glaring defect of Handel’s style. Almost every air has, first, its allotted number of bars in the major key, then its quantum in the minor, and then returns to the major with the most undeviating and uncompromising regularity. Take, for instance, the well-known song, ‘Let the bright Seraphim.’ Why should ‘the cherubic host’ be forced to ‘strike their immortal harps’ in the minor key, whilst their brethren, the seraphim, are allowed ‘to blow their trumpets’ in the major? Why should there be any minor at all, unless interwoven naturally in the principal movement of the song? Surely those who arrogate to Handel the praise of having deviated from the bad customs of his age, and formed a new style of his own, must allow, that in this most important particular he was as faulty as any of his predecessors. And this, I rejoice to see, your correspondent concedes without a word of defence. Let any unprejudiced person compare those songs where the minor movement and Da Capo are introduced, with those in which they are omitted, and he will at once perceive the superiority of the latter. But, ‘O, what art can teach,’ ‘Pious orgies,’ and ‘But thou didst not leave,’ in the Messiah, are as chaste and beautiful compositions as have ever existed; and it is upon such songs as these, and upon his magnificent chorusses that, in my opinion, the true glory of Handel rests. There is also, I think, another general defect in Handel’s writings, not adverted to in your correspondent’s letter; which is, a constant sacrifice of harmony to melody. Allow him the praise of melody; but surely his harmony is deficient in richness, depth, and grandeur. Where do we find anything in Handel at all equal to ‘The Heavens are telling,’ in Haydn’s Creation? Examples might also be adduced from Handel, where the harmony and melody are almost equally neglected—as the duet, ‘Joys in gentle train;’ the air of which, if we can call it an air, is as tame and meagre as we can well conceive possible. With many apologies for this long letter, which you will oblige me by inserting in the Harmonicon, I remain your obedient servant, P.S. I hope to see this subject resumed, ere long, in your valuable pages. |
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