Part 32

The contrast with the composer's operas, which are made up almost entirely of solo numbers was too decided, and moreover there was at this time in London a marked and deplorable falling off of musical interest. After years of immoderate indulgence, there followed a period of weariness and indifference. Handel, indeed, set to music in 1739 Dryden's lesser "Ode to St. Cecilia," and in 1740 Milton's beautiful poem "_L'allegro ed il pensieroso_,"[3] thus showing how he identified himself with the intellectual life of the English and the creations of their most eminent men. But his efforts seemed no longer to bear fruit, and he was already considering the project of leaving England forever, when offers made to him from Dublin opened favorable prospects in a new quarter. He was requested to give a performance in that city, for the benefit of some of its benevolent institutions, and in return the best vocal and instrumental talent of the place would be at his disposal for such other concerts as he might give. The work composed by Handel for the desired performance was the "Messiah." The text had been drawn from the Bible by Charles Jennings (not by Handel himself, as has been falsely stated), and the music was completed on the 14th of September, 1741. On the 18th of November Handel arrived in Dublin, and on the 13th of April, 1742, was produced for the first time the work in which the lofty aim of the composer became perfectly clear. The new order of art created by him, the oratorio as he conceived it, was now first comprehended by the world, and began at once to enter into the life of the English people as an exponent of the highest ideal good which had been vouchsafed them in their generation. Many of Handel's other works were brought out in Dublin, and he enjoyed there a period of unalloyed happiness, after the trials of the past few years. When he returned to London in 1742, he found that here also the tide had turned in his favor. The seed sown by him through a quarter of a century was finally beginning to germinate. His music had gradually cultivated the taste of the nation and he could henceforth count upon a sure understanding of whatever he might create. From this time Handel's authority in England was uncontested and his popularity boundless. He stood forth before the eyes of the people as the embodied essence of all music. It now became his habit to perform the "Messiah" every year for the benefit of a foundling's home, and he employed the resources of his art most freely and nobly in every direction in aid of all charitable institutions. What he had already once attempted in 1735 in the Lenten season, when no operas could be performed, but had not been able to carry out, became now a regularly organized arrangement. Twelve concerts were given annually, in which he produced his own vocal works and in addition delighted the audiences by his performances upon the organ. In 1743 he began the series of concerts with his "Samson," which was composed immediately after the "Messiah," and won scarcely less favor than the latter. Of his later oratorios, "Judas Maccabæus" alone enjoyed an equally great and lasting success. But the remaining thirteen, which occupied the inexhaustible energies of the man until within two years of his death, were listened to with sympathetic interest. They are: "Semele" (1743), "Joseph" (also 1743), "Belshazzar" (1744), "Heracles" (1744), Occasional Oratorios (1746), "Joshua" (1747), "Alexander Balus" (1747), "Solomon" (1748), "Susannah" (1748), "Theodora" (1749), "The Choice of Hercules" (1750), "Jephthah" (1751), "The Triumph of Time and Truth" (1757). The last-named work is that final arrangement of the Italian oratorio, which has been already mentioned. When Handel brought it out again in 1737, much changed and amplified, he still retained the Italian text, and it was now, for the first time, incorporated with the series of his English oratorios. It is an allegorical drama: Beauty and Pleasure stand upon one side, Time and Counsel on the other. Which of the two pairs shall finally win the day, is to be shown. Deceit places herself near the first, and tries to blind their eyes to the transitoriness of all delights and the earnestness of life. But in the end, following the warnings of Time and Counsel, Beauty and Pleasure turn after all to Truth. The deep significance of Handel's closing his long career with the same work which stands at its entrance, is readily perceived. Well might it seem to him an image of his own life. He too had formed intimate acquaintance with the beauty and pleasure of the world, but he could truly say in the evening of his life that they had not succeeded in averting his gaze from the serious and eternal things which "are not of this world."

Between the oratorios just mentioned fall a few other less important works, among which the "Te Deum" for the victory at Dettingen in 1743 deserves special mention. The last of his oratorios written down wholly in his own hand was "Jephthah," and this he could only accomplish with difficulty. For when he had arrived at the closing chorus of the second part, he was attacked with a disease of the eyes, from which, however, he so far recovered as to be able to complete the work by degrees. But he was engaged upon this oratorio from the 21st of January to the 30th of August, whereas three or four weeks were usually sufficient for a task of this sort. The oculist Taylor, whose want of skill was manifested so clearly in the case of Sebastian Bach, treated Handel also, and performed an operation; but here again the experiment was unsuccessful and total blindness was the result. With Bach this condition lasted only a few months, while Handel was obliged to support the affliction through all the last years of his life. In spite of this, he continued his musical performances under the direction of his pupil, John Christian Smith, and even in his blindness, regularly played an organ solo between the second and third parts of an oratorio. He chose for the purpose one or another of his organ concertos, but when obliged to play without instrumental accompaniment, did not confine himself to the music as written, trusting instead to his great gift for improvisation and joining in with the other performers at a given signal. It was an impressive sight for the audience when the blind old man was conducted to the organ bench and then, after he had enchanted them through his wonderful playing, was led forward to make his bow. During the singing of the oratorio, he was accustomed to sit still near the organ, and on the performance of "Samson," when the blind hero of the piece reached the aria: "Total eclipse! no sun, no moon," tears were often seen to flow from the sightless eyes. Even as late as 1759 he still gave his oratorio concerts. But before the series was ended, on the 6th of April, he fell ill, never to recover. On the 14th of April, at eight o'clock in the morning, he died. It was the Saturday between Good Friday and Easter. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, where stands the monument erected to his memory.

Of his not inconsiderable property, he bequeathed about £20,000 to his relatives in Germany. He went through life unmarried, and posterity has not learned whether the prospect of founding a family of his own ever opened itself before him. In figure he was tall and robust; his movements were clumsy, but his features were animated and dignified. He was easily moved to anger, but a certain element of humor served to break the force of his stormy outbreaks. The broken English in which he spoke had often a comical effect, especially in moments of excitement. Burney relates that he had a natural turn for wit and the gift of treating the most commonplace matters in an interesting manner. His ordinary expression was somewhat stern, (that he seldom laughed in his younger days is also related by Mattheson) but when he smiled it was like a sunbeam piercing a dark cloud. Unyielding determination, strong independence, sincere devoutness, a high sense of honor, fidelity and a noble philanthropy, which was always ready to offer help, were among the most marked traits of this man, whose greatness did not consist in his art alone.

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In Handel and Bach the inborn talent for music of the German people finds a fuller expression than at any earlier or later period, nor have other nations furnished an instance so phenomenal. The reason lies partly in the fact that the two men, equally endowed by nature, differed from each other as widely as possible, and accordingly exercised their powers in the most opposite domains of art. Precisely in these two departments of music from which Bach held himself entirely aloof, the opera and the oratorio, Handel labored with untiring and exclusive energy. Organ and piano playing, to be sure, formed for him the starting-point of his development, but while Bach went on through his whole life in the path marked out from the beginning, Handel left it at the early age of eighteen and entered upon a wholly different career. Of Bach it can be said that he was an instrumental composer, and remained such to the end of his life. The medium through which Handel wished to express himself was that of song. Instruments which can be associated with the voice and form a setting for it he considered, and therefore treated as subordinate. And even where he allows them to work independently--in his piano compositions, in his concertos and sonatas of the most-varied arrangement--there is awakened in the hearer the feeling that he is being amused by a sweet, beautiful, thought-inspiring play, but still a _play_, in the truest meaning of the word. Handel first becomes entirely serious in his cantatas, operas and oratorios, and for this reason it is difficult to provide a place for him in the history of instrumental music. He stands by himself and not in the ranks.

The most beautiful of his piano compositions are the eight suites of 1720. "_Suite_" does not signify here a definite form of piano music, as with Bach and his German predecessors. The word indeed can only be translated by _series_, or _succession_. In this collection there is not one actual suite, but a number of different pieces for the piano are arranged in pleasing alternation. There are dances and variations, but also preludes and fugues, and finally pieces more in the manner of the Italian chamber music, which preferred the violin to the piano as a medium of expression. The caprice of the master here held sovereign sway. Even his manner of writing for the piano is different from that of Bach. He had learned more than the latter from Krieger and Kuhnau, and a certain relationship with the South German piano music is also shown; it is very significant that he interested himself in the "_Componimenti Musicali_," by Gottlieb Muffat of Vienna, which appeared in 1735, while, so far as we know, he took no notice of Bach's piano compositions. It is, however, certain that he allowed himself to be strongly influenced by the two Scarlattis; this is plainly shown by the style of his piano technique, but more especially in his manner of writing piano fugues. In regard to this, one should examine, by the side of the first collection, the fourth, published in 1735, which only contains six fugues. The contents of the second and third are less important. Handel at one time gave instruction to the royal princesses, and may have written down for their use much that is included in this collection.

As is readily conceivable, when we consider the school in which his taste was formed, Handel wrote from preference chamber music in the Italian style. He has given us solo sonatas with bass, trios for two violins and bass, _concerti grossi_, and concertos for the organ. But here, also, he shows an inclination to depart from the forms which, after a gradual process of development, had become established in 1700, not for the purpose of making organic improvement in them, but through pure caprice. Like that of his piano compositions, the music has something of an improvisatorial and accidental character. It might be different, without becoming therefore less beautiful and entertaining. The creations which he offers are by no means always original; we repeatedly find portions of his compositions for the voice, which he has simply arranged for instruments. He once went with a clerical friend of his to take a walk in the Vauxhall gardens on the Thames, at the hour of the usual public concert. The orchestra began to play and both men drew near to listen. After a time the old clergyman said: "It is wretched stuff." "You are right," said Handel, "I thought so myself, after I had written it." But just in this improvisatorial style lies one of the especial charms of his instrumental music. It is necessarily unequal in merit, but when the composer was in the right mood, he accomplished something which delighted everybody and will always delight anew. Among the twelve _concerti grossi_ of 1739, the third, in E minor, and the sixth, in G minor, are works of surpassing beauty. The twelve _concerti_ are only written for stringed instruments, to which Handel, for the most part confines himself in works of a different class. This is the Italian fashion. Bach employs by preference the most diverse sorts of wind instruments in the six great concertos of 1721. To his complex, contrapuntal style of writing, moreover, the transparent simplicity of Handel, who always says exactly what he has to say without circumlocution, but with the greatest emphasis, offers a sharp contrast. One may say, indeed, that Handel's _concerti grossi_ are no _concerti_ at all, in Bach's sense of the word. They have the form of Corelli's sonatas, freely adapted to the resources of a fuller body of instruments. The organ concertos of Handel are more in the prescribed form. It has already been observed that the organ is here treated like a piano of richer tone, and not like a church instrument, after the manner of Bach. English performers have had the same idea and have just as often made use of the concertos for piano music.

The Italian cantatas of Handel are likewise to be regarded as a less important branch, or even a component part of his operas, just as the chamber duets, anthems and similar compositions belong in the domain of his oratorios. For a brief survey of his works, it is therefore sufficient to confine ourselves to the opera and the oratorio. The opinion has been widespread and prevails even in our day, that so long as Handel occupied himself with the opera, he was obstinately pursuing the wrong path, which he only abandoned after many bitter experiences, in order henceforth to devote himself to the oratorio, for which nature had intended him. For it has always been considered one of the most marked characteristics of genius that it discovers the right way unconsciously, as it were, and impelled by inward necessity. According to this, Handel, with his forty operas, would have mistaken his true bent during the best forty years of his life. The opinion rests, however, upon the theory of an antithesis between the opera and the oratorio, which has never existed. During the hundred years preceding Handel's time, the two forms of art, simultaneous in origin, kept equal pace in their development. Through the changes wrought in the opera in the middle of the seventeenth century at Venice, and from the end of that period at Naples, solo song attained almost complete supremacy in that field, while in the oratorio there was still room for the chorus. The extraordinary pleasure derived from solo-singing is shown by the effort made to express the individual personality in music, and the opportunity of doing this is what attracted Handel to the opera. If we regard the poetic compositions employed by him in the light of their dramatic value, their delineation of character, the systematic management and increasing intensity of the action, they are not, for the most part, calculated to excite a profound interest. They are after the manner of all operatic poems in Italy in 1700, and generally derive their material from ancient history or from mythological lore. But the poets certainly show skill in so arranging their incidents that the personages concerned find opportunity to give utterance to their feelings. The portrayal of character, by means of music, was, then, the object in view. This Handel wished to accomplish in his operas, and, within the limits which he prescribed for himself, he was entirely successful. Not psychological processes, but psychological conditions were what he wished to represent in his arias, and the progress of the action lies always outside of the principal musical themes. That this was intentional with him, and also with the Italians of his time, is proved most clearly by the form of solo-song almost exclusively employed. The aria, as fashioned by Alessandro Scarlatti, is only adapted to a feeling which indeed rises above its original state, but soon returns to it. The recurrence of the first part at the end, after a weakly contrasting middle portion, is the image of a self-centred exclusiveness. The direct opposite of this form is that in which a slow movement is followed by a more rapid one, so that the feeling passes from rest to motion, from contemplation to activity. This is certainly the dramatic form, and therefore Handel's opera music is not dramatic in a narrow sense. But no one will attempt to deny that his style has also its artistic justification and is sure of producing great effects whenever the hearer concentrates his attention upon the characteristic picture presented, rather than upon the suspense resulting from an uninterrupted continuous action. With inexhaustible inventive power, Handel has drawn such pictures in his operas. No reproach is less deserved than that he has acquired a stereotyped manner and turns out his productions as if they were cast in a mould. Whenever the same forms and turns recur in his works, they express exactly what is demanded by the situation and is necessary for the accomplishing of a powerful effect. For the rest, he seizes every problem firmly and repeats himself as little as the circumstances of our lives are exactly repeated, even if they sometimes seem to show a general resemblance. His work, to be sure, lies almost wholly in the province of simple sensations--complicated, romantic, psychological conditions are out of his sphere. So-called _ensemble_ movements, in which different persons with strongly-contrasting emotions confront each other, whose utterances it has become one of the most interesting tasks of the latter opera-composers to weave together upon the ground of a certain universal sympathy, are of comparatively rare occurrence in his compositions. Just as little does he concern himself to give expression to a mood which proceeds from a single scene, considered as such. The instrumental accompaniment, which finds herein one of its heaviest tasks, is always extremely simple and restrained. Everything really essential finds utterance through the singer. Singers of the highest order are therefore demanded by his operas, those who have not only command of the most highly perfected technique of their art, but whose creative mind enables them to become thoroughly imbued with the spirit of a piece of music. He lived in a time when the art of song on every side was in a condition of the highest cultivation, and it was under such influences that he was able to create those perfect specimens of characteristic and artistic song, found in almost superabundant measure in his operas. Because in our time this art has been lost, the beauty of Handel's opera arias remains for the most part concealed from us, but that another change will one day take place there is no doubt. An immediate revolution, to be sure, is not to be expected. Music has fallen by degrees from that lofty height, and only by degrees can she again attain unto it. What the operas of Handel will then signify to the world cannot to-day be even approximately estimated.