George Frideric Handel_Dover Books on Music

by Paul Henry Lang

  In spite of the ambiguous situation, both Innocent XI and Innocent XII, whose reforms were still felt when Handel lived in Rome, earnestly strove to cleanse the moral atmosphere that enveloped the Holy See and the Eternal City, abolishing nepotism and in general ruling the Church in exemplary fashion, but not even a new Savonarola could have interfered with the Italians’ love of music. Clement XI, during whose pontificate the Holy See suffered grave political reverses, was the Pope during Handel’s Italian visit. Another one of those high churchmen of blameless life, and a man of vast learning and culture, a great patron of the arts and letters, he nevertheless saw the prestige of the papacy sink to the lowest level in centuries. In the Treaty of Utrecht (1713), which Handel was to memorialize in a splendid Te Deum in London, the Pope was completely ignored by both the Protestant and the Catholic parties.

  In contradistinction, the humanistic societies, led by cardinals and princes, were flourishing, and Handel saw them in their most extraordinary splendor. The principal circle of cultivated intellectuals met in the academy called Accademia Poetico-Musicale, usually in the palace of Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni, and occasionally at the residence of the Marquess Francesco Maria Ruspoli, later Prince of Cerveteri. The Academy was founded in memory of Queen Christina of Sweden. This daughter of the great Protestant warrior Gustavus Adolphus abdicated, embraced Catholicism, and moved to Rome in 1659, becoming alternately the despair and the laughing stock of European diplomacy. Her life was beset by scandals, and in the end, the Pope, who had hailed her conversion and her advent to Rome, was making every effort to get rid of this embarrassing and ill-behaved guest with her questionable retinue. But her influence on Roman arts and letters was considerable, and she was especially fond of music. The queen died in 1689, and the Academy was founded the following year by her friends and protégés as a tribute to her.

  The eccentric queen’s role as high patron of the arts fell to Cardinal Ottoboni, but ten years after the death of Christina another exiled queen, a member of the Academy, claimed the vacant throne of patroness, though without success. Queen Maria Casimira of Poland, a woman of very ordinary intellectual capabilities, nevertheless managed to recruit a distinguished coterie. For a brief period Alessandro Scarlatti was her court maestro, and after Alessandro’s departure to Naples, his son Domenico inherited the post early in 1709. Handel undoubtedly watched the exiled queen’s moves to restore opera. Maria Casimira petitioned the Pope to permit her to produce musical plays in her palace, assuring him that they would be altogether free of frivolity. Permission granted, the first such musical plays were innocent serenatas for very small ensembles. Emboldened, by 1708 she built herself a tiny theatre, engaged a full-time librettist, and actually advanced to opera, the first production being, naturally, by Alessandro Scarlatti. But the move was abortive, and during Handel’s stay the interdict was enforced.

  Giovanni Maria Crescimbeni (1663-1728), critic, poet, and historian, for thirty-eight years “custodian general” of the Academy, remembered for his great chronicle of Italian poets and poetry (Dell’ Istoria della volgar poesia, 1698), an able and observant man of letters, is our reliable witness for the meetings and concerts held in the Academy. His interesting descriptions are detailed and inform us of the paramount role music played in the sessions. Though Handel was not a member, perhaps because he was under the minimum age requirement or because he was a foreigner, he was nevertheless often present as a guest, and thus came to know at first hand the three coryphaei of Italian music, who were honored members of the Academy: Corelli, Scarlatti, Pasquini. Their acquaintance gave new directions to Handel’s entire concept of music.

  Arcangelo Corelli (1653-1713) was the undisputed and universally admired leader of instrumental music in Italy. A patrician, he lived honored like a prince in a private apartment in Cardinal Ottoboni’s palace. Corelli was a very slow, meticulous, and highly critical worker who corrected and polished eternally. Moreover, the great master of the sonata and the concerto apparently never wrote a single piece of vocal music. His distilled classicism, based on tradition yet advancing into the future, was new to Handel, as was the clarity of form, the logical yet imaginative exploitation of ideas, the pathos, and the beauty of the noble string tone that was never beclouded by empty virtuosity or reckless adventures. Corelli sums up everything that a century of instrumental music had produced; his influence was tremendous. Handel, like everyone else, was deeply indebted to Corelli, and his own concertos were a direct continuation of the Italian’s work. But the significance of the concerto as form and principle was not restricted to the genre itself: this most original “invention” of the Italian Baroque affected all music to the marrow. The concerto invaded and reformed everything, reaching even such seemingly unrelated fields as fugue, cantata, and opera. As in Sebastian Bach, where the spirit of the concerto touches his very fugue themes and the choruses of his cantatas, in Handel we must proceed beyond his concertos and realize that essential stylistic features in his operas and oratorios are governed by ideas coming from that form. We shall see how fond he was of shaping his orchestral accompaniments to arias in the concerto grosso manner. The type we might call “concerto grosso aria” is already present in some of the Italian cantatas Handel composed in Rome. The flowing concerto style is likewise present in Bach’s da capo arias, but even some of his great organ fugues are veritable concertos, and not a few of the chorale preludes are “concerted.” No one could resist the appeal of this invigorating musical principle, least of all Handel; the meeting with Corelli was an overwhelming experience.

  Alessandro Scarlatti (1660-1725), a lineal descendant of the great Roman and Venetian masters of the 17th century and the real founder of the Neapolitan school, was a Fra Filippo Lippi let loose on the walls of Prato Cathedral. It is impossible to enumerate his works—operas, oratorios, cantatas, Masses, instrumental music—all of them glowing with a resilient yet gentle and wonderfully arching melody expressing the accents of warm and passionate lyricism. This prodigal inventor, who must have been composing every waking hour of his life, was also an incomparable musical thinker who reformed almost every aspect of music, creating an operatic ideal that for a long time was accepted as the musical ten commandments by the whole world. As Frank Walker puts it, Mozart, who never knew Scarlatti’s music, “was yet his best pupil”; but we can safely go beyond the limits of the 18th century and affirm that Scarlatti was one of those on whose broad shoulders our music is .still uneasily poised. It was Scarlatti who ensconced the da capo aria in its position as the principal element of the pure “music opera,” who brought life and variety to the orchestral accompaniment of arias by placing the concerted style into a new perspective in the opera pit, who established the Italian overture, reversing Lully’s sequence of slow-fast-slow and thereby giving impetus to a type that was to play a capital role in the symphonic style of the Classic era.

  Bernardo Pasquini (1637-1710), the third of the distinguished musical Arcadians, is one of the great unknowns. A Handelian figure, robust yet at the same time gentle, his works show Tuscan nobility, exquisite taste, and marvelous knowledge of all facets of music. He was so famous that Emperor Leopold automatically sent his protégés to Rome to his school, and indeed the roster of his pupils is most impressive, from the Germans, Kerll, Krieger, and Muffat, to Durante, Gasparini, Della Ciaia, and Domenico Scarlatti. In his old age he was proclaimed “Organist to the Senate and to the People of Rome.” His craftsmanship had a quality of its own, a sort of quiet incandescence, but he also had practical gifts of a high order, such as extraordinary skill at the keyboard and above all a power of actively directing and inspiring others. Scarlatti was greatly indebted to him, and it stands to reason that Handel, observing him at close range, could not escape the attraction of this great musician. Pasquini is known as a pioneer keyboard composer, but he was much more than that. His dramatic and other vocal works are numerous—the Italian libraries are full of his manuscript cantatas—and they were at least as famous and influ
ential as his keyboard works.

  When we speak of Scarlatti and of his influence on Handel, we are really indulging in a little game of historical anachronism. At the time Handel met Scarlatti in Rome, the musician in the Italian master was far superior to the dramatist, and what made his opera stylistically consistent was his pure musicality, not dramatic insight. He was of course considerably restricted by the interdict in Rome, while in Naples he had to cater to the rather shallow tastes of the viceroys. Even Prince Ferdinand in Florence demanded a “light” style, constantly criticizing Scarlatti for the “severity” of his music and finally replacing him with Perti. It is for this reason that his most remarkable works up to about 1710 are his cantatas, of which there are hundreds. Though he had some very fine operas to his credit by 1707, the great dramatist first appears before us in Tigrane (1715), years after Handel’s departure. Here the orchestra is large and elaborate, the continuo aria disappears, the characterization is highly dramatic, and Scarlatti pays particular attention to delicately worked ensembles that are simultaneous and not dialogued, as in the earlier operas. Therefore, the operas had little to do with Handel’s immediate Italian impressions, but the influence of the cantatas was permanent and pervasive. Scarlatti’s cantatas are composed with conspicuous delicacy, freshness, and a delightful suggestiveness of detail. There is often a capricious fiitting from one little oddity to another, bold modulations, and astringent dissonances. But his whimsicalities are never forced, and his trifling is often significant; the profusion of the attractive detail work is subordinated to the classical clarity of outline and to discipline. These cantatas were the first overwhelming experience for Handel, and the validity of the experience he proceeded to test scrupulously.

  Handel knew Protestant church music, and he knew opera, and he must have been acquainted with the Italian cantata, either from Zachow —which seems very likely, for Zachow surely possessed in his fine library the scores of such older cantata composers as Luigi Rossi and Marcantonio Cesti—or, if not, at least from the Hamburg period. Kusser was a friend and admirer of Steffani, and so were Telemann and Mattheson, and Steffani’s duets and other vocal chamber music were even better known and admired than his operas. Throughout much of the 17th and 18th centuries the cantata a voce sola was the principal form of serious music for polite entertainment in courts and cultivated homes. But the cantata acquired new meaning when Handel heard it in its natural habitat, performed by Italian singers. He came to Italy because of opera, but with his sound judgment he realized that opera is a country that can be travelled in only if one learns the language spoken there. The key to that language was the cantata.

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  CANTATA, SERENATA, PASTORAL PLAY, ORATORIO, OPERA—they seem to be inseparable and indistinguishable; they overlap and merge and at first glance it is difficult to establish categorical genres, but we can start our analysis by recognizing the outer boundaries. These are the solo cantata with basso continuo and the opera; all the rest lies between these two. Handel’s judgment of the situation was clear: in order to learn the finer aspects of the Italian musical and linguistic idiom he must start with the chamber cantata, and since Alessandro Scarlatti was in Prince Ferdinand’s service, composing countless cantatas, he began his studies right then and there, using the master’s works as models. He undoubtedly heard many cantatas by other composers, not only in Florence and Rome but also in Naples and Venice, for all composers were devoted to this delightful form of miniature opera, on which they usually cut their operatic teeth. While Scarlatti was the sun of this planetary system, the demand for cantatas was so enormous that even the copious output of practically all active composers was not sufficient to satisfy it, and a good many older composers’ works were still in circulation and widely performed. Of these composers, Florence and Rome, and even the south, showed particular interest in Giovanni Battista Mazzaferrata (d, 1691), a Ferrarese of very advanced and adventurous bent; the lilting tone of his chamber cantatas kept him popular long after his death.

  Considerable influence came from the Bolognese school, one of the prominent regional centers of music. Pietro degli Antonii (c. 1645-1720), whose solo cantatas were composed in the nineties, was uncommonly popular. Giacomo Antonio Perti (1661-1756) was so highly regarded that he was five times elected “Prince” of the Bolognese Accademia filar-monica. Over six hundred manuscript compositions of Perti are preserved in San Petronio (whose maestro he was), among them many Masses for double choir whose choral writing is magnificent, but his hundred-odd cantatas, duets, and serenatas were staples at musical gatherings.

  Francesco Antonio Pistocchi (1659-1726), though a Sicilian by birth, was another member of the Bolognese school, a pupil of Perti, and a member of the Oratorian order. A fine connoisseur of singing and vocal style, Pistocchi was the founder of what might be described as the first methodical school of bel canto (around 1700). He wrote operas and oratorios, of course, but what surely came to Handel’s attention was the Duetti e terzetti, a collection published in 1700. From this circle also came Giovanni Carlo Maria Clari (1677-1754), a good all-round composer. Handel later borrowed from Clari’s very fine vocal duets and trios in Theodora. To be sure, this was a later event and the borrowed music of much later composition,9 but Handel must have discovered Clari while still in Italy.

  Most certainly Handel knew some of Giovanni Bononcini’s beautifully turned cantatas, for they were famous all over Europe. Giovanni Bononcini (1670-1747), who also came from the Bolognese school, having studied with its famous founder, Colonna, became in the 1720s Handel’s rival in London, a real rival, for he was half a generation his senior, an experienced, original, and highly gifted musician who left his mark wherever he worked—Vienna, Venice, London. Unfortunately, his portrait is as distorted as Handel’s own, except that Handelian biographers were not willing to permit him even an equivalent to a “Largo.” Chrysander, who responded with automatic deprecation to any challenge to Handel’s categorical pre-eminence, is once more at the bottom of this lopsided appraisal, for many subsequent writers accepted his views without investigating Bononcini’s music. English opinions show the typical mistrust of the Italian melodist. Even Burney hedges a little. He acknowledges the beauty of Bononcini’s melodies but mentions, with implicit approval, the judgment of those who found this melody pleasing but lightweight. Bononcini was a bold, inventive, and resourceful composer, with a very personal melodic and dramatic talent. His expressive musical declamation was noticed even by Sebastian Bach. Handel could not have failed to see some of his cantatas in Halle, Berlin, or Hamburg, because Raguenet in his comparative essay on the merits of French and Italian music (1702) speaks of him as universally known and admired in Europe, and his Duetti da camera of 1691 were widely disseminated. Judging from Handel’s subsequent acts in London, he must have kept a weather eye on this excellent musician. The borrowings from Bononcini’s Cantate e duetti (1721) are known, but no one has yet investigated how many borrowings from Bononcini there are in Handel’s operas.

  Another place of particular importance must be given to Alessandro Stradella (1642-1688), whose cantatas show, along with gentle and ele-gant lyricism and beautifully turned melody, dramatic power and a fine theatrical sense. Of his nearly two hundred cantatas only a handful are available, but the serenatas especially served as models for Handel, who admired them so much that he implanted some in his own music. With Stradella the trend to separate recitatives from arias solidifies into a custom. The aria becomes the most important element in all dramatic genres, and as it grows in size and artfulness so does the obbligato accompaniment.

  It is here, in the cantata, of which Handel composed seventy-two for solo voice with basso continuo and twenty-eight with orchestral accompaniment, 10 that we can observe for the first time his extraordinary ability to fuse various styles—Venetian, Roman, Neapolitan, Bolognese; he used them all, but soon with his own personal stamp. These hundred compositions not only form an important and as yet very largely unexplored part of
his oeuvre, they also contain many masterpieces, some of which were later embedded in his oratorios. The cantata played such an important role in the formation of Handel’s style and whole musical view that we must take a closer look at its nature. The cantata was not only the proving ground for his melodic skills; it was there that he began to experiment with descriptive music and with the delightful bucolic tone we shall encounter in such mature works as Acis and Galatea.