Handel’s return to London found the operatic situation considerably changed. Most of the great Italian singers were gone; so was Aaron Hill, who had yielded the management of the Haymarket Theatre to a shady operator by the name of Owen Swiney, though Haym was still connected with the enterprise. As if affected by this general deterioration, Handel permitted himself a faux pas: a somewhat careless and hasty new opera, Il Pastor fido. The manuscript states “finished Oct 24,” which has been interpreted to mean that the opera was largely if not entirely composed in Hanover, which is possible but not probable. The unusually haphazard—for Handel—nature of The Faithful Shepherd indicates rather that it was a pièce d’occasion, the response to a chance for a quick production, which actually took place on November 22. Handel probably threw it together in a few days. The opera did not pass muster, to the great delight of Addison and Steele, who saw a chance to eliminate this troublesome intruder and turned their fire on the German with renewed vigor. After six performances the opera was given up as a failure. Opinions were almost unanimously low, and the production must have been of the “shoestring” variety, for one critic scornfully remarked that “ye Habits were old.—ye Opera Short.” Pastor fido was a pasticcio, very Italian, and reverted to a somewhat older style, but the work is not so poor as first reactions would indicate, and in the second version of 1734 proved to be a very appealing piece. To be sure, Rossi’s libretto is silly, it fearfully mangles Guarini’s original, and the librettist failed to provide any dramatic interest, but Pastor fido is in Handel’s pastoral, bucolic vein, which always means delightful music, charming dances, and delicate orchestral writing. The original version also had an extended and very impressive overture, which may have been a concerto composed for Hanover.
Handel learned his lesson, and on his next work, which he undertook immediately, he spent three weeks—probably three times what he had needed for Pastor fido. As his enemies were to learn, a failure acted on him as a stimulant that usually led to a superior sequel. The new opera was finished on December 19, 1712, and first performed on January 10, 1713. Giving up the hapless Rossi, Handel had turned to Haym, who, like da Ponte with Mozart, studied his composer, carefully estimating his gifts and leanings. The libretto he prepared, Teseo, was a “heroick” piece designed to bring out the best in Handel. Haym’s sagacity was rewarded with a resounding success. This time “ye Habits” were “new & richer” than in the earlier work, and Handel regained his commanding position on the London operatic scene. Unfortunately, he almost immediately met with a painful financial setback. Swiney decamped with the box-office receipts of the first two full houses of Teseo without paying anyone—librettist, composer, stage designer, or singers. The situation was catastrophic, but Heidegger persuaded all parties to continue. Teseo was maintained in the repertory, and, while the participants’ loss was irreplaceable, everyone shared in the proceeds of the remaining performances. Although a fine work, Teseo is inevitably made colorless by the total absence of natural men’s voices: none of the six roles is lower than alto.
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IN THE MEANTIME, Handel took the first steps in the direction that was to make him England’s national composer. While the announcements of Pastor fido and Teseo still proclaimed him as being in the service of his Electoral Highness of Hanover, two events actually made him into an English court musician, if not de jure certainly de facto, for with his Utrecht Te Deum and Jubilate Handel virtually assumed Purcell’s legacy as purveyor of ceremonial music for state occasions at St. Paul’s. The Te Deum was performed at the Cathedral on July 7, 1713. Its success was instantaneous and the work became a “repertory piece” rivalling Purcell’s hallowed “St. Cecilia” Te Deum, the presentation of which for such festivities had been considered de rigueur since 1694. Thereafter the Utrecht Te Deum alternated with Purcell’s for three decades until Handel’s own Dettingen Te Deum replaced both. Yet neither the success nor the timely appearance of the Te Deum was a simple matter of offering such a work for performance; the whole affair had to be carefully planned.
As a German, Handel could not have had the slightest reason for celebrating a peace treaty disadvantageous to his fatherland, nor, indeed, were such works composed in the 18th century out of personal impulse. Handel was perfectly aware of the custom, fortified by statutory restrictions, of not allowing foreigners to compose ceremonial music for state occasions. Characteristically, he set about circumventing the prohibition. That Handel quietly but deliberately planned his moves is attested by all known facts. The coming peace treaty was “in the air” for some time; it was finally concluded on March 31 and proclaimed in London on May 5. Handel, privy to the political developments, composed the Te Deum in January and put it aside to be used at the right moment; only the Jubilate was composed at or about the time of the official celebration. The Jubilate did not take long to write because Handel used his fine Laudate pueri of Roman memory. We have no document to show that the Te Deum was ordered or commissioned, but no work presented at such an official celebration, with Parliament attending, could have been sung without the Queen’s consent, and in this particular case only royal command could have set aside the legal restrictions.
While Mainwaring’s statement that Handel had already been introduced to the Queen during his first visit to England remains conjectural, there can be no doubt that by his second visit he was well known and respected by Queen Anne. The circumstances are easy to reconstruct. Handel’s hostess, the Dowager Countess of Burlington, was one of the Ladies of the Bedchamber, and thus had easy access to the sovereign’s ear, but there was another, even more influential intimate of the Queen who, as an habitué of Burlington House, took a great liking to Handel. Dr. John Arbuthnot, the Royal Physician in Ordinary and a close friend of the literary great of the day, was described by Samuel Johnson as “the most universal genius, being an excellent physician, a man of deep learning, and a man of humours.” Since the Queen was almost constantly ailing, Dr. Arbuthnot was frequently at her side, and could scarcely have failed to communicate to her his admiration for Handel. So it came about that in January 1713 Handel composed an Ode for the Birthday of Queen Anne, performed at court February 6 by an all-English cast from the Chapel Royal. In so doing, Handel trespassed on the domain long and honorably occupied by John Eccles, who furnished such odes annually ex officio. Handel’s tactics worked to perfection, for the delighted Queen undoubtedly commanded him to write the Te Deum.
The Utrecht Te Deum was modelled on Purcell’s “St. Cecilia” Te Deum, then the outstanding ceremonial piece, well known and much admired; nevertheless, to say that Handel’s work is altogether indebted to Purcell is vastly to oversimplify the case. It was of course natural that Handel should have studied Purcell’s Te Deum, and have followed its general outline, but Chrysander and others are surely mistaken when they claim intimate correspondences. Handel espied the specifically English tone but not Purcell’s essential and very personal qualities. This English tone was new to him—and congenial—but it took some time to penetrate underneath the pomp and panoply; that insight into Purcell’s delicately refined art came much later.
Indisposed, Queen Anne did not attend the July 7 festivities at St. Paul’s, but heard the Te Deum later at St. James’s Palace and as a consequence settled on the composer an annual pension of £200. This created a curious and awkward situation. The law was explicit on such matters: “No foreigner shall receive a grant from the Crown, or hold office, civil or military,” yet Handel received a grant and was virtually assuming the position of a court composer. Mainwaring, closest among biographers to the events, takes pains to remark on this fact, which must have been apparent to observers: “This act of the royal bounty was the more extraordinary as [Handel’s] foreign engagements were not unknown.” Given the Queen’s distaste for her heirs presumptive, it is quite likely that aside from her genuine appreciation of Handel we are also dealing with a subtle insult to the Hanoverians that could not have been lost either on Sophie or on Georg Ludwig.
If the situation created by these events was awkward, it was as nothing compared to what was to follow in the aftermath of Queen Anne’s death on August 1, 1714. None of Anne’s numerous offspring having survived, the Crown, by virtue of the Act of Succession, descended to the Protestant House of Hanover, the Catholic line of Anne’s half-brother James Stuart having been excluded. Anne disliked the Hanoverians, especially the clever and intelligent Dowager Electress Sophie, while for Georg Ludwig she had nothing but contempt. After many entreaties by her ministers to demonstrate her attachment to the Protestant succession and thus silence the rumors of Jacobite sympathies, she made a gesture towards her heirs by creating Georg Ludwig’s son Duke of Cambridge in 1706, but she remained adamant about permitting the Elector himself to visit England. Although she never disavowed James as a brother, she considered him a “popish pretender” and never wavered in her constitutional duty as head of the Church, and for this reason supported the Succession Act. Anne was of very mediocre intelligence and small ability, not greatly interested in culture though she liked music and played the harpsichord with some fluency. But the Queen had homely virtues; she was devoted to the Established Church (disliking both Catholics and Nonconformists), maintained strict standards of moral conduct at court, was generous and kind, “never loved to do anything that looked like an affected contraint” —hence her sobriquet: “Good Queen Anne.” Her reign, which saw the union of Scotland and England, was one of the most brilliant periods in English history.
Upon the death in 1714 of the Duke of Gloucester, last of the English line of Protestant princes, Ernst Augustus’s widow, Sophie, the youngest daughter of Elizabeth, the daughter of James I of England, was the next Protestant heir to Anne. Since the Act of Settlement of 1701 secured the succession to her and her descendants, the Dowager Electress suddenly found herself in line for the throne of England. Considering her age, she was under no illusions as to her probable assumption of the crown, but to his discomfort Georg Ludwig, no man to shoulder responsibilities, realized that he might well have to give up his comfortable and carefree existence to rule as king in a strange country. The death within three months of both Sophie and Anne opened the way for Georg Ludwig (1660-1727), a German prince who did not speak English and had no understanding of anything English. On the very day of the Queen’s death, Georg Ludwig of Hanover was proclaimed King George I of England; he landed on English soil with an impressively large German retinue on September 18, 1714, arrived in London on the 20th, and was crowned a month later in Westminster Abbey.
All the King saw in his new position was an opportunity to improve the situation of Hanover, of his family, and of his retainers, among whom there was always a covey of mistresses. The personal union between England and Hanover remained until 1837. George’s only desire was to leave these unfathomable islanders as often and for as long as possible, to spend his time in the familiar surroundings of Hanover. The King’s frequent visits to Hanover (like George II’s, too) caused a good deal of resentment in England. George simply let the Whigs run the country while he attended to his own pleasures, chief among which, next to his two favorite mistresses, was music. The two ladies in question, Baroness von der Schulenburg and Baroness von Kielmansegg (the latter, an illegitimate daughter of Ernst Augustus, was therefore George’s illegitimate half-sister as well as his paramour) were prodigiously bulky and unattractive, long past the flower of youth, which at that court was not a necessary qualification for a royal mistress. When in 1722 Sir Robert Walpole, the first true Prime Minister, took over the government from such minor Whigs as Stanhope, Townshend, and Sunderland (derisively called “the German ministry”), George left matters entirely in the great statesman’s hands. Since he could not speak English, he did not attend the cabinet meetings, and his frequent absences from the country permitted his ministers to have their own way. The power of the King, as exercised by William and by Anne, all but passed from his hands. Yet it is a mistake to regard George I as totally uninterested in his new domain. He took a direct hand in external affairs, and on the whole the country benefltted from his rule.
The arrival of George caused a delicate dilemma for Handel. His employer, whom he had certainly slighted by ignoring the terms of his contract, now became the sovereign of the land where he resided. His biographers seem to be embarrassed by the situation. Mainwaring gently remarks that “the promise he had given [to the Elector] had somehow slipt out of his memory,” ruefully adding that Handel “did not dare to shew himself at court.” For once, even Chrysander exhibits some annoyance with his hero, for his patriotic and sentimental nature did not approve of such an affront to a German prince who in good faith permitted his servant a leave of absence of a stipulated length. But while the biographers are embarrassed, Handel surely was not, nor does the Elector-King seem to have shown anger or disappointment. In the first place, there was no sign from Hanover that the Elector resented Handel’s absence or ordered his return. Rolland may not be far from the truth when he says that it behooved the aspirant to the throne of England to be on good terms with Queen Anne, and since the Queen showed interest in Handel, Georg Ludwig could not very well order him home without displeasing her. In the second place, it is inconceivable that Handel, who moved in circles where he could observe political developments at first hand, was not aware of the imminence of the succession; the Queen was visibly in bad health. Moreover, he had a lively sense of legal and contractual niceties as well as a very good idea of George’s turn of mind and of the measures he was likely to take.
As it happened, after his succession George showed no interest in calling his truant Hanoverian court conductor on the carpet, and Handel attended to his own affairs, sure of his case, simply waiting for a move from his sovereign. Whether the King was angry or not is hard to tell; the story about the “reconciliation” on the occasion of the famous barge party on the Thames when the Water Music was played is fictitious, and so, probably, are all the others.26 On the other hand, the King could not have missed the fact that his sometime music master was a famous man in London; since he had as little taste for the English as Queen Anne had had for the Hanoverians, and since he remained a German to the end of his life, he probably concluded that he might just as well hold on to this German musician. The chances are that both were sensible enough to rationalize the situation, and that there was no falling out between them, only a situation that was best solved by ignoring it and refraining from meeting in public until the dust had settled. At any rate, it is positively known that the King attended, albeit incognito, the revival of Rinaldo in 1714, as well as the new opera Amadigi a few months later and eventually confirmed Anne’s pension, adding another £200 to it. Handel received still another £200 from the Princess of Wales, Caroline, as music master to her daughters, and together these payments amply compensated for the loss of the Hanoverian emoluments. It will be noted that upon George’s first visit to Hanover as King of England (July, 1716), his “es-tranged” erstwhile court conductor accompanied him, closely following the King’s schedule. This raises the question whether the personal union of Britain and Hanover extended to the King’s Master of Musick and the Elector’s Hofkapellmeister. There is nothing to indicate such an arrangement. Handel had no stated duties, was not in attendance, and soon went his own way and the King his. They remained on good terms, for the King really liked music, especially opera.
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THE OPERA SEASON commenced soon after the dynastic change took place, and Handel was of course fully engaged in its vagaries. Rinaldo was revived on December 30, 1714, eleven other performances following; both the King and the Prince of Wales attended several evenings. For the moment this took care of the situation in the public theatre, and in the meantime Handel wrote an opera for the private stage of his host, the Earl of Burlington. Silla was a slight work, designed for amateur performers, but it contained a good deal of fine music, which of course was not wasted but was immediately transferred to his next opera, composed for the Ha
ymarket Theatre.
Amadis of Gaul, or Amadigi di Gaula, the third opera fashioned on the successful pattern of Rinaldo—plot and characters as well as tone are all similar—saw its first night on May 25, 1715. It is not clear who the librettist was; to judge from the similarity, the old partnership of Rossi and Haym had a hand in it, but it was Heidegger who assumed responsibility for the book, and in all probability his was the lion’s share. Handel rose to the occasion and the success was tremendous, for the libretto was good and the music spirited. The production, too, was lavish; “All the Coaths and Scenes were entirely new,” and the stage and its machinery, with its wings, shutters, pulleys, candles, lanterns, torches, and other paraphernalia rivalled those of the most elaborate European Baroque theatres. The bubbling fountain, bathed in colored lights, was the talk of the town, but what mattered above all was that Nicolini was back, and the popular Anastasia Robinson had her second role. Now Handel rode on the crest of the wave; Rinaldo and Amadigi alternated, constituting the core of the repertory; the composer was a celebrity, the opposition was silenced, and the King himself attended several performances. Handel’s financial situation must also have improved materially, for we see him invest £500 in the hottest stock of the day, the South Sea Company, collecting—for the time being—a nice dividend from this hazardous venture. As can be seen, it did not take long for the provincial German musician to become a “capitalist,” a free middle-class citizen running his own business.
George Frideric Handel_Dover Books on Music Page 18