George Frideric Handel_Dover Books on Music

by Paul Henry Lang

  Aside from the Chandos works, which we shall presently discuss in detail, Handel composed a good deal of instrumental music during 1717-20. Of the harpsichord pieces we shall speak later, but we must return to the much-disputed Water Music, because it definitely belongs to these years and it represents a first peak in Handel’s orchestral music. Gerald Abraham and others have conclusively proved that the final version of the Water Music unites two suites written at different times. One, the larger of the two, was composed for the positively documented barge party in 1717, the other probably a couple of years earlier, in which case it could have been the music performed at the water-borne “reconciliation” party —if that episode actually took place. Handel rescored the earlier pieces to accord with the final set. This lengthy suite is fragrant, expansive, and unflaggingly inspired outdoor music, written for a large orchestra manipulated with sovereign skill. The silly “modernizations” and arrangements we usually hear instead of the original distort these qualities; when this music is heard out of doors Sir Hamilton Harty is not needed to realize its full charm. The variety is very great because concerto and dance suite are combined in a colorful blend; the continuity is well planned, for while the music grows in grandeur, this rising amplitude is suitably interrupted by the most delicate, meditative—indeed, galant—pieces. A close inspection of the score will reveal that the writing very carefully avoids “holes” in the harmony—there was not likely to be a continuo atop a barge.

  The six concertos, Opus 3, also known as the “Oboe Concertos,” were probably composed at Cannons. They are really concerti grossi with winds, and while less remarkable than the later set, Opus 6, they offer very fine and very enjoyable music. Handel borrowed and reworked several instrumental pieces from the Brockes Passion, from Amadigi, and from his earlier chamber music, but most of the rest is not only new but attractively fresh material. In his orchestral music Handel remained faithful to the Corelli-Albinoni-Locatelli lineage, and none of his concertos should be compared with the altogether differently oriented Brandenburg Concertos of Bach. This is popular music in the best sense of the word; simple, fluent, clearly articulated, and gloriously euphonious. The contrast between tutti and concertino is usually very sharp, the tuttis being robust, while the solos are gentle and at times even unaccompanied. Though one of the greatest contrapuntists of the time, Handel was not interested in intricate part writing but in plasticity of representation and expression, in melodiousness, and in differentiated orchestral sound. The concertos do contain some very fine fugues, but they would cause despair to any theorist attempting to analyze them according to the “rules,” for Handel is always ready to drop linear logic for the sake of a nice turn or rich sound.

  [6]

  ON FEBRUARY 20, 1719, Handel wrote to his brother-in-law Michaelsen apologizing for his inability to undertake a family visit, which he apparently had promised upon learning of the death of his sister. The affairs unavoidably keeping him in London are of such importance, says Handel, that his entire future may depend on them. The business he referred to was the intense preparation for what amounted to a genuine permanent opera society to be called the Royal Academy of Music. This was not really a court opera on the Continental model, though the King was the chief patron and contributed a thousand pounds yearly; rather it was like the Metropolitan Opera House in New York before the World Wars and before income taxes: a plaything for the nobility. As a matter of fact, the similarity between the two institutions is striking. Neither showed the least interest in native art, each wanted the best singers procurable from abroad, and the directors of each felt that since they were footing the bill they had the right to dictate the policies and run the show. If the reader will substitute “Mr. Gatti-Casazza” for “Mr. Hendel, Master of Musick,” all he has to do is to modernize the spelling of the “Instructions” issued to the latter on May; 24, 1719 by the governor of the Royal Academy of Music, the Duke of Newcastle, to obtain a document that could have been issued in New York in 1910. Similarly, “Caruso” could replace the name of the great castrato in this passage: “Mr. Hendel shall engage Senezino as soon as possible to Serve the said Company and for as many years as may be.”

  The plan was to issue joint stock for £10,000, each of the shareholders subscribing £200, but the issue was heavily oversubscribed by an illustrious group of some seventy of Britain’s great families. The Duke of Chandos and the Earl of Burlington, Handel’s particular patrons, pledged five shares each. The comparison with New York’s Metropolitan Opera ends, however, when we examine the business structure of the enterprise; these English aristocrats were indeed modern businessmen. The Royal Academy of Music was a corporation whose stocks were listed on the Stock Exchange, and a number of shareholders joined the enterprise for investment and speculation, not for music. This was a time of “easy money” and hazardous gambling, as exemplified by the South Sea Company. Indeed, the satirists never failed to quote the Academy’s stocks in the same breath with the South Sea Company’s to emphasize its precarious stability. 31

  The Governors’ instructions directed Handel to proceed abroad—undoubtedly referring to Italy—to recruit a company of singers. Handel must have responded immediately, for within two weeks we can trace him to Düsseldorf, to the court of the Elector Palatine. But he was no longer quite the same welcome visitor, the admired maestro of former years; his relationship with the Elector, as indeed with all ruling heads who maintained opera houses, must have undergone a certain change. Handel had become a threat, an impresario who with plenty of money behind him could entice singers to leave their employ and go to London. But Handel was careful and urbane; everyone treated him with respect if with a little nervousness. There was of course a visit to Halle. The big old house had become a sad, depopulated place occupied by two old and helpless women, Mother Händel and Aunt Anna. Handel always dropped into his home town whenever he was on the Continent, but by that time his world had become incomprehensible to them.32

  The most important stop on this trip was Dresden, a business call to see which of the fine singers at the splendid Dresden opera he could lure away to London. Dresden was one of the most brilliant centers of music in Germany, and its opera rivalled the best in the world. During the 17th century the capital of Saxony established a remarkable tradition both for lavish Festspiele of all sorts, which would put to shame anything seen today, and for Italian opera. The electoral palace boasted a gigantic hall, a combination of ballroom and theatre, for the festivities, and there was a magnificent opera house (replacing an equally magnificent older building), the largest in Germany, which was to open its doors in September 1719, soon after Handel’s arrival in the city. Antonio Lotti was the resident composer and conductor, and both the singers and the orchestra were of the best. It was into this magnificent operatic plenty that Handel walked with ulterior motives; he knew exactly what he wanted, and I am convinced that he knew why he should seek it in this particular spot.

  Historians have wondered why Handel went so far east in Germany when his obvious destination should have been Italy. True, Senesino, his main quarry, was at that time in Dresden, but his task was to recruit a whole company, and it is difficult to see how he could have hoped to denude a wealthy, flourishing opera house of its members. This rich display of resources in Dresden hid, however, a potentially catastrophic situation: the profligate King-Elector’s treasury was empty, and the extensive operatic establishment was on the verge of tottering. Handel must have had an inkling of the situation, or in any case it could not have taken him long to find out once he talked to those closely involved in Dresden. He don-cluded that it was not necessary to go to Italy, for even if Senesino received six times the salary of the local German music director, it clearly would not be forthcoming much longer—the Italian opera in Dresden did in fact collapse in the following year. It took more than a decade to piece it together once more, to start the second glorious chapter of its history under Hasse.

  Handel arrived in Dresden probably in la
te June, that is, before the grand opening of the new opera house, but the singers were there, and so was his old friend of the Venetian days, Antonio Lotti. The first “situation report” was dispatched to the Earl of Burlington, one of the directors of the Royal Academy of Music, on July 15. Handel advises the Earl of his negotiations with Senesino, Matteo Berselli, a tenor, and a singer by the name of Guicciardi; the outlook is favorable. Later, matters turned a little sour, the negotiations with Senesino falling through, though he duly arrived in London in the fall of 1720, when Dresden could no longer pay him his fee. Nor was Handel able to sign Guicciardi, but Berselli agreed to come, and he also engaged a second old acquaintance, Margherita Durastanti, his first Agrippina of a decade before, as well as another soprano, Maddalena Salvai. Since he had some very fine singers, such as Boschi, already spoken for, Handel could feel satisfied with the troupe at his disposal. Just when the engagements were concluded is difficult to verify—instructions from London were still arriving in November. Handel stayed on, attended the festivities, gave a concert at court in September (though his fee was not collected for several months; it was eventually remitted to London), and finally, towards the end of the year, began the return journey to London.

  In the meantime Heidegger was made manager of the Academy, Rolli staff librettist, and Roberto Clerici master of décor and machines. The board of directors made further important decisions. Handel was named “Master of the Orchestra,” i.e. music director, and Giovanni Bononcini was invited “for composing & performing in the Orchestra” (as was later Ariosti in a similar capacity). Heidegger as manager also engaged a few singers, among them Mrs. Robinson, and Senesino was finally brought into the fold through the intermediation of one of the Italian diplomats stationed in London. When Handel returned and 1720 dawned, everything was ready for a spectacular rebirth of opera in London: three of the leading composers of Italian opera in residence (Giovanni Porta was there), all of them also redoubtable conductors, a fine group of singers, a good and experienced manager, and seemingly inexhaustible funds. But before we proceed to the opening of the Royal Academy of Music, we must examine this Baroque opera, than which there is no more misunderstood and misinterpreted genre in the entire history of music.

  VII

  Baroque opera, its nature, dramaturgy, and esthetics—Comparison of Baroque with modern opera—Obstacles to our understanding—The aria—Rote of Alessandro Scarlatti—Italian melody, Handelian melody—General form of Handel’s opera—The castrato

  MANY OF THOSE WHO HAVE VISITED THE GREAT MUSEUMS of the world would be surprised to hear that the magnificent Greek statues, which they always see in their pristine white, were once colored with paint. This could not have been otherwise, for ancient Hellas, no less than its modern offspring, was bathed in sunshine under a blue sky; the southern sun gives even the bare rocks a radiant coat of color. Cold white is unthinkable in such surroundings; the white of Greek sculpture and architecture, which we look upon as the embodiment of the spirit of antiquity, is the barbarous handiwork of time. Archaeologists have proved that once the halls of the Acropolis glowed with colors as deep and dazzling as the landscape. Perhaps the Venus of Milo smiled with blue eyes, and her now snow-white breasts and shoulders were softened by wax or oil enamel. Now she looks at us with deathly pallor from a room in the Louvre; living, conquering beauty bare and imprisoned. The cruelty of time could not ruin the perfection of her figure, nor wrinkle the smoothness of her face, but in her millennial dream among the earth’s debris the moisture of the soil sucked away the life-giving colors, bleached her garment, robbed her of a measure of her charm. After many centuries, those of the classical statues that escaped the rough blows of the barbarians arose from their graves, and in their colorless whiteness weighed, like ghosts, on the sculpture of the Renaissance and on that of subsequent ages. These ages saw only the distilled forms, which they managed to resurrect and at times rival with their own, but the pulsating life, the hypnotic sorcery cannot be conjured up without color. Those who have seen the purple, the red, and the blue on Augustus’s statue in the Vatican will have an idea what the Romans learned from their masters.

  Just so are we suffering from a misconception of Baroque opera, in which we see nothing but pure white melodies. It will take several more decades before musical archaeologists will convince the public and the musicians that these musical statues also had colors. Music being the most perishable of the arts, it did not take millennia for this old opera to lose its colors, only a couple of generations of composers, singers, and audiences, but the distance that separates us from a Scarlatti, a Bononcini, or a Handel is in effect greater than that which separates us from a Myron, a Praxiteles, or a Lysippus. Handel’s operas were already completely strange to musicians and audiences at the end of the 18th century, when the composer of Messiah was already venerated as an English institution. In 1787 Giulio Cesare was revived, but the libretto states that “the original offering a great number of incongruities, both in the language and the conduct, several material alterations have been thought absolutely necessary, to give the piece a dramatic consistency, and to suit it to the refinement of a modern audience.” Variants of this refrain can be followed up to Sir Thomas Beecham and other notable musicians of our day. Still, is it not only fashions that change while passions remain? One would think that love and hatred, heroism and sacrifice are the same from Agamemnon to Mario Cavaradossi.

  The theatre does not operate with durable materials, it must form its public night after night. The poet and the composer can address an imaginary, future public, but over the theatre the judge is Today, and there is no Court of Appeal; a theatre not understood is nonexistent. The theatre is entirely dependent on the age and on its disposition.

  If the spoken theatre is perishable, its lyric counterpart is far more so; opera does not grow naturally out of “the boards”; there is something in it that is actually hostile to the stage. In fact, opera is a paradox, it cannot be justified intellectually. Drama in the theatre attempts to render life, to conjure up in a small place, in a short time, with a limited number of figures, the illusion of the whole world. It is in the nature of the spoken drama that the conflicts of its figures must be treated in a form that is opposed to stylization. It demands a certain logical construction, and necessity reigns in it with more consequence than in life itself. The construction rests on a chain of cause and effect, on a causal procedure. Opera cannot express the fullness and richness of life in the manner of the spoken theatre; its expressive possibilities are not on the same plane with reality but are stylized abbreviations of it. Therefore, completeness of content is replaced by formal completeness, the empirical by the symbolical, the expansive by the intensive. Dialectical exposition and causal reason are merely a sketchy basic frame, for the decisive element will be the constructive, formal, expressive power of music.

  The constant intellectual procedure followed in the drama hampers immediate sensuous expression, an inhibition missing in opera. What the music offers in a good opera is something that comes from a region that precedes the concrete concept of drama and, strictly speaking, stands outside the world of drama. Opera does not permit men to appear in nakedly logical acts, for the music dissolves feelings and thoughts into melodies and rhythms, harmonies and counterpoints, which in themselves have no conceptual meaning. Thus in opera objective situations may very well become entirely subjective expressions. Because of its paradoxical nature opera is capable of paradoxical effects; it can express purely sensuously the most profound abstractions, and the musical drama, exerting a mass effect far more than does the spoken drama, is much more primitive as drama than the spoken theatre; it must render conflict and character in immediate symbols. If it departs from this, as in the “philosophical” operas, it immediately sacrifices its naive security, for it can convey intellectual theses only to a very limited degree.

  This paradox of the merger of the concrete and the abstract that characterizes opera is present in all its components
. At first glance everything in an opera is the same as in the ordinary theatre: dramatic personalities appear, act, and give the illusion of life, except that they present their lines in song. But this in itself is the chief paradox, for living, spontaneously acting persons do not normally sing, yet here music represents and conveys life and the concrete, and it is the music that is charged with the creation of the illusion of life.

  In an opera, character and action can be disparate. The sketching of character in a spoken drama demands time, in opera it is almost instantaneous; the action in a play requires a certain movement, in opera action is constantly suspended; in drama plot and action can be both detailed and extensive, opera aims at comprehensive summary. Scale is different too, and while 19th-century grand opera has accustomed us to decorative monumentality, essentially opera is near and intimate.

  There can be no question that in a composite art such as opera we must accept the fact (which also influences the form) that in its contemplation the energy of the individual senses is divided. The spoken theatre unites the spatial and the temporal; opera in addition unites the conceptual, the text, with the nonconceptual, music. Obviously, therefore, in this complicated symbiosis form must be achieved by certain inevitable concessions and compromises. Take an operatic duet or ensemble: it is both theme and its elaboration, material and form simultaneously, once more something that is difficult to reconcile intellectually. Such a piece is largely—and in Baroque opera almost entirely—determined by its material and not by the logic of its text. The musico-formal requirements determine its extent and progression. An aria may be superfluous and dispensable from the point of view of dramatic structure, but may have considerable relevance in terms of tonal symmetry and logic. If the text in these older operas is too short for the form dictated by musical logic, individual lines or even words will be repeated arbitrarily. Thus the aria or ensemble becomes an almost total stylization—but it can also become a concentrated symbolic expression of a man and of his entire fate. Universality rises here to such heights, mood and communication become so elevated, that they can no longer contain anything concrete and real. And this is the very power of opera, it is through this extraordinary ability of music that opera can rise far above the finite world into a mystic atmosphere.