George Frideric Handel_Dover Books on Music

by Paul Henry Lang

  It is obvious, then, that before the advent of Handel and Italian opera, music had become an integral part of the English theatre. This theatre, whose musical worth cannot be lightly dismissed, did create a specific esthetic, as well as authentic masterpieces in the works of Purcell, to which we shall return when discussing Handel’s contributions to the English lyric stage. It is equally obvious in the light of these historical developments that when Addison wrote his celebrated pieces in the Spectator his irony hid a good deal of deep conviction and full agreement with his French literary colleagues. Fundamentally, the core of the opposition to opera rests on Boileau’s maxim: On ne peut jamais faire un bon opéra, parce que la musique ne sait narrer. This was interpreted by the critics, both French and English, to mean that since music is “unable to narrate,” to tell a story, opera is a drama in which essentials have little relation to the permanent realities of human conduct. In Addison’s words: “Our countrymen could not forbear laughing when they heard a Lover chanting out a Billet-doux, and even the Superscription of a Letter set to a Tune.” His description of an opera as “extravagantly lavish in its Decorations, as its only Design is to gratify the Senses, and keep up an indolent Attention in the Audience,” is similar to that given by Chappuzeau somewhat earlier: “But, after all, these fine spectacles are only for the eyes and ears; they do not touch the soul and one may say afterwards that one has seen and heard, but not that one has been edified.” This tone of criticism continued throughout Handel’s activity and far into the late 18th century. In a letter to his son, Lord Chesterfield said: “Whenever I go to an Opera, I leave my sense and reason at the door with my half guinea, and deliver myself up to my eyes and ears.” Johnson, in his Life of Hughes, also believed that opera was “an exotick and irrational entertainment” 48

  All this should not reflect adversely on Addison’s keen insight into the nature of the relationship of music to a cultural circle. “A Composer should fit his Musick to the Genius of the People, and consider that the Delicacy of Hearing, and the Taste of Harmony, has been founded upon those Sounds which every Country abounds with: in short, that Musick is of a relative Nature.” This Handel’s opera totally disregarded, and while in the meantime, at Cannons, Handel found “those sounds which abounded” in England, it took him a long time to realize that they could not be found in Italian opera.

  There were additional weighty reasons for the failure of the Royal Academy of Music and for Italian opera in general. First of all, the language barrier was not only insuperable but caused effects totally unexpected by the foreign staff running the King’s Theatre. In Vienna or Dresden, opera in Italian was accepted without any objection, and if there was any objection later in the 18th century, it was on nationalistic or patriotic grounds—the foreign language did not irritate those audiences. Frederick the Great would not let an Italian composer into his Berlin opera house, not because of his language—he himself preferred French to his native tongue, and liked Italian opera—but because he wanted to help German opera. Not so in England, where songs in a foreign language, or even in Welsh, or English with a strong accent, invariably created a comic effect and were deliberately used in plays for this purpose. When Addison scornfully refers to the Haymarket Theatre audience as preferring “High Dutch” to English he is using a term that has frequently been applied to comic songs in Stuart drama and, quite logically, it seemed to him that if a whole piece is presented in “High Dutch,” not only is the realistic effect of a comic interlude lost, but the entire work makes no sense. Another reason for popular dislike of Italian operas was their subject matter. Caesar, Scipio, and all the other Romans were to the Italians their ancestors, but beyond the Alps they became boring historical figures with whom the public felt no kinship. English letters may have been steeped in classical antiquity, but the man in the street was not.

  We have seen the political connotation attached to the events at the Academy, but the middle-class public also saw in opera foreign popery that affronted their sturdy English Protestantism. Furthermore, the middle-class Englishman, aware of the corruption and immorality rife in aristocratic circles, equated Italian opera, the plaything of aristocrats, with the wily, unscrupulous, pleasure-seeking, and dagger-wielding Italians, the most frivolous and ungodly race on earth. Then there was the castrato, upon whom this Italian opera was largely built. Since the castratos were prominent in the papal choir from the 16th century onward (as they were in other church choirs) and were mostly Italians, they were associated—not without some justification—with Catholicism. The Church recognized them and it took a long time before indignation—not missing in Italy either—forced their abandonment. It must be acknowledged, though, that while in the young Mozart’s time the opera buffa evicted the “unnatural ones” from the opera theatre, church choirs retained them for another century, and castration of promising young singers continued, though infrequently, far into the 19th century. In Italy these male sopranos and altos were so highly regarded—and highly paid —that there are authenticated records of natural sopranos—that is, women—making a career by masquerading as evirati. The English, who on their trips to the peninsula could see on the shields of veterinarians and barber-surgeons the legend: Qui si castrano ragazzi, found the practice repulsive and a gross violation of morality. They were also disgusted by the physical appearance of the castratos. Some of these were merely feminine looking, with marked feminine characteristics, but many became huge and grotesquely misshapen. The beau monde did not share in this revulsion and welcomed them into their homes as chic and exciting foreign specialties. Wild accusations were hurled at the castratos by the public, though mostly without foundation. They were vain and demanding, but so were natural sopranos, and so are our natural tenors today. On the whole, their probity matched that of other human beings. Dr. Burney, gentleman and scholar, came to the castrato’s rescue to remove, “in justice, as well as humanity,” the contempt in which they were held, denying that they were “cowards and illiterates,” and praising them highly for their incomparable singing.

  If all this militated against Italian opera in England, the coup de grâce to the Academy was administered by that irony which is so engaging in English letters. On January 29, 1728, at Lincoln’s Inn Fields, the Beggar’s Opera, a glittering, full-blooded epic of roguery triumphant, full of wit and bitter cynicism, was first performed to “a prodigious Concourse of Nobility and Gentry.” Its run of over sixty performances topped all existing theatrical records. John Gay’s spirited farce was accompanied by a garland of popular tunes, cleverly selected, arranged, and prefaced with an original overture by Handel’s erstwhile compatriot, present fellow-Briton, and old competitor, Dr. Pepusch. The Beggar’s Opera won lavish praise not only for being English theatre, but for what it was: musical comedy in the modern sense. This was a thoroughly English form of the theatre, a challenge to Italian opera both as to native wit and language, and as to masculinity. Dean Swift confirmed the challenge plainly in the Intelligencer: “This comedy likewise exposes, with good justice, that unnatural taste for Italian music among us which is wholly unsuitable to our northern climate, and the genius of the people, whereby we are over-run with Italian effeminacy, and Italian nonsense.” There is scarcely a creature in this magnificent farce who is not, if seriously considered, corrupt and despicable, yet every spectator took the characters to his heart. While ballad operas and satires were a popular entertainment, called by historians a “democratic art” and “low-life opera,” it is incorrect to consider them merely an entertainment for the populace; all classes of society enjoyed them, not least some of the outstanding literary figures of the age as well as the nobility. Underneath the cynicism there is a wealth of theatrical skill, good writing, and wisdom; Pope and Swift were not only interested in the Beggar’s Opera but had some part in its preparation, and Dr. Johnson also thought highly of it. Furthermore, the ballad opera was a potent political weapon, something always relished by Englishmen. Its merciless satire hastened the retirem
ent of more than one political potentate, among them Walpole.

  The ballad opera is generally dated from 1728, though Gay’s masterpiece is only the most successful specimen of the genre. Some historians carry its origins back to Richard Brome and even Ben Jonson, properly considering also the French comédie en vaudeville, which could be heard at the Haymarket Theatre, where visiting French troupes played. These are reasonable historical reconstructions, but the very fact that by the middle of the century the ballad opera had practically disappeared shows that it owed a great deal to the English reaction to Italian opera in general and the Handelian in particular. There can be no doubt that the most important ingredient in its make-up was the direct—and immediate—parody of every successful “serious” opera, the parody being accentuated by the borrowing of famous arias from the very opera that was the subject of the satire, which were then sung with bawdy lyrics. The satirical and often riotous take-offs started with the first Italian operas performed in London, Arsinoe and Camilla, and almost every one of Handel’s new offerings was immediately greeted with a hilarious travesty at Drury Lane or some other place. The intended ridiculing of Italian opera is manifest in such titles as Tragi-Comic-Farcical Ballad Opera, and so on.

  The ballad opera is a genre by itself, different from both the masque and the “English opera,” or the “semi-opera.” While the flavor of its wit was so English as to refuse transplantation to foreign languages, its influence was nevertheless considerable. On its way southward on the Continent it merged with kindred French types, eventually calling to life the German Singspiel, its most notable distant progeny.

  The Beggar’s Opera drove the biggest nail in the coffin of the Royal Academy of Music, but the collapse of the Academy did not mean “ruin” and “bankruptcy” for Handel; his personal fortunes were not at all threatened, nor was his reputation as a composer, which was international. He was not even in straitened circumstances. Percy M. Young, who in his biography made an interesting study of Handel’s numerous financial dealings, shows that at the end of the final season of the Academy Handel purchased £700 worth of annuities of the reorganized South Sea Company, followed within a month by a further £400. He must have accumulated a tidy investment of several thousand pounds and was ready, willing, and able to launch his next venture. However, before following him on his further operatic quest we must retrace our steps to Burlington House and Cannons to investigate the beginnings of the “English” Handel.

  IX

  Beginnings of “English” Handel—Standards of Augustan Age—Class society and religion—Capitalism—The bourgeoisie—Literature—The Burlington circle—Its influence on Handel—About church music—German music of the Baroque—The cantor’s art—The Church of England —Its secular spirit in Handel’s time—Nonconformists and Puritans—Handel’s conception of Anglican church music—Commemorative—ceremonial-patriotic compositions—Ode and anthem—Chandos Anthems —Other anthems—Te Deums—Handel’s English church music compared to Continental—His indebtedness to English composers

  ALTHOUGH HANDEL’S EARLIER STAY AT BURLINGTON house and at Cannons, viewed from the perspective of the Royal Academy of Music, seems to be a mere interlude, it represents the period of gestation for Handel as we know him. The newspapers might refer to him for years to come as “Mr. Handell, the famous composer of Italian Musick,” but with the anthems, the Te Deums, pastoral, and masque composed during these years, there began the decisive change that was to turn the purveyor of exotic entertainment for the aristocracy into a national English composer.

  The anthem plays an important part in this change and is a constituent element in the oratorio, though it must be remembered that the anthem was ceremonial music while the oratorio was music drama. It is the extrovert, festive—even “official”—tone and manner of the anthems that reappear in the oratorios at places appropriate for such tone and manner, not the “churchly” quality that is so often emphasized. Even Messiah really culminates on a heroic-triumphal tone that is distinctly secular, for the Hallelujah Chorus is a “coronation anthem,” one of the many Handel composed. It is true, however, that in instances where there is no dramatic construction and characterization, as in Judas Maccabaeus, the anthem style may dominate the whole work. With the very first of these “English” compositions, the Birthday Ode for Queen Anne and the Utrecht Te Deum, Handel was seeking the formula for a music that would express the collectivity of the nation; henceforth the problem was to make this also a personal art. Many of Handel’s biographers see him almost apart from his environment and experience, yet the influence of the climate of English civilization and culture is inevitably present in his works as the decisive constructive force determining perspective, subject, and expression. Perhaps it will not be superfluous, then, to meditate a little on English thought and history, some of which we take so much for granted that its significance is lost. The England of green lawns, cottages, manors, old family retainers, porridge, and high tea, all presenting an appearance of flawless cleanliness and freshness, may be the impression the tourist gains, but the tourist of history must go far beyond this Sunday heritage of Victorian England. For this is also a nation that can get along comfortably with a statue of Cromwell at one end of a short street and a statue of Charles I at the other.

  The arts of the Augustan age expressed the standards of the dominant aristocracy, who, well placed, well poised, secure in the possession of power, and untroubled, were free to concentrate upon formal perfection in their way of life, their intellectual no less than their social manners. The principle of aristocratic superiority in politics found its analogy in literature and music, in the attention paid to correctness and solemnity of style. This clarity of view, which differs from the Italian’s because of the Englishman’s calm, is the enemy of all obscurity; the mystic and metaphysical that is characteristic of the German is far removed from the Englishman. His aversion to abstract speculation, rejection of mysticism, love of liberty, of tolerance, of free inquiry, delight in the attainable and in the exercising of reason are all summed up in John Locke, who was as characteristic of the English mind as were Descartes of the French and Kant of the German.

  The monarchy was the apex of society, but it was the craftsmen and the tradesmen, and also the highest stratum of the middle classes, the literary men, who in airing their views evolved the ideals of liberty and order, the principle that none should have too much power and none too little, ideals developed in the spirit of reasonable compromise that made Britain’s institutions possible. All this was palpable reality even though political morality was very low in Georgian England, following a tradition well established by Charles II, though, of course, neither English invention nor monopoly. What the non-Briton must remember is that despite lax political morals there was an abiding respect for the rule of law and that constitutional practices rest on the rule of the spirit of the law rather than on its letter. Constitutional rigidity is alien to the English political genius.

  The richness of the Elizabethan age and its immediate sequel was bound to create a reaction against its irrational profligacy, a reaction of sobriety and of the rational mind. With Mind there appears its pretty sister, Cleverness, to take over from Genius the governing of thought. On the Continent, prestige and authority still ruled, the authority of the monarch and of God; this was the age of the Habsburgs, of the Jesuits, of Louis XIV, the grand siècle. But England proved that divinely sanctioned royal prestige can be in conflict with popular authority, and a revolution took place in the name of the Puritan God, eliminating that frivolous and superfluous pomp which is called the monarchy.

  Milton, the great poet of the Puritans, defends the revolution—though in Latin tracts; he even defends the execution of the sinful King: Pro populo Anglicano defensio. The religious background was of course very real, yet the new, utilitarian conception of life, for which ample sanction was found in the Hebrew Scriptures, is an important point that must not be overlooked. The Lord Protector of the Commonwealt
h was a “conservative” dictator; there is evidence that he would have been willing to go farther in the direction of religious tolerance. It was another matter when Parliament threatened private property; here he would not yield. One recalls his famous words to Parliament in 1654 in which he protested the “Levelling Principle” that would “make a Tenant as liberal a fortune as the Landlord.” Indeed, some historians call him, with right, “the guardian of private property.” Here is the beginning of what the Puritans, though unwittingly, assuredly helped to develop: “Class consciousness superseding chapel consciousness,” to quote Trevelyan. Religion in practice is inevitably affected by social and economic ideas. It had its role to play in the development of the idea of human unity, but the class society prevailed and used religion for its own ends—that is, to maintain itself.

  The sparkling world of the English Renaissance gave way to new moral tenets, a new art, and a new science: a civilization based on industry, finance, and commerce, on the building of an empire; the primary fact of human life had become economic and political well-being. Roger Boyle, a Restoration dramatist, expressed the frame of mind of this rising capitalist, empire-building society: