George Frideric Handel_Dover Books on Music

by Paul Henry Lang

  Well might Queen Anne have been delighted with the Birthday Ode (1714), first in the line of anthems. The text, by an unknown author, gave Handel opportunities to indulge in pastoral descriptive music, rendering the “gentle murmurs,” the “rolling streams,” and the flutter of “downy wings,” but also the glories of the Queen who “fix’d a lasting Peace on Earth.” The work was unquestionably based on the welcome and birthday odes of Purcell and other English composers, and it is quite apparent that Handel had studied both recent and older English music.

  O be joyful in the Lord, the first of the Chandos Anthems, all composed between 1717 and 1720, uses so much material from the Utrecht Jubilate that we can pass over it after noting Handel’s remarkable technical achievement in reducing the choruses from four and five parts to three, and the orchestra to strings (without violas) and two oboes, all without essential loss. The second Chandos Anthem, In the Lord put I my trust, is a rather extended work with a number of choruses and tenor solos, but though it contains some fine and elaborate fugues the tone is prevailingly intimate, leaning toward the pastoral. Only in the chorus “snares, fire, and brimstone” does Handel adopt the ceremonial tone. Perhaps the only Chandos Anthem that shows introspection is the third, the penitential Psalm, Have mercy upon me. The solo numbers, especially, are truly penitential in feeling, but even here the joyous triumphal tone of “Thou shalt make me hear of joy” gains the upper hand, and the final double fugue, “There shall I teach Thy ways,” though dark, is positive in tone. The fourth, O sing unto the Lord a new song, is festive and proclamatory, yet midway Handel turns to the evocative—“O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness”—only to make the bowed listener sit up startled when the chorus suddenly falls in with “Let the whole world stand in awe.” I will magnify Thee, the fifth anthem, exists in two versions. The first is scored for the usual modest Cannons ensemble of three-part chorus, tenor and soprano solo, the second for four-part chorus and full solo quartet, the final “Glory and worship are before Him” broadening to a double chorus of eight parts. While the second version is the more artistic of the two, it borrows a great deal from other anthems, and the final ceremonial Amen chorus, while effective, is somewhat conventional.

  The sixth anthem, As pants the hart, of which there are four versions, illustrates Handel’s phenomenal skill in choral writing. The first version is in the chamber style, while the subsequent reworkings have magnificent choruses in several parts. The second version is a real tour de force. In the reworking of the opening chorus Handel wanted something more spacious and under normal circumstances would have enlarged the customary four-part chorus to eight parts. At Cannons he had only a three-part choral ensemble to work with, therefore the doubling resulted in a six-part chorus, but the whole thing is a feat of sleight of hand, for while the setting gives the impression of the richness of a double chorus a 6, nowhere does he employ six real parts. The opening of the anthem is suffused with the gentle melancholy of southern Italian church music. The magnificent soprano solo, “Tears are my daily food,” also breathes this spirit; in its introduction the oboe and the violins emit delectable little sighs. The duet “Why so full of grief?” is also melting, but the tenor solo before the last chorus is a veritable aria di bravura. This is a great work, lamentably disfigured in the final version.

  My song shall be alway (No. 7) is the least interesting of the anthems, but No. 8, O come let us sing unto the Lord, is one of the finest. This and the following five anthems use a four-part chorus; apparently the Cannons forces had been enlarged. It is a piece of general rejoicing, one of the real ceremonial works, as elaborate, powerful, and splendid as any of the great oratorios; indeed, some of this music will reappear in Belshazzar. Yet the pastoral interlude is not missing. In the tenor aria “We are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand,” a delicate pastoral atmosphere is created simply by using two recorders. The ninth anthem, O praise the Lord with one consent, is also broad, hymnic, and full of rhetorical pathos. The tenth, The Lord is my light, clearly foreshadows the great “military” scenes in the oratorios; the words allude to “hosts of men,” to the “trembling of the earth,” insisting that “Yet shall my heart be not afraid.” In the chorus “For who is God” this anthem presents one of those mighty pieces where the Englishman looks with confidence to his constitutional God (who will shake the earth in Joshua); the anthem ends with a resounding choral fugue of praise. The grand manner continues enhanced in the eleventh anthem, Let God arise. The very first chorus, “Let his enemies be scattered,” is sledge-hammer music, a quality that still echoes in the solos, which are interrupted by a fine choral siciliana, and the anthem ends in a majestic double fugue. The final Alleluia offers one of the few instances of cantus firmus work. The twelfth anthem, O praise the Lord, is routine Handel.

  To carry this genre of works to its conclusion, we must mention the Wedding Anthem for Princess Anne (1734), a festive piece with its double choruses, but too dependent on borrowings. The second wedding anthem, for the Prince of Wales (1736), is not noteworthy, but the Foundling Hospital Anthem of 1749 is no routine work. “Blessed are they that consider the poor” touches deep feelings, for Handel was a charitable person with a love for children. Here, as in the Funeral Anthem, he reminisces from his own childhood, as is immediately evident from his use of the chorale Aus tiefer Not, set with an unusual “strictness”—for Handel—that recalls the German cantor’s art. Even the final Hallelujah is more dignified than jubilant.

  Though chronologically earlier (1737), the Funeral Anthem has been left until last because it is in a class by itself. Burney, usually judicious and somewhat cautious, abandons restraint when speaking of this anthem, which he places at the head of all Handel’s works. There are even some sacrilegious voices—from Handel’s native land—to be heard declaring that this great Psalm-cantata is “equal throughout to Bach’s best efforts”!

  This anthem is not pure ceremonial music, it is ceremonial music with a profound personal involvement, which gives it an altogether unique cast. Caroline as Handel knew her during a friendship of thirty-odd years—as the fairy princess of his childhood, as the Princess of Wales, and as the steadfast Queen supporting a vacillating, shallow King —passes before his mind’s eye as the music recapitulates that life. The opening chorus, “The ways of Zion do mourn,” brings back Handel’s youth, the cantor’s apprentice who from the organ led the congregation in the singing of the chorale, Herr Jesu Christ, du hochstes Gut. But the manner in which the cantus firmus is used is entirely Handel’s own, the piece being a sort of free chorale fantasia, not an integral setting of the traditional Kirchenlied. The opening strains of the tune are announced in the usual even half notes, the “cantus firmus” gradually taking over the other parts, while two additional motifs are introduced. The combination of these elements creates a wondrous, ever-expanding contrapuntal tapestry ending in a great fugue. Then comes a gentle solo quartet, “When the ear heard her,” a musical portrait of the noble friend, and, even more affecting, the simple choral setting of “She delivered the poor.” Nevertheless, the heroic tone is not missing, and the contrast between the quietly meditative and narrative passages and the solemn and sturdy choral proclamations is maintained throughout. At “But their name liveth evermore” Handel quotes the great funeral motet, Ecce quomodo moritur, by his namesake, Jacobus Gallus (Handl), revered in German lands since the 16th century. The anthem does not end with the usual triumphant Hallelujahs; it dies away pianissimo.

  The deliberate withholding of the expression of personal religious faith was alien to Evangelical-Lutheran church music; Anglican orthodoxy, more formal and externalized, virtually demanded it. In Georgian times the atmosphere of ceremonial splendor in the great London churches would have made the lyric confessions of a Bach totally incongruous. There is no need to search in the Te Deums for any religious sentiment; this is official music, state music, in which the appeal to the political-national consciousness of the people is so direct tha
t one almost feels there is nothing to be gained by analysis of their musical construction. To us these splendid works appear to embody a kind of elevated religious rhetoric, but there can be no doubt that their composer intended them to fulfill a political and psychological purpose, and that is how his contemporaries saw them.

  With the banishment of the Stuarts the face of England may have changed, but in John Locke’s treatises the Miltonian ideas are not absent. The King receives his sovereignty from the people, and he obliges himself to use the powers vested in him for the defense of their rights and of the laws that safeguard them. Nevertheless, the sovereigns still called themselves “kings by the grace of God,” a seeming violation of the basic constitutional principle but gladly supported by the English people, who knew well that it presented no threat to their institutions. For Anglican festive occasions nothing was more appropriate than the poetry of the Old Testament, since such ancient religions as the Semitic had, for the most part, no creed; they consisted rather of institutions and practices. History has demonstrated that institutions are far more lasting than their interpretations. Over these interpretations, of which the Handelian anthems are magnificent examples, the Englishman’s ardent consciousness, pride, and tolerance shed a glow that obscures from us the basic ground of fact. Basil Lam wittily remarks that “Handel seems to have accepted readily the convention by which the Almighty was assumed to have special responsibility for national victories,” yet whenever we encounter Handel’s sumptuous ceremonial music it is subjected in our minds to an unconscious meiosis that is very difficult to correct without falling into the contrary error. We must not forget that though wholeheartedly agreeing with the English conception, and preferring the Old Testament and classical antiquity to Christian subjects, Handel’s faith in divine grace, in an inner guiding voice, remained unshaken; each of his acts proves that he was filled with a peace and fortitude that could withstand every assault from without, every adversity, and every pain. But he did not compose for this God; the recognition of a spiritual order lying at the foundation of political reality displaced his early Lutheran religious faith.

  The grandezza of the Te Deums and Coronation Anthems is well emphasized by the forces used. The Te Deums, though they have solos, are essentially choral works, the very first of them, the Utrecht Te Deum, consisting of eleven sections. Its constituent numbers are short, the whole being a well-constructed, compact work set for a five-part chorus and brilliant orchestra with trumpets and drums. There are some echoes of the German past, notably in the opening chorus, “We praise Thee O God,” with its cantus firmus work, but also palpable memories of Roman and Venetian choral techniques and of Carissimi. Of the others, the D major Te Deum seems to be an early work composed about the time of the Utrecht Te Deum, and the A major was perhaps written for the coronation in 1727. Neither of these two is significant; much more important is the B-flat Te Deum from the end of the Cannons period, even though it is a partial reworking of the Utrecht Te Deum. This is a mature piece, though in its recasting of some of the choruses in the Utrecht Te Deum, their simple but telling impact lost some of its freshness.55 The Dettingen Te Deums, much later than the others, is more monumental, extended, and varied in its techniques, but also somewhat more “official” in tone and substance. Very interesting composite structures provide both attractiveness and a logical building up to the culminating choruses. A fine example of this procedure is “Thou art the King of glory,” where the bass solo, ac-companied by continuo and a concertante trumpet, leads like a precentor, followed by the chorus, until everything is swallowed up in the jubilation of the full chorus and orchestra.

  The Coronation Anthems are somewhat simpler in design; their counterpoint, even their rhythm, is less elaborate, but the ceremonial-proclamatory quality is overwhelming. This is most deceptive music when studied from the score; one sees simple diatonic harmonies, but they are so placed in the voices and so timed that when heard the effect is irresistible. The first Coronation Anthem, Zadok the Priest, begins with a simple undulating introduction in the strings which, welling up repeatedly, leads to a veritable explosion when the chorus enters. One might say with a little exaggeration that it does not matter much what follows, the issues are settled then and there. What neither apologists nor detractors seem to understand is that in ceremonial music of this kind the ritual aspects must needs develop at the expense of the religious, even at the expense of the more subtly musical. Nor can such a piece tarry for individuals to meditate upon their feelings. Where psychology begins there are no longer deeds, only motives for deeds; the solidity offered by the unequivocal is lost.

  Zadok the Priest is the supreme example of this ceremonial music, though the second Coronation Anthem, The King shall rejoice, is no less magnificent, even if more elaborate and polyphonic. The third, My heart is inditing, differs from the others. It is gentle and warm, since it served for the part of the ceremony where the Queen was crowned. Nothing massive here, but a good deal of Purcellian finesse, especially in the delicately worked “Kings’ daughters were among thy honorable women,” and in “Upon thy right hand did stand the Queen,” whose dancelike lattice work is most attractive. Only at the end does the tone turn to the proclamatory. Let thy hand be strengthened is the least important of the four anthems.

  Handel’s ceremonial music “faithfully reproduces the tone of Anglican church music,” it is true, but his means and substance are his own. A comparison with Purcell’s and other English composers’ works will show in Handel’s a more imaginative texture as well as elements coming from German, Italian, and French sources, the presence of which may have prompted Dent’s statement referred to on page 215. But neither is there any similarity to the German cantata, steeped in mysticism, to which the anthems are often compared even by English authors. Outwardly the anthem may look like a cantata because it consists of several sections or numbers, the solos alternating with chorus, but the tone and purpose exclude all comparison. The cantus firmus technique is used sparingly. In the Utrecht Te Deum and Jubilate it surely represents a natural employment of Handel’s German training, for it appeared in the earlier Laudate pueri whence it was transferred to the English work. The final chorus again makes use of an old cantus firmus, paraphrased around the turn of the century by many German masters. The insistence on motivic elaboration in “Vouchsafe O Lord” in the same work also recalls German techniques and so does “O go your way to his gates.” This piece, the core of the Jubilate, with its elaborate five-part counterpoint, is unthinkable without the old German motet style, but the independent handling of the orchestral accompaniment gives it a different coloring. When Handel transferred parts of this glorious piece to the Brockes Passion (“Wir alle wollen erblassen”) somehow the glory was lost. It was quite natural that in the Funeral Anthem Handel should recall the liturgical music of his youth and quote the hallowed tunes used at funerals in Germany. Nothing of this sort was available to him in England; there was not the unbroken living tradition of church music as in Germany, for by the end of the 17th century the spirit of the Reformation had disappeared. He could not find symbolic tunes that would fit into his grand choral style and therefore returned to those he knew so well from the Liebfrauenkirche and the Calvinist cathedral in Halle.

  Comparisons have also been made between the Handelian Te Deum and such of Bach’s works as the opening of the Christmas Oratorio, quoting especially the lack of dramatic quality in the Te Deums and equating the joyous tone with Bachian religious fervor. In the first place, the dramatic quality is not absent, though it is of a special, almost static kind. As an example of the many such touches, one may quote the sudden changes at key words from minor to major, from adagio to allegro, and from solo to tutti. The ceremonial anthems have no sinfonia at the beginning, again demonstrating the conceptual difference between cantata and anthem. Only the Funeral Anthem, in every way an exceptional work, has one. Though some of the anthems have brief instrumental introductions, they are of the French overture type, th
e Lully type, as are, indeed, practically all of Handel’s overtures; the Italian form is never used. But what sets these works altogether apart from the German cantata and oratorio is precisely their royal rather than their religious spirit. Te Deums were composed in the 18th century that approximate the spirit of the 1812 Overture: cannon firing, church bells pealing, military bands blaring, but all this only amounts to a good deal of more or less harmonious noise. If we want to see the essential difference between Handel’s English Te Deums and similar works composed by Germans all we have to do is to compare the former with any of Hasse’s five Te Deums. All of Hasse’s are well composed, festive, and even splendid, yet basically commonplace and expressing nothing in particular. Only the aged Haydn, in his second Te Deum (1800), offers a tone and quality kindred to Handel’s, undoubtedly derived from Haydn’s study of Handel’s music while in England. Among later composers one might mention Brahms, whose Triumphlied has something of the commemorative spirit of the Handelian Te Deum. On the other hand, such a “Bearbeitung” as Robert Franz’s of the Utrecht Jubilate takes its place with Elgar’s “retouching” of a Chandos Anthem mentioned above; it is a complete misreading of the spirit that animates the original.