resolute enough, to deliver us from our Italian bondage; and demonstrate, that English is soft enough for Opera, when compos’d by Poets ... I am of opinion, that male and female voices may be found in this kingdom, capable of every thing, that is requisite; and, I am sure, a species of dramatic Opera might be invented, that by reconciling reason and dignity, with musick and fine machinery, would charm the ear, and hold fast the heart, together.72
Here was a blueprint, most of whose features Handel had already apprehended, and he had also found the native voices, male and female, that could do justice to song in “soft English.” Handel’s answer, if there was any, is not known, but he evidently disregarded Hill’s appeal. Since his powerful reaction to the unauthorized performances also erased the men in the Little Theatre, any hope for English opera was gone. Piracy or no piracy, what the Arne-Carey-Lampe trio was trying to do was not a subterfuge; when they said they were offering English opera they meant it. The qualifying “after the Italian Manner” did not refer to castratos, coloratura pieces, and all the other components of the Italian opera seria, but to a genre distinguished from masque, semi-opera, and ballad opera. It is true, of course, that there was no English composer within sight who could have realized this dream, but Handel could have made it possible for some to arise by showing the way. It is sad to think that this tragedy of lost opportunity was to be repeated later under even more auspicious circumstances.
As we have seen, subsequent events seemed to confirm Handel’s deep-seated optimism in regard to Italian opera. Having succeeded in gaining access to the Theatre Royal in Covent Garden and having organized a company, he produced Ariodante and Alcina, two great and successful operas. Yet even so he had to round out the repertory with the reworked Acis, Esther, Deborah, and Athalia, which, with the organ concertos played between the acts, were popular and virtually bailed him out. This return to oratorio in 1735 was not due to a recognition of the feasibility and viability of the oratorio but solely to the circumstances. Opera was in bad straits and something had to be done to retrieve his fortunes. Either he had no Italian singers, or those he had could not measure up to the competition’s galaxy of stars; the only solution was the employment of English singers (and the ever-faithful Strada) in English works. Also, it is not inconceivable that with his sober business sense he realized the savings unstaged works would effect in this difficult situation. There were no artistic or esthetic reasons for the change. It is most interesting to observe that while Handel instantly reacted to piracy, he paid no attention to rival oratorios. When his erstwhile friend Greene produced a Jephthah, and Defesch a Judith, they remained ignored, but the minute the challenge came from opera, from the Italians, he was full of fight—and creative fervor.
In January 1736, Handel suddenly decided upon a new English work. By February 19 it was not only finished but performed in Covent Garden to considerable applause—and the money started to flow into Handel’s rather depleted coffers. With Alexander’s Feast we are back in the situation we found in Italy in Handel’s youth, where the dividing line between serenata, cantata, and oratorio was a very tenuous one. Alexander’s Feast might be termed a large cantata, but since we are in England its proper name is an ode. That it is called an “Ode to St. Cecilia” is a little more far-fetched. The dramatis personae-Alexander, Timotheus, Thais, and the chorus of Greek warriors—have little to do with the Christian saint, who at the end of the ode is virtually dragged into the story. But the ode offered good poetry, the arranger, Newburgh Hamilton, obsequiously respectful of Dryden, did not hurt the original, only arranging it for recitatives, arias, and choruses, and Handel found many opportunities for the genre pictures he always loved.
Since the foundation of the London St. Cecilia Society in 1683, the feast of the patron saint of music, November 22, had been celebrated annually in music. Although there is only a passing reference in her legend to her praising God in music, Cecilia somehow acquired fame as a musician, and the painters early appropriated her as a favorite subject, creating magnificently anachronistic scenes in which the second-century martyr plays on beautiful Renaissance and Baroque organs. In literature, too, she found admirers in Chaucer and others. It was Dryden’s second Ode to St. Cecilia that was the subject of Handel’s great new work. Dryden, the classicist, made a big detour to reach St. Cecilia, going back all the way to Plutarch, perhaps because this was his second Cecilian ode and he wanted to do something different, and his preference in any case was for antiquity. He chose the famous feast of Alexander, held many centuries before St. Cecilia in celebration of the conquest of Persepolis. To enliven things, Dryden introduced Timotheus, known to have been a singer of unusual powers of persuasion. The allegory of the power of music, which is the subject of Cecilian odes, is thus present, though somewhat incidentally, and calling for more classical learning than the simple traditional eulogy of musical instruments. Dryden, the playwright and polemicist, the satirist and critic, the cool, precise, brilliant, and seemingly unemotional observer, aging and left behind, turned to lyricism. He himself was convinced—and said so—that an ode of similar merit had never been written and never would be. The ode is indeed a fine piece of poetry and most suitable for musical setting; its climax is reached by well-organized stages which Handel followed not only in the quality of his music, but in the instrumentation. Given a well-constructed piece and beautiful words, Handel was bound to create a masterpiece, and an extraordinary masterpiece Alexander’s Feast is.
There were some precedents he could follow. Dryden’s ode had been set to music by Jeremiah Clarke in 1697 and by Thomas Clayton in 1711—Clarke’s a minor work, Clayton’s less than that. Hamilton, who thought that Handel alone was capable of doing justice to Dryden’s poem, forgot another St. Cecilia ode which, though not composed on Dryden’s text, hovers over Handel’s: Purcell’s of 1692. As usual, Handel does not borrow directly from his great predecessor, but the imprint of the English master’s particular delicate art is everywhere. Shelley’s words on Raphael’s St. Cecilia: “She is calmed by the profundity of her passion,” is perhaps the most fitting description for Purcell’s ode.
There is something truly “classical” about Alexander’s Feast, a happy and serene score, with its simplicity, diatonic directness, pellucid choral writing, and refined orchestration. Handel now proceeds with the newly-won rapport between the arias and the choral pieces that we have seen established in Athalia. Right at the beginning there is a remarkably fine alternation between the chorus and the solo voices. “Bacchus ever fair and young,” a bass aria with chorus, reminds us that of all the gods Bacchus was the only one who demanded not worship but conviviality, a god who was willing to sit down at the same table with his devotees. For a moment a darker tone appears as the soprano sings of the sad fate of Darius, immediately commented upon by the chorus, a magnificent dirge, a choral arioso that ends in no thunderous Hallelujah but stalks away, pianissimo. “The many rend the skies with loud applause” is one of Handel’s fine agitated pieces, but its brisk and animated quality hides an extraordinarily raffiné construction, in which a basso ostinato goes its own rigid way while the chorus proceeds with constantly variable phrase lengths. Now the trumpets and drums appear as the chorus of warriors clamors: “Break his bonds of sleep asunder.” This also is an ostinato construction, a choral chaconne, but simple and direct, and is followed by a great bass aria, “Revenge, Timotheus cries,” one of the blustering rage arias Handel likes to give his villains in the operas, but the busy orchestra gives it a comic undercurrent. That Handel seems indeed to be secretly smiling in his Homeric way at the whole affair lends Alexander’s Feast a particular charm. The bass continues with an ombra scene: “The Grecian ghosts, that in battle were slain.” The bassoons and the organ’s tasto solo running with the strings create a mystery-laden atmosphere. The King then takes a torch and led by Thais makes ready to destroy the temple to a gently flowing pastoral accompaniment; Handel again has tongue in cheek. The final chorus, quite Purcellian in
gait, ends the scene, and properly with it the ode. But where does that leave St. Cecilia?
By a real tour de force Dryden now rings in the saint. Commentators have found this hard to accept, though some have advanced the not implausible if a bit tenuous solution of regarding this as the triumph of St. Cecilia over Timotheus, Christianity over paganism. Is it not possible, though, that Dryden, the old and incorrigible satirist, perpetrated in this abrupt transition from antiquity to Christianity a sly little parody, which was well understood by Handel? By hinting at the universally known symbol of Cecilia, the organ (but see Handel’s mocking ritornels that surround this brief recitative), he paves the way for a fine chorus in which “At last divine Cecilia came.” Then Dryden builds a rather strange situation: a competition between Timotheus and the saint, which results in a draw. In a recitative the tenor suggests “Let old Timotheus yield the prize” but the bass counters with “Or both divide the crown,” for “He rais’d a Mortal to the skies,” while “She drew an Angel down.” Now the superb final chorus takes up this proposition enthusiastically, the Timotheus theme dancing lightly toward the skies while the angel steps downward in solid quarter notes; only in the last measures, marked Adagio, is the conflict finally resolved by the simple expedient of letting the angel have the last word. Once we realize the innocent satire we notice some other things. Dance rhythm prevails in Alexander’s Feast (as it does in Acis and Galatea). The majority of the solo numbers and half of the choral numbers are in triple time, and some of those in duple time are marches. The role of the tenor is reminiscent of that of the Evangelist in the Passion, and this too seems to have been more than a coincidence, more than a mere traditional technical device, especially when the narrator’s role is shifted to the soprano.
When the scene moves from antiquity to Christendom, Handel is willing to display the full measure of his contrapuntal art; “At last divine Cecilia came” is a grand fugue. The final chorus is even more remarkable, a combination of solo ensemble and chorus, as it were, a solo ensemble in choral form. The mastery and inventiveness of this number make it one of Handel’s supreme compositions.
At this point Alexander’s Feast really ends—or should end. Hamilton was of a different opinion; he graced Dryden’s verses with a few of his own wretched lines, which Handel set to music, but subsequently wisely cancelled. Though the music is not bad, these additions, printed in the appendix of the new Halle edition, are rightfully omitted as spoiling the effect of a wondrous final chorus. Mozart, in his re-orchestrated version, also ignored the additional numbers; every musician would feel that Dryden’s poem and the magnificent ending as set by Handel do not suffer continuation.
The German exegetes had a great deal of difficulty with Dryden’s Ode, the opinions ranging from the naive to the preposterous. Chrysander, the good old Romantic, denounced Dryden for writing on commission: this practice, he said, was debasing for a true artist and incapable of resulting in a masterpiece.73 Surely he must have heard of the Esterházys and Rasumovskys and how they debased some true artists! Most of the others resent the small role assigned to the saint, whose “Christian” and “churchly” role is ignored. But Dryden and Handel found the ambiguity that envelops the work attractive, and the composer, with his fine instinct, seized upon the poet’s “salto mortale from antiquity to Christendom” (Kretzschmar), turning it into one of his finest choral scenes.
This lovely work, whose popularity for a long time was second only to Messiah’s and whose performance, properly adorned with an organ concerto or two, could not fail to enchant an audience no matter what its preferences and prejudices, is today seldom heard in America. Goethe and Herder admired it, but our choral societies cannot exercise their Christian lungs sufficiently on its Grecian beauty. Handel seems to have been equally insensitive to these beauties once the creative urge was satisfied. Abandoning a clearly promising trend, he doggedly returned to opera, to three consecutive failures, and the enterprise came crashing down in ruins.
XII
1737-1741
Aachen—Remarkable recovery—Handel returns to London—Renews partnership with Heidegger—Queen Caroline dies—Funeral Anthem (1737)—Faramondo (1738)—Roubiliac’s statue—Handel’s popularity —Serse (1738)—Opera disappears in London for two years—Handel begins Saul—Charles Jennens—Sanl, Israel in Egypt (1739)—Handel leases Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre—Ode for St. Cecilia’s Day (1739), L‘Allegro, il Penseroso, ed il Moderato (1740)—Influence of Purcell —Handel suddenly returns to opera—Imeneo (1740), Deidamia (1741) —Final opera season ends in spring of 1741—Inception of “conversion” theory with Hawkins—The “oratorio way”
THE ARTISTIC GRAVE COULD NOT HAVE YAWNED MORE ominously for Handel than in the early fall of 1737, when, afflicted in mind and body, he repaired to Aachen. But commiseration with his plight yields to admiration for the way he faced it. Music-loving physicians are fond of reconstructing case histories of their favorite composers, an occasionally illuminating pastime somewhat similar to inquiries into the performance practice of old music, and, one imagines, with as inconclusive results. At any rate, Dr. Wilhelm Reinhard, a Düsseldorf physician, in Die medizinische Welt (1935) questioned the “stroke” Handel is supposed to have suffered in 1737 and arrived at the diagnosis of “rheumatic muscle and nerve condition of the right arm.” Considering the rapidity of Handel’s recovery of the full use of his paralyzed arm, the modern diagnosis may appear correct, but it does not explain the mental disturbance verging on derangement hinted at by all contemporary witnesses.
Whatever the illness was, it could not cancel the iron will and energy of this man. Dr. Reinhard thinks that Handel must have undergone what the Germans vividly call a Pferdekur (horse cure), taking the cure in double or triple doses, which would be entirely in keeping with his impatient and determined character. The balmy climate of Aachen and the warm medicinal baths must have been helpful, and even more so the congenial atmosphere of the Rhineland city, which, with its many churches and monasteries and easygoing and rather “Latinized” Catholic population, must have recalled the Italy of his youth. Soon he regained the use of his arm and fingers, and naturally he immediately looked around for a place to exercise them by playing his favorite instrument, the organ, not a difficult task in Aachen. He found a fine instrument in the Abbey Church at Aachen-Burtscheid. The sudden complete recovery of their famous guest and his mastery of the instrument so awed the good nuns that they ascribed his cure to a miracle wrought by St. Cecilia, thus starting a legend that Alexander’s Feast and the St. Cecilia Ode were Handel’s thanksgiving offerings to the saint for her succor. Unfortunately, as with most such legends, history neglects to cooperate and corroborate—Alexander’s Feast was composed the year before. As to the smaller Ode, it was composed, as were many others before and after, back home in London for the November feast of the patron saint of music, observed in Protestant England more fervently and regularly than in the Catholic Rhineland.
Even more important than his physical recovery was the return of Handel’s mental faculties. As we shall see, his creative power welled up with undiminished force. The equation between the inward state of an artist of Handel’s magnitude and its outward expression is, of course, difficult to establish. There were not a few who believed that the composer of Arminio, Giustino, and Berenice, all failures, had shot his bolt; they noticed that the “Paraletick Stroke” had induced depression, apathy, and “the most violent deviations from reason.” These facts were known not only in England but in most centres of music on the Continent. The Crown Prince of Prussia, the future Frederick the Great, who was a cousin of Anne, Princess of Orange and Handel’s pupil and ardent friend, did not share the former English princess’s enthusiasm for Handel. Writing to her husband in October 1737, he expressed his conviction that “Handel’s great days are over, his inspiration is exhausted, and his taste behind the fashion.”
Returned to London in November 1737, Handel found a city empty of opera—and of competition;
the Opera of the Nobility was bankrupt, Porpora and the great singers had gone back to Italy. Recent estimates show that Handel was not plunged into bankruptcy as has been supposed, but the situation was bad enough. He was in debt, with virtually nothing but his royal annuities to keep him afloat. That his finances were in a bad state is proved by the absence of dealings with the Bank of England during 1737-38. But Heidegger was still in business, once more a lessee of the Haymarket Theatre, where he opened the season with a pasticcio, Arsace, just about when Handel returned from Aachen. The two old campaigners came to an understanding, and soon we see Handel hard at work composing an opera, Faramondo. That Heidegger was still willing to experiment with Handelian opera is truly remarkable in view of his past experiences. Faramondo was hardly begun when on November 20 Queen Caroline died and all places of entertainment were closed for a period of mourning. Handel dropped the opera, and by December 12 finished the great Funeral Anthem for the Queen’s obsequies, which took place in Westminster Abbey on the seventeenth. All newspapers praised the “fine Anthem of Mr. Handel’s,” and the performance, which is reported to have employed some 150 to 180 singers and instrumentalists, must have been impressive. In the words of the Bishop of Colchester, it was “reckoned to be as good a piece as he ever made,” a feeling shared by many a modern critic. If there were any misgivings about the aftermath of Handel’s illness, the Funeral Anthem (see p. 226 f.) should have dispelled them, for it showed Handel’s creative faculties not only unimpaired but rising to the summit. Nor was the tempo of his productivity slowed: Faramondo was finished on December 24, and two days later Handel began work on Serse.
George Frideric Handel_Dover Books on Music Page 40