George Frideric Handel_Dover Books on Music

by Paul Henry Lang

  [6]

  THE SEASON WORE ON. Handel, seemingly undisturbed, went back to the English works. On January 31, 1741, L‘Allegro, “with several new Additions and Concertos,” did a little better; Handel added eleven new numbers and shifted the parts, “the Boy” being replaced by the new Italian soprano, Monza. February 3 was given over to a benefit for Handel’s old friend, John Christopher Smith, Sr. Then with the final Deidamia on the tenth the curtain was rung down on the opera composer, never to rise again. The season was rounded out by a command performance of L’Allegro, revivals of Acis and Galatea and Saul, and on the last evening a presentation of L’Allegro ed il Penseroso, without Il Moderato.

  And now quiet settled down both on the theatre and on the house in Brook Street; Handel seemed at last to have acknowledged defeat and given up opera. What was his state of mind? He must have been baffled; neither oratorio nor opera was successful, only the pastorals found favor with the public. We see him compose, early in July, two fine Italian duets, Quel fior ch‘all’alba ride—not to be confused with the early Italian piece by the same title—and Nò di voi non vuò fidarmi, for which there is no particular reason that we have been able to discover. Rumors once more began to circulate that Handel was ready to strike his colors, his career ended, and return to Germany. But personally he was still widely popular, and an open letter to the London Daily Post indicates the existence of an equally widespread sentiment deploring the decline of the composer who for a generation had been a prominent figure in London’s artistic life. The anonymous author of the letter laments the neglect into which Handel has fallen, appealing to the reputation of Englishmen as “encouragers” of the arts, and exhorting them to “take [Handel] back into Favour.” 83

  It is at this point that biographers paint a pathetic picture of a man whom life has defeated, who is bereft of his fighting courage, but who now finds lasting serenity by turning away from the theatre to Holy Scripture, henceforth dedicating his gifts to the service of religion. “The powers of his art,” said Sir John Hawkins, “never appeared to so great advantage as when he made use of passages selected from Holy Writ.” The danger of such a simplified and generalized interpretation is that it inhibits further investigation; it seems to explain the course of events without actually doing so. Messiah, which at this point is always the chief exhibit, does not reflect a change in Handel’s artistic habit and thought.

  Handel cannot be considered a compromise phenomenon. Only his time was that, and only his time can be censured. A lesser man would have perished in attempting to acclimatize English taste to the opera theatre, as indeed all the others did perish. Among the victims we must sadly count one of the greatest musical talents of the 17th century, which was rich in them: Purcell. He is of course far from forgotten, and enough of his music lives to assure him exceptional rank not only in Britain but everywhere else. His great dramatic powers, however, were not permitted to develop to full maturity, and he departed young from a scene where his particular talents were hobbled.

  The impression that in Handel’s case we are dealing with a categorical “conversion” is misleading; it is the result of half-serious historiography. As a matter of fact, such a conversion is inconceivable; in the case of a truly great creative personality, we shall always be made aware of the continuation of his earlier art, only perhaps enhanced. An undramatic composer will never become dramatic, and a miniaturist will not give us great symphonies. It could not be otherwise, because temperament is inborn; there is no such thing as a changing temperament, and this manifestly applies to Handel, but we cannot dismiss the circumstances that affect temperament. Unlike the artist in more recent times, whose every move seems to be influenced by his surroundings, the art of the Baroque masters was remarkably stable, yet this stability, so prominent on the Continent, did not extend to the free artist in England who managed his own affairs. The world had a greater influence on such an artist than on the Kantor in the service of a church or school or the Kapellmeister in the service of a princely court. There is here, then, a dichotomy that has led many a writer to false conclusions.

  It is agreed that at this juncture of his career Handel reached a posi-tion that was to hold good for the future; but earlier biographers—and not a few later ones—consider his reorientation a “conversion to a sacred calling,” implying that oratorio is noble and sacred while opera is something not quite clean and Christian. Time and again these critics bewail the “waste” of Handel’s creative years on this frivolous and alien form of music. The same regret is expressed by some literary critics for the twenty years “wasted” by Milton during the interlude when he put aside his “singing robes” to engage in prose polemics. Burke was also seen “squandering his time on speeches and pamphlets.” But could either of these men be imagined without their complementary activities? And who could say whether Paradise Lost and Samson Agonistes would have been created without the interlude of prose, or whether the great oratorios could have been composed without the operas preceding them?

  More recent historians, fully aware of the fallacy of the religious conversion theory, advance the contrary view that Handel turned to the oratorio out of sheer necessity, fleeing into a safe world for lack of force to put up with the rough realities of opera in England. Stated thus categorically, what truth there is in such a statement becomes veiled. Handel did not lose the game because of lack of force. How can we speak of “lack of force” in the face of the resurgence that followed his repeated “bankruptcies”? Handel continued to compose operas in the face of defeat, remaining intrepid, competitive, and willing to take risks, until he became convinced that he had found a new and suitable outlet for his dramatic talents. Seen from this perspective, we must also question the theory of Müller-Blattau, set forth in an otherwise good article in Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, that Alexander’s Feast is the turning point, the proof of Handel’s decision. But this is to confuse a masterpiece such as Handel was likely to produce at any time and under any circumstances with a “decision” to which he had not come even after his disastrous collapse and his return from Aachen. There was no such decision made at the time of the composition of Alexander’s Feast, for Handel did not yet see the situation clearly; the final crisis was the result of cumulative factors. In a speech at Halle University, Dent said that it was only in the middle forties that the period of experimentation ended for Handel. This is an equally untenable view, for the experimentation itself ended with Athalia—Saul, composed in 1738, is one of the greatest of the oratorios. The decision must have been made before Samson was composed, that is, in 1740-41. It may be helpful at this stage to review the process by which Handel was brought to a point of evident crisis that forced a decision.

  Until about 1728, despite apparent variety, Handelian opera was confined within the relatively narrow limits of the composer’s variant of the Venetian-Neapolitan opera. Meant to appeal in the main to aristocratic audiences, this opera inhabited a realm of experience not common to the vast majority of Englishmen. “The opera,” says Hawkins, “was an entertainment calculated for the better sort of people in this country.” Could it, if continued on this plane, have reached out to include the chief patrons of the English theatre, the educated middle classes? Italian opera did not have this capacity in 18th-century England. After Handel’s return from his second Italian journey we notice a gradual change in the operas; they become lighter, and several of them won considerable popular success, being indeed very fine works. Still, he was decidedly constricted, and in the final operas one senses a conscious attempt to break through the routine of the opera seria. Some of these changes, as well as the employment of the chorus, were the result of his experiences with the first oratorios. It is interesting that this intelligent man, whose art grew out of opera, who lived his entire life within its sphere, never expressed his thoughts on the matter. But Serse shows that he began to ponder its nature as the English works proved to him that the great vessel of his imagination was too large for the res
tricted waters of the opera seria, and he must have recognized that even the new, lighter, and more popular style he essayed in the last operas would not lead anywhere; the public simply rejected Italian opera.

  There were some other inhibitions that increasingly turned Handel’s attention towards English works. Because the regulations affecting opera during Lent began to be enforced in earnest, from 1737 onwards Handel organized what amounted to oratorio “seasons,” which of course also included odes and pastorals. It was during that same year, when he was in dire straits and his health at a low ebb, that the Lenten season at Covent Garden demonstrated that while the operas played to scant audiences, Alexander’s Feast, Deborah, and Esther filled the house. We noticed that this astute observer and good businessman chose at that time to ignore these important omens and continued to risk his fortune and health in fanatic defense of Italian opera. But the great success of the English works at Oxford must again have been in his mind when the final curtain went down on Deidamia.

  He now saw that there was absolutely no future for Italian opera, and that not even the temporary successes of the past decades could be repeated—the fate of Serse and Deidamia must have been a bitter disappointment. Yet it was the businessman in Handel who sized up the situation ahead of the composer. Beginning with 1739, Handel abandoned the subscriptions, the only known safe system of providing working capital and basic income for a repertory theatre.84 Henceforth anyone who could afford a single admission fee was able to attend the theatre, and it was thus that Handel made the first move towards attracting the cultivated English middle classes instead of the aristocratic patrons of the Italian opera. So the impresario; but the composer was not yet convinced that he should altogether forsake opera for oratorio; after all, both Saul and Israel in Egypt were failures. At this point there was a crisis, perhaps the only real crisis in his life; here, then, would be the human explanation for Handel’s “conversion” to oratorio. But beyond this we must find the purely artistic reasons; and it seems to us that the solution of his dilemma owes a good deal to that “magnificent failure,” Israel in Egypt.

  Clearly, the greatest attraction to Handel in the English works was the chorus; we have seen that under the influence of oratorio, ode, and pastoral, he tried to use the chorus even in the operas. Had it not been for the lack of a permanent chorus in the contemporary opera house (though not of course in Vienna and Paris), he undoubtedly would have extended its role in the opera. As it was, most of the time he had to be satisfied with a “chorus” made up of a solo ensemble. In Israel Handel overreached himself, presenting a plethora of great choruses without “songs.” The public did not like it at all, and Handel realized that he must return to the reasonable balance of the two elements achieved in Saul. The moment he understood that this oratorio was still music drama—theatre—even though the visual element was suppressed by a hypocritical society, the course of his remaining creative years was irrevocably set, and the resilient old warrior immediately threw off his indecision. That this is more than a guess is borne out by the events that took place about this time.

  Lord Middlesex, who had already tried his hand at managing theatre, the New Theatre in the Haymarket, now founded a replica of the Opera of the Nobility, moving across to the opera house, the old Haymarket Theatre. Heidegger, whose masquerades and ridottos were still remembered, must have been in some way connected with the affair but avoided publicity so as not to embarrass the distinguished “undertaker.” The peregrinating Rolli was immediately on hand, and Middlesex acquired a first-class composer, Baldassare Galuppi, for musical director. A good Italian cast with two castratos, one of them the Andreoni of Handel’s last troupe, was assembled, the season opening on October 31, 1741, with a pasticcio, Alessandro in Persia, put together by Galuppi from the works of half a dozen composers, including himself. The pasticcio was very successful—twenty-one performances during the season—and it seemed that this new corporation of aristocrats would restore Italian opera to its erstwhile glory. A year or two before, Handel would have considered the mere formation of such a company casus belli, exploding into frantic activity, recruiting a troupe and composing operas, ready to vanquish, before they could gain a foothold, the foolhardy who dared to challenge him. Instead, he attended the opening night at the Haymarket Theatre as a spectator—and ‘laughed.” The laughter was not directed at Galuppi’s pasticcio—Handel was guilty of many of those himself—but at the realization that he no longer had to struggle with such things. The whole situation now seemed to him so ridiculous that, as he wrote to Jennens, it made him “very merry all along the journey” to Dublin. His mind was made up; he no longer saw competition in Italian opera because he had altogether different plans.

  So when Handel left for Dublin early in November 1741 (to paraphrase Penseroso somewhat), “old experience attained to something like prophetic strain.” At fifty-six he was to start the artistic voyage to reach final equilibrium, turning altogether to the oratorio. That he realized he had at last made landfall cannot be doubted; the great works that follow prove this conclusively. Now he becomes the composer of giant events and giant feelings; the world widens before him as space and time widen before De Quincey’s opium eater. To the much-tried composer the oratorio now becomes, as neither Italian cantata nor German Passion could, a personal genre.

  XIII

  1741-1742

  Messiah (1741)—Circumstances surrounding composition of Messiah—Arguments supporting special purpose—The legends—Dublin at the time of Handel’s visit—Local musical scene—Charitable societies—Handel’s trip to Dublin—First public concerts—Subscription sold out—Second series of concerts—Messiah first performed, April 13, 1742—The libretto—The music—Critical appreciation of Messiah in modern literature—Hande! returns to London

  WHILE THE ACCUMULATED REASONS FOR A RADICAL artistic reorientation related in the preceding chapter should have sufficed to bring about the change, the deus ex machina was still needed to give it a concrete beginning and direction; throughout Handel’s life this was so, and the momentous step he was about to take was no exception. The calm we have seen in the Brook Street house where Handel whiled away the time composing Italian chamber duets was suddenly shattered by furious activity. At the end of the summer of 1741, Handel began Messiah. Part I was completed in six days, another nine days were needed for Part II, and six more for Part III; after three days for “filling out” the score, i.e. completing the orchestration, the great work was achieved. The new incentive was so powerful that upon affixing the date to the last page of Messiah, September 14, Handel immediately began Samson, and this other gigantic work was fully sketched by the end of October.

  Messiah is a unique work in Handel’s oeuvre, the only biblical oratorio calling on the New Testament.85 Messiah is not typical of the Handelian oratorio because, while it is a justly admired and appealing masterpiece, it is undramatic. We notice that immediately upon finishing Messiah, Handel returned to the dramatic oratorio. There must have been an unusual incentive for him to compose so special a work, and this incen-tive clearly came from Dublin, whither Handel was invited by the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, the Duke of Devonshire, on behalf of three of the Dublin charity organizations. When this invitation was extended is not known, but there is a report that the Duke was in London in February 1741. Handel was well known in Dublin, where his works were often played, especially for charity benefits. Messiah must have been especially planned for such a charitable benefit, a fact that would explain its specific nature, the consequence of a request based on his reputation as a composer of church music.

  When Handel arrived in Ireland he was described in Faulkner’s Dublin. Journal of November 21 as “a Gentleman universally known by his excellent Compositions in all kinds of Musick, and particularly for his Te Deum, Jubilate, Anthems, and other compositions in Church Musick.” The notice emphasized that works of this nature “for some Years past have principally consisted the Entertainments in the Round Church, which h
ave so greatly contributed to support the Charity of Mercer’s-Hospital.” Only one piece of available documentary evidence, however, specifically backs up our conclusion. Reporting on the final rehearsal of “Mr. Handel’s new Grand Sacred Oratorio, called, The MESSIAH,” the Dublin Journal expressly stated that the oratorio was “composed for this Noble and Grand Charity.” Though the Journal’s writer echoed a belief shared by most Dubliners, we cannot positively ascertain whether he spoke from first-hand knowledge, because the communications on the subject known to have taken place between Dublin and London in the fall of 1741 have not survived; but the chronicles furnish strong circumstantial support.

  Upon arrival in the Irish capital, Handel immediately mapped out his plans, as was his custom, by scheduling everything he considered attractive to the public. A subscription series of six concerts was announced in December, and another set in February 1742, but in neither of these very successful series was Messiah included, though the finished score was in Handel’s travelling bags. It was not until April 13, almost five months after his arrival, that Messiah was introduced on the occasion of a great and very special charity gathering “For the relief of the Prisoners in the several Gaols, and for the Support of Mercer’s Hospital in Stephen Street, and of the Charitable Infirmary on the Inn’s Quay.” That this was regarded as an extraordinary event is clear from the long preparations supervised by a committee, and from the interest shown by the highest civic and religious authorities. Handel had the assistance of the choirs of both Christ Church and St. Patrick’s Cathedrals, the latter also an Anglican church, whose dean at the time was Jonathan Swift, known for his dislike of music. The request of the Governors of Mercer’s Hospital, however, was for such a noble purpose that even the irascible Dean had to give his permission for his choristers to participate.