George Frideric Handel_Dover Books on Music

by Paul Henry Lang

  “And with his stripes” is a fugue in the old style. Though masterly in execution, this chorus does not seem to be so spontaneous as the others, a fact that gave an opportunity to the writers of scholia. A whole literature arose in Germany about the piece’s spiritual and religious meaning. Such meaning, if it exists in an abstract fugue, “is hardly susceptible of proof,” to quote our colleague’s wise words about Handel’s heavenly vision; but the warning was disregarded, and the fugue was taken to represent the cross. So we have a Kreuzfuge, even though nothing is said about it in the text. Actually, this is an ancient peregrinating fugue theme, used by many composers all the way up to Mozart, and it had seen service before in Handel’s keyboard music.

  In the next chorus, “All we like sheep,” Handel is again back in the world, communicating with his listeners directly, pictorially, and without need of any metaphysical assistance. His alert imagination seizes upon every image: the concise ejaculations on “All we like sheep” are followed by meandering figurations that indeed “go astray,” and on “we have turned” roulades appear. How these symbols are then converted into the most appealing musical constellations demands a chapter by itself, which we propose to undertake farther on in this book. The figures on “turned” course from voice to voice in admirably rolling counterpoint, their attraction so strong that the orchestra cannot withstand it. Significantly, the end is in F minor, tying this marvelous piece, over the preceding fugue, to “Surely.”

  With the sharply dotted rhythm of “All they that see Him,” Handel reverts to the two earlier instances of accompanied recitative, but the orchestra is now angrier as Handel writes a near-realistic piece of action. The immediately following chorus, “He trusted in God,” presents a fugue subject so capriciously asymmetrical that in lesser hands it would surely have come to grief in the course of the exposition. Handel glories in it, plays with his material with sovereign ease, modulates rapidly, and throws in countersubjects. This time the commentators are within their rights in speaking of a “mocking fugue,” or as Schering plausibly says, “a turba of soldiers.” “Thy rebuke,” an accompanied recitative originally for tenor but presently almost always sung by a soprano, is again the work of the dramatist. The piece is heavily affective and the harmonic scheme disturbed by constant modulation. The tiny arietta, “Behold and see,” restores peace, but the ending is very sad. After a brief recitative, “He was cut off out of the land of the living,” which is curiously perfunctory considering its text, the A major aria, “But thou didst not leave his soul in Hell,” sets the tenth verse from Psalm XVI, which seems rather arbitrarily applied to the Messiah. It is a good piece, but one is aware that Handel wants to get at the great chorus that follows.

  With “Lift up your heads,” the jubilant theme of “Glory to God” returns, but Handel varies the simple homophonic anthem proclamation with the whole arsenal of his redoubtable choral counterpoint. Polyphony gradually gains, only to yield to the massive antiphonal homophony (“The Lord of hosts”) of the coronation anthem style. This is one of the great choruses. The second chorus, “Let all the angels,” is often omitted, but Larsen plausibly defends it and its importance in the scheme of the oratorio. The air “Thou art gone up” is known in four versions, but the original, for bass, is the preferred one. Though on the whole the aria itself is not outstanding—Handel begins to miss the opportunity for direct dramatic representation of individual characters—its rollicking accompaniment is very spirited. The composer obviously struggled with the vocal part of this piece. “The Lord gave the word” revives the expansive anthem type of chorus. From here onward one feels that occasionally the conspicuously Old Testament anthem style is somewhat incongruous with the Gospel. Christ emerges more and more as a hero, perhaps as King of Kings, but not as the Lamb of God. The musical level remains high, however, even though this particular piece, a good anthem, is not on a par with the great ones. “How beautiful are the feet” is known in five versions, but today the aria with its lovely gliding siciliana rhythm is usually given to a soprano. In it Handel is at his suave—and Italianate—best. The short madrigalesque chorus “Their sound is gone out” replaces the da capo in the aria.

  “Why do the nations” is a fine old thunder piece of the rage-revenge aria type of which there are many notable examples among Handel’s bass roles in the operas. There is something grimly determined in the ritornel, which grumbles angrily, three times exploding in a spiteful shout, each time at a higher pitch, to end, after a dozen measures, in a helpless trill. The bass solo starts with a widely arching trumpet-like call, but is afterwards lost in bewildering coloraturas. It is a great mistake to tack on a da capo to this piece; the chorus is the third section of the aria, which never had a repeat. By now Handel was wary of the da capo aria, and whenever he could he avoided the repeat. Yet this chorus, “Let us break their bonds asunder,” is often omitted in favor of a da capo, which not only upsets Handel’s formal plan, but robs us of a fine piece. Forgetting the anthem for the moment, Handel here again conjures up the madrigal; the delightfully frivolous “fugue” theme is opposed by an entirely different one composed of a broken triad and a running figure in sixteenths. Most attractive is the deception Handel plays on our musical expectations. Instead of the expected combination, the two themes never appear together, but throughout the composition one gets the impression that eventually they will. By almost general agreement this is considered one of the turba choruses. According to the text it should be, but unless the music is sung loudly (Handel gives no dynamic indication), in which case it loses its musical character, it surely belongs to the transparently light choruses. In the tenor aria “Thou shalt break them,” the orchestra does justice to the words; the vigorous theme almost physically suggests “breaking and dashing,” but the vocal part, after a good start, turns into a rather routine affair.

  And now we come to the most famous of the Messiah pieces, indeed the most famous choral piece in the English-speaking world. While our German friends often call the Halleujah Chorus a Glanzstück—which it most assuredly is—they also see in it “the expression of spiritual-religious introspection”—which it most assuredly is not. No more magnificently extrovert music has ever been composed. Interestingly enough, a musical dilettante—but a great philosopher—Wilhelm Dilthey, could have shown the way to the musicological exegetes. He found the exact definition for this exhilarating work by calling it “a coronation march.”90 The triumph of God, says Dilthey, here assumes a secular character. The Berlin philos-opher was indeed right, for the Hallelujah Chorus is a pure coronation anthem, built with an unerring sense for gradual intensification to an irresistible climax. This point is reached when the treble declaims in solidly repeated tones “King of Kings and Lord of Lords,” holding on to the same pitch while the other parts excitedly approve with their “forever, Hallelujah.” Six times this is repeated with ever-rising pitch as well as tension, when at last, the treble having moved upwards the distance of a seventh, all parts join in proclaiming the Lord of Lords. The effect is overwhelming. Beethoven, who admired Handel above all other composers, used the bass motif on “and He shall reign forever” for the fugue theme of the “Dona nobis pacem” in his Missa Solemnis.

  The remarkable gradation of intensity we just spoke of is unfortunately almost invariably disregarded in the ferocious fortissimo bellowing of our choral societies, who give their lungs a sturdy Christian workout in this piece. Handel indicated precisely the dynamics he desired at the beginning of the great chorus by demanding that the orchestra play senza ripieni, which of course cannot mean forte, but in our performances the bedlam starts with the opening notes. Though it is an extraordinarily fine and rousing composition, the Hallelujah Chorus should not be considered the summit of Handel’s choral art. It is one of the finest of the anthem choruses, but among the dramatic choruses there are many that are superior works of art; Handel himself declared the final chorus in the second act of Theodora far superior.

  One would expect tha
t anything that followed such splendor and power would suffer. Handel did experience difficulties in the third part of Messiah, working hard, correcting, amending, replacing, and in some instances improving upon the earlier versions. The situation in this third part is somewhat like what we see in a number of his operas and oratorios, where he shows a certain lack of interest in what follows after the dénouement. And, of course, a dénouement of a sort was undeniably reached with the tremendous chorus that ends the second part. This slackening of interest is not, however, in evidence in the aria that immediately follows the Hallelujah Chorus, “I know that my Redeemer liveth.” This is the more surprising because textually its quiet faith is in contrast with the finality, the convinced certitude expressed in that rousing chorus. This ineffably beautiful aria is sheer transfigured enchantment, at the same time having the pastoral quality of a chaste awakening of nature in the early morning sun. It affords another example of Handel’s complete assimilation of the spirit, the sound, and the meaning of the English Bible. We say “the spirit” because the declamation itself is faulty, but only the grammarians could be troubled by that. It is perhaps of some significance that “I know that my Redeemer liveth” was never altered in the many subsequent versions of the score.

  The following chorus, “Since by man came death,” carries us—like the preceding aria—into the Christian orbit par excellence. The stunning opening phrase for the first time in this work offers a quality of sacred music one finds, for instance, in Antonio Lotti’s church music. To search for antecedents in Schütz is as futile as to invoke Purcell; this is the latter-day “Palestrina style” of Venice (see above, p. 70 ff.). After these two pieces, Handel’s inspiration does not reach the consistently exalted level of the first part. The aria “The trumpet shall sound” not only resembles the trumpet aria so popular in 17th-century opera but has a good deal of its spirit—as well as its routine. One would be tempted to call this aria naive, but the epithet does not fit Handel. It is much safer to assume that this piece is well within the English tradition of anthem arias or welcome songs which afford pause between the great choruses. The general plan of Messiah forbade the grand scena that Handel would normally have built in such a situation in an opera. But if the piece is not grand it certainly is long; from Mozart onward everyone tried to cut it, with varying results. To speak of “considerable symbolic significance” in discussing this harmless aria is nothing but fantasy.

  The only duet in Messiah, “O death, where is thy sting,” also descended from an earlier, amorous Italian duet. Handel reworked it considerably, but in its present form it is still altogether of the Italian chamber duet style, suggesting a different musical climate. Not so the chorus “But thanks be to God,” in which we once more witness the masterly extension of a duet into a full chorus. Though the polyphonic work is very attractive, this piece is often omitted. Amusingly enough, the dance rhythms of “If God be for us” have made some Handelian authorities unhappy. Did they never look at the superb gavotte or minuet arias in Bach’s cantatas that sing of the most hallowed themes? This is a good “English” piece, Purcellian Handel. Mozart recognized it for what it is, a minuet, but was severely taken to task by the later analysts, for the aria is supposed to represent the descent of the Holy Ghost from heaven. The poor little Viennese musician, untutored in hermeneutics, could not be expected to divine such things.

  The final choruses, “Worthy is the Lamb,” “Blessing and Honour,” and “Amen,” which form a sort of compound finale, return to the grand anthem style. The first two are rather simple, but the final “Amen” fugue is a dazzling piece. It is the amplest choral number in Messiah, built on exceptionally large and characteristic themes, which Handel develops with all contrapuntal stops pulled out. His sketches in the Fitzwilliam Museum show that the many canonic imitations and strettos received considerable preliminary scrutiny, which reminds us that the chances of a fugue being grandly constructed may perhaps be a matter of contrapuntal skill and imagination not requiring assistance from metaphysical sources. Handel meant this stupendous chorus to be the crowning glory of the oratorio; it will remain forever the envy of all choral composers.

  That Messiah was an exceptional work even in Handel’s own estimation is attested by its immunity from his notorious habit of shifting music from one oratorio to another, a practice from which none of the others was exempt. That is one of the reasons it is called “the most homogeneous of all Handel’s larger works.” But this is hardly true even if we willingly admit that few of Handel’s works show such a consistently high and rich inventive power. Even “ideologically” there is a distinct dichotomy in Messiah, as Handel alternates between the concept of the Lord of Awe, Power, and Retribution, and that of the other, the Galilean. The magnificent anthem choruses show that by this time there was no turning back; the ceremonial style was in his bones, and unless he could employ the chorus for specific dramatic purposes or to illustrate a pastoral scene, the result would usually be an anthem, and one feels the presence of “Jehovah with thunder arm’d.” Nor could the contemplative intention be kept intact, though Handel wrought wonders in the arias, which proved that he could be as lyrical at fifty-five as he had been twenty years earlier. If anything, there is more tenderness and magnificently controlled eager melodic compulsion in some of the Messiah arias than in their predecessors. But the dramatist, the lover of imagery, could not always be repressed; single words that suggest action could unleash his imagination. An interesting example is afforded by the second version of the recitative “And they were sore afraid,” in which sore received a sharp emphasis, whereas in the first version it is unaccented, a simple narrative.

  Much of Messiah was repeatedly altered, even recomposed. As a matter of fact, not even in Dublin was the oratorio performed according to the original manuscript; several important numbers were altered or altogether replaced before the premiere. However, this was largely due to local conditions, as some of the London reworkings had to take into account the singers’ capabilities—and desires. Nevertheless, Handel was clearly not altogether satisfied with some portions of the work and, responding to his marvelous sense of form and propriety, improved many a detail, even whole numbers. These many changes led to the belief that a “definitive” version of the score is an unattainable goal. Modern scholarship, free from the hobbling “tradition” that surrounds this work, holds a different opinion. The earlier editions were like gaudy plaster copies of a noble marble statue. Arnold Schering’s was the first modern edition (1930) based on a thorough knowledge of, and nice feeling for, the style and on patient collation of the historical facts. In the meantime, J. M. Coopersmith, Jens Peter Larsen, Alfred Mann, and Watkins Shaw, with their enlightening studies, have proved that the many versions and variants of individual numbers often represent changes that Handel considered permanent. On the basis of these findings, Alfred Mann published an excellent full score (Rutgers University Press) in 1961.

  Critical appreciation of Messiah in the modern literature presents a bewildering variety. We shall not list the hymns of praise Handelian authors composed in their own right; the great work deserves all the admiration it has won, even though we can no longer accept the tradition that made Messiah a quasi-liturgical work. But it will be of interest to mention some of the quaint misreadings of style and time. Leichtentritt, expressing the consensus of his generation of German scholars, thought that whereas the other oratorios build on Italian foundations, Messiah’s construction rests on its composer’s German heritage: the German Passion and church cantata. This view was seconded by a number of British authors. More recent writers, while still insisting on a basically German-Lutheran quality in Messiah, attempt to fortify their position by minimizing the Italian element in the making of the score. Bücken (Die Musik der Nationen) calls the Handel of the pastoral portions of Messiah, so full of Calabrian and Sicilian rhythms, tunes, and echoes, “the greatest musical representative of the German pictorial Baroque.” Serauky goes farther—he claims the ent
ire work. “Messiah belongs among those rare oratorios of Handel in which the Italian sweetness of the melodies retreats behind the homely tone of German musical feeling.” Indeed there are three homely German sicilianas in the first part alone! Finally, one more example of the inadmissible and misleading application of hermeneutics that plays havoc with an esthetic appreciation of this splendid music. We have mentioned Rudolf Steglich’s fantasy about the “Fourth of Certitude,” the Gewissheitsguarte. He also insists that D major is the “Messiah key,” citing as proof the act-ending choruses, all of which are in D. But that would make Bach’s B minor Mass, most of which is in D, or almost any other major Baroque work calling on trumpets, a kindred work; for all the composers did was to accommodate those instruments, which were tuned in D. They counted on the festive brilliance of the trumpets.

  [3]

  THE DUBLIN DAYS drew towards their end. The great success of Messiah was followed by a nonsubscription presentation of Saul and by a second Messiah; on June 3 Handel conducted his last performance “with Honnour, profit, and pleasure.” Lingering for a while in the hospitable city, he attended Garrick’s performance of Hamlet and paid his respects to Dean Swift. One imagines that he wanted to thank the Dean for lending St. Patrick’s choristers for his concerts, but if so, his gesture of courtesy was in vain: the man Handel tried to talk to was no longer sane. On August 13 he embarked on the journey to London, fully resolved to return to that “generous and polite Nation” within a year. This hope was never realized.