It was in the Old Testament that the English found the roots of this national mystique. The historical Israel of the Bible offered to England a most congenial parallel. Judaism presented an intense national consciousness of a people divinely set apart, a destiny that English Protestantism applied to itself, the English nation becoming the new Israel, chosen by God as His instrument. This identification with the ancient Hebrews dates from the Reformation, when the Bible, until then a hidden book, not accessible to persons unable to read Hebrew, Greek, or Latin, was made generally available in the vernacular. It was strengthened by England’s experience of what became a Holy War, in which it saw itself as a righteous people opposing the power of the idolatrous, foreign-god-worshipping Spaniards. The fate of the Armada, with its almost miraculous outcome—Flavit et dissipati sunt—had the force of a biblical confrontation of good and evil. The idea was inherited and accentuated by the Parliamentarian party during the Civil War, who thought of themselves as the Chosen of the Chosen, strongly and deliberately identifying with the Old Testament, even to the use of Hebrew names in preference to those of the saints, a practice previously rare. The idea survived the Parliamentarians’ political defeat to become, after the Restoration, the most prominent of English attitudes. By Handel’s time this Puritan-descended concept had been translated from a religious idea into a broad social assumption, a prime example of the interaction of religion and politics.
The Jews of the Old Testament were a disciplined people who lived by the Law. That the Jews not only created a remarkable system of law but stanchly upheld it, firmly believing in a government of law rather than of men, appealed to the English mind. For the Jews there was no term that more adequately expressed the essence of their religion than “Law.” The Maccabees died for the sake of the “Law”—that is, for the ancestral faith. If we examine the writings of prominent English churchmen of the Handelian era we shall find a similar attitude. Bishop Gibson, leader of the Church-Whig alliance, had a great antagonist in Bishop Thomas Sherlock of Salisbury, the leader of the Tory clergy. But to both the Bible was Scripta Lex, and both dealt with religious questions like lawyers. The religion of the Law shared by Hebrews and Britons had its noble ingredients, but it also had a fondness for negatives, for a mercenary spirit, and its attempt at redemption through human effort contradicted Christian doctrine. The English greatly admired also the passionate belief of the Jews in the righteousness of the mission of their people. However, while this idea of a Kingdom of Heaven on earth was a religious-theocratic idea to the Jews, to the Englishman in Handel’s time it was an eminently practical, secular proposition. He most certainly wanted the Kingdom of Heaven—but right then and there. In many affairs the rest of Europe would have considered purely spiritual, King and Government took precedence over Canterbury. Handel’s contemporaries noted with satisfaction that the Old Testament’s perspective was not that of eternal life, but of a present existence for which the Jews organized their society with skill and solicitude. They were proudly confident that a righteous, strong, and prosperous Englishman was fully capable of achieving the good life by his own strength. To the English mind Ezekiel’s view that man is capable of exercising sufficient will power to enable him to live in accordance with the purpose of Yahweh was welcome.
The Englishman fought his own battles, after which, in ringing anthems, he asked God’s concurrence. This is the spirit of his wonderful ceremonial music. The Christ of the New Testament was difficult to place in this picture; He had qualities that contradicted the English anthropocentric-humanistic concept at every step. Yahweh, however, could be made into a constitutional God who was all-powerful and exacted obedience yet whose speech from the throne could be prepared, like that of the monarch, by the government. We should recall Milton’s Pro defensio populo Anglicano, which insists that power does not descend from God but is vested in the sovereign by the people. This the Englishman believes with unshakable faith, though with similar tenacity his kings claim their office “by the grace of God.” Here, too, they found a parallel, for Yahweh was regarded as the Lord of his People. (That He became a universal God was owing to the genius of Moses.) It should be remembered that as early as Milton’s Paradise Lost the Kingdom of Heaven is the model of a well-organized earthly state. One can find hymns there, but also commands and war chariots. The Lord’s heavenly armies enact the same deeds as Israel’s soldiers down on earth. It is only a different, larger Earth. The Briton will not accept a faith that does not spell out its tenets; he accepts religion as something that gives human life the reassurance of being part of a higher order of things but insists that this order should have particular relevance to earthly life, should offer a frame for, but not be the overpowering aim of, his existence. For all this he found abundant precedent in the Old Testament but little in the New. The Gospel is essentially a message of spiritual redemption, not of social order and reform. And it offers a drastic revaluation of earthly goods.
To the English Protestant, God appeared as He did to the Jews, as the powerful ruler of a kingdom on earth. The Jewish concept was a national organization under the effective kingship of Yahweh. To the prophets the kingship of Yahweh was an actual reality. And when the monarchy came to an end and the Hebrew state was broken, there arose the expectation of the coming of a future king, who henceforth was an ideal king because he was not present to enforce his laws. The political idea of the Messiah, the restorer of the Jewish state, remained alive as part of rabbinical theology, and it is well known that during the Middle Ages more than one false Messiah appeared, arousing ardent hopes. But the Jews did not believe in a suffering and atoning Messiah; the first disciples of Jesus could only gradually extricate themselves from the elements of Jewish political doctrine to arrive at their understanding of the Saviour.
The English, too, chose to see in God a Lord Protector and were devoted to maintaining this role with great ceremonial elaboration. But while the Nonconformist was earnestly interested in the observance of the severe moral principles laid down in Scripture and mistrusted the Established Church, he united with the Anglican in expecting God to observe His part in the contract and not to meddle with the political-economic order of the modern state. While the Yahweh of the Old Testament was a deity with concrete power, in the religious view as embodied in the 18th-century Church in England, heavily touched by political philosophy and by the ideas of the rising Enlightenment, the God of the New Testament was acknowledged without being allowed to interfere with constitutional life, though all the decorum due a reigning monarch was observed. To the straightforward and practical Englishman the simple, dramatic, and visually apprehensible stories in the Old Testament seemed more real and congenial than subtle abstractions, complicated theological and philosophical articles of faith. (The contrast with the Lutherans, who favored the musical representation of the Gospels, is significant.) The Old Testament story could always be interpreted in ethical and moral terms, and there was a lesson to be learned from the fate of those who defied the authority of the Lord, for they were punished not unlike the guilty defendant in a British law court.
The Christian Church has traditionally lent support to the assumption that the powers that be are ordained by God, a view that gave rise to the glamorous ideal of the Holy Roman Empire. After the Reformation the idea received fresh impetus and found a new realization in England. Here the Church, being a national institution headed by the King, had a particular role. The Kings of England had always been accustomed to surround themselves with clerical advisers, whose duties were as much secular as ecclesiastical; and whenever the coming of a new dynasty made strong support for the throne more than ever desirable, that support was sought as much from the lords spiritual as from the temporal counsel of the Crown. By Handel’s time, the episcopate was regarded as a political body whose duty it was to offer advice on matters of state, and the obvious method of advancement in the ranks of the Church was by party appointment. The bishops sat in the House of Lords throughout the session,
their solid Whig block counted upon to deliver the votes, and they did indeed frequently help to decide purely party matters in favor of the government, while at election time they were expected to influence the constituency in their diocese. All this left little time for spiritual matters; the bishops spent the winter in London, attending Parliament and showing up at court. William Warburton (1698-1779), Bishop of Gloucester, Pope’s friend, a Shakespearean and one of the most doctrinaire critics of the age, in his Alliance between Church and State (1736) clearly demonstrated that in this alliance the state was not concerned at all with religious doctrines or defense of the truth but with the practical advantages secured to itself by the addition of religious sanctions to its own authority.
The Englishman was engaged in commerce, industry, and finance; he was building an empire, organizing the world. Like the old Roman, he must lead and enlighten the barbarian, defend civilization. (Kipling, still more recently, wrote verses that could have been written by an ancient Roman.) As he civilizes, he also converts, the cause of empire becomes the cause of Christianity; in this cause he needs not other-worldliness but hard-headed practicality. He was comforted by the Old Testament, which showed an appreciation for private property and wealth, the cornerstone of modern Protestant ethics.97 Renunciation no more appealed to him than poverty, which he felt to be practically synonymous with sin. He saw that in the Old Testament those who lived a righteous life and obeyed the laws could invariably count on Jehovah’s support. Doing well in business was almost a corollary of religious observance; success and status were the good to be pursued, and he felt no doubt of God’s support so long as he observed the letter of the law. Actually, all the camouflage notwithstanding, this was the victory of the modern secular state dedicated to material well-being and civic progress and to its protection. As Crane Brinton succinctly observes: “Protestantism did help to make the nonChristian world-view of the Enlightenment.”98
The Old Testament supported the Englishmen’s view, and they liked the Old Testament for its exaltation of righteousness, the constant emphasis on morals, the primacy of law, its Puritanism, its unequivocal endorsement of private property and “free enterprise.” And they loved the elaborate ritual, administered by a priesthood of high estate, the role of the King, and above all the staunch defense of the nation’s ideals, laws, and institutions by great commoners who rose to heroic leadership. No one in their entire history has realized for the English these ideals, these thrilling ceremonies, these dramatic figures, with more conviction, more majesty and grandeur, and more exhilarating immediacy than Handel in his anthems and oratorios.
The enthusiastic celebration of the genius loci should not suggest, however, that at every minute we must remember “1066 and all that.” Handel had centuries of the Christian tradition and the Christian paradox behind him but did not see his artistic duty in the light of any theology. He did not directly revert to this Christian tradition in his English works, but neither did he discard it, though the devotees of the religious conversion theory never notice the true manifestations of the tradition, notably at the end of Handel’s career. The last oratorios, while not religious in the Victorian sense of exhortation, are informed by religion as a landscape is informed by light. Handel had absolutely no use for sanctimoniousness, though never disputing true piety. He felt strongly for the suffering of others, and compassion, the sacredness of sorrow, is a Christian trait absent from the Old Testament. He laid himself open to life in all its manifestations, and when in old age and sickness he continued to wrestle with his art, consolation, the philosophy of Christian revelation, appears unobtrusively and in an altogether personal form. This is the Christian belief in Christian experience rather than in a book. In these last works an iron door had shut on the interests for which posterity will esteem him. The quiet ecstasy, the note of stillness and spiritual security, indeed of prayer, wholly escaped the sober middle-class mind then as now; Theodora and Jephtha were total failures. But what does sobriety know of true piety—and of true poetry? Perhaps in the end there is a special impressiveness in the way Handel’s life and work leaves so much to our awed conjecture.
[7]
JOHN LOCKMAN, in his introductory essay to the libretto of Rosalinda written for John Christopher Smith, Jr., in 1740, deplores that “notwithstanding the wonderful Sublimity of Mr. Handel’s Compositions, yet the Place in which Oratorios are commonly performed among us, and some other Circumstances, must necessarily lessen the Solemnity of this Entertainment, to which possibly, the Choice of the Subject of these Dramas may likewise sometimes contribute.” Here is the principal problem posed by the new English oratorio, a problem of tradition: the oratorio had to abandon the stage practically at the moment of its inception. Yet it was not welcome in the church either. The English example is not unique; the same suspicion surrounded the oratorio in other Protestant countries in the 18th century. In Hamburg, oratorios were performed as “musical concerts” because churches often prohibited their presentation within sacred precincts. If in London Handel produced oratorios in theatres and inns, the Hamburgers did so in armories, harbor installations, and even the local prison! It is somewhat amusing to observe that eventually the complacent English had to emulate those idolatrous Italians by performing oratorios during Lent as a substitute for opera.
In Rome—or Vienna, or Dresden—this was considered the decorous thing to do, and everyone was clear about the subterfuge, but in England the practice, which started in earnest after Handel’s death, was surrounded with a large aura of hypocrisy. The 19th-century Puritans still wanted to exterminate everything in the oratorios that would even faintly recall the stage; Chrysander himself was horrified at the idea of imputing dramatic-theatrical qualities to the oratorios, though towards the end of his life he began to see the light. It was only after the First World War that staged oratorio performances, begun in Germany, could be mounted in England with impunity. But it took several more decades before Winton Dean could arrive at the logical conclusion that “Semele and Hercules are the greatest full-length musical dramas in the English language.” These two works were composed on classical subjects and were called oratorios without the “sacred” prefix, but the “biblical” and hence “sacred” oratorios are every bit as theatrically conceived music dramas as the “secular” oratorios.
A scene such as the one in the first act of Solomon may give the impression of a very religious affair; the High Priest, famed Zadok, is certainly pious and fervent, and even the King has some nice things to say about his religion. Just the same, what is uppermost in Solomon’s mind at that moment is to retire with his young and tempting Queen to a bucolic spot, which he presently does to the delight of the chorus, which wishes him a pleasant time in one of the most charming choral ballads ever created. How Handel’s imagination flares up at the prospect of love and the contemplation of nature! The horrified Victorians took appropriate steps to remove King Solomon’s unequivocal statement that his “love admits no delay.” Most expressions of this sort were suppressed, for these good people wondered uneasily whether the composer of Messiah was not something of a sensualist. The “Nightingale” scene in Solomon is one of those instances to which Lockman refers as a questionable choice of subject, and it is quite possible that without the “sacred” label, the judicious excisions and alterations, and the purported religious edification, the biblical oratorios would have shared the fate of Hercules or Theodora, both of which are about as well known as the opera Ariodante. The theatre makes conscious the processes of life, compelling us to look them in the face and understand their necessity, but Puritans of all eras dread sex and link its sinfulness with the theatre. Handel’s oratorios had enough love scenes to worry them considerably. The tepid “sacred” performances given today do not even suggest the oratorios’ great richness in mood and expression.
It is significant that the two non-dramatic works, Messiah, and Israel in Egypt, became the most popular of Handel’s oratorios, indicating the continued, if lat
ent, bias, the fear of the theatre and its unsuitability for sacred music. (Amusingly enough, Parsifal, a full-blooded romantic opera, with a scorchingly sensuous second act, does, on Good Friday, transform the opera house into a church.) Handel was convinced that dramatic music demands the stage, and since he was first and foremost a dramatist, his mind was so preoccupied with opera that it took him some time to realize that he could not only create dramatic music in the oratorio but could go much farther afield than the conventions of opera permitted. While the bishop’s ban on staged performances forced some compromises, the drama and the stage were not separated in the oratorio: the detailed stage directions testify to this even though most of them were removed from the published scores. One constantly feels something in the oratorios that should be realized but for two centuries could not be realized: Handel’s true dramatic intentions. In Elizabethan drama and in the Greek drama, intention and realization went together; in the Handelian English music drama, though the intentions are clear, the realization was —and is—prevented by what we have called the “religious issue.” Thus, even though Handel’s numerous stage directions make his artistic intent clear, it was neutralized if not destroyed by the injection of another extraneous and irrelevant issue, the essential moral degeneracy of the theatre versus the revelatory nobility of Holy Writ. The rising bourgeois civilization insisted on a moralizing, religious, political, and didactic interpretation for fear that otherwise the sacred subjects would be lowered to the level of theatrical entertainment. For two centuries the humanity was sucked from the core of the Handelian oratorio.
The religious exercise is still carried out at performances of Handel’s oratorios, but the artistic problems are honored in the breach. The Romantic era, and our own musical practice which is still largely based on it, could not solve these problems because it could not see the musico-dramatic values. Important things are neglected and nonessentials accented, so that the intended effect is usually distorted. The many fine nuances in the solo numbers are ruined by breast-beating, while the choruses turn into brutal melodrama. The irony of it is that in just those works where Handel attained that dramatic continuity which he was unable to create under the handicap of the formal conventions of the opera seria, we destroy this continuity in our performances of the oratorios by pauses that isolate the numbers. By the time of Saul, Handel used the da capo aria with circumspection, though he still resorted to it as a vehicle for lyric effusion; now the accompanied recitative and the extended arioso come into their own. Both of these are highly dramatic means of expression, demanding the vigor and experience of the opera singer, not the church musician. The Handelian oratorio may appear undramatic in the concert hall, but with few exceptions it is essentially theatre music and therefore eminently dramatic. What in the spoken drama seems unduly to stress the epic and lyric qualities, and consequently loosen dramatic form, is in the music drama a fundamental necessity. It makes possible the conversion of the intellectual element into mood and feeling, both intimate and monumental. And that mood and feeling are not uniformly devotional; the enemy of the poetic and the dramatic is custom.
George Frideric Handel_Dover Books on Music Page 53