“The plays of Shakespeare and the English Bible are, and ever will be, the twin monuments, not merely of their own period, but of the perfection of English, the complete expression of the literary capacities of the language, at the time when it had lost none of its pristine vigor.” It was this language, and Shakespearean characterization, that appear in Handel’s oratorios with pristine vigor. They are not quaint period pieces, but the musical embodiment of Saintsbury’s “twin monuments” of English art.
XV
1742-1744
Handel returns from Dublin—Milton and his Samson Agonistes—Hamilton’s libretto for Samson—The music—Handel’s changed dramaturgical ideas—Tenor displaces castrato—Samson (1743) a success —First Messiah in London—Dettingen Te Deum (1743)—Radical change of style: Semele (1744)—Congreve’s libretto arranged—The music—Renewed opera war—Ruthlessness of Middlesex party—Moral opposition from public and clergy to Semele—Joseph and his Brethren (1744)—Middlesex company collapses, Handel leases Haymarket Theatre -Twenty-four subscription concerts announced
AFTER AN ABSENCE OF NINE MONTHS IN IRELAND HANDEL came home to London and quietly took up residence in his Brook Street house. There is something curious about this quietness. In former years his comings and goings were publicized—the “famous Mr. Handel” was newsworthy—but this time one might have thought that London had completely forgotten him. Handel retired into solitude and for months nothing was heard of him. Once more we see him in the seemingly incongruous occupation of writing Italian duets: incongruous, because Handel seldom composed without some definite purpose in mind, and there was no apparent reason for the musician now firmly resolved to follow the English “oratorio way” to write Italian vocal chamber music. One recalls, however, the Italian duets composed during the deceptive rest that preceded Messiah, and, as at that time, the present inactivity does not appear to be lacking at least some signs of conscious purpose.
The pleasant and heartwarming intermezzo in Dublin did not efface the memories of the hard years that had preceded the Irish journey; Handel knew very well that a return to the musical marketplace of London meant a renewed struggle. At that time London gave the impression, said Dr. Johnson, “of a people not only without delicacy but without government, a herd of barbarians, or a colony of Hottentots.” Though these words are palpably an exaggeration, we are tempted to apply them to Handel’s enemies, high and low, who, as we shall presently see, continued to attack him with unremitting ferocity. Even Horace Walpole was ready to turn the fusillade of his destructive wit upon Handel. The serenity and confidence acquired in friendly Ireland did not, however, dull the entrepreneur’s tactical sense; Handel bided his time and made his plans while shunning publicity. Then one day he picked up the score of Samson. Though the oratorio had been practically finished the year before, he subjected it to a thoroughgoing revision, in the process making many changes dictated by the as yet uncertain composition of his troupe. Thus again, though far more extensively than in Messiah, the composer meddled with the original score even before its premiere, and again the changes were not always to the advantage of the work.
If Homer and Virgil represent the greatness of the pagan world, Dante and Milton must be assigned their position in the Christian. One stands for Catholicism with Aristotelian forms, the other for Protestantism with Platonic theories. But Milton was also one of the makers, for good or ill—or both—of modern England. He gave a permanent turn to English literary thought, he completed and sealed the triumph of Protestantism. To his mortification, the ardent Puritan lived to see the return of the old system of church government, restored on a much firmer basis than he had ever known it to enjoy. With the monarchy returned, the great poet stood in a hostile world, blind, poor, alone, and proscribed, but even this did not break his spirit, and now he began writing Paradise Lost. Besides being a Puritan, however, Milton was also a classicist; there are judges of Latin literature who on the strength of his Latin poetry do not hesitate to give him a high place in the long line of Latin poets. His Puritanism is now modified by lyric passion, from his classic reminiscences arises an involuntary worship of beauty. The order and harmony he brought to his poetic forms are more than the harmony of a cold mind; they are rather the resolution of the tension between the ascetic and the man of vivid imagination. Religion and reason meet in Paradise Lost, Platonic and Augustinian ideas in the middle of the Baroque, the Puritan Bible mated with pagan poetry. Macaulay sees the hero of this great poem as neither Adam, nor even God, but Satan, the fallen angel, for to the Puritan everything revolves around the problem of evil. Adam and Eve shrivel in this tremendous perspective and the work becomes a heavenly drama, the drama of the eternal tension of the world that collides in the microcosm of man.
But Milton could also write Greek drama, in a severe Sophoclean tone, though again with a biblical theme, for he was a Protestant. Samson Agonistes was his last work. Although Samson Agonistes is a Greek tragedy to the point of preserving the unities, Milton, as a Puritan, did not of course intend it for the theatre; Handel’s librettist had to make a semblance of a play out of it. While the subject comes from the Book of Judges, it is less a biblical than a Miltonian drama. The blind Milton appears to have seen in Samson a symbolic parallel. In treating the motif of feminine treachery, the poet altered the biblical story to make Dalila Samson’s wife. We must recall Milton’s distressing first marriage, which haunted him increasingly in his old age. He also invented Harapha, the Philistine giant, and a happy dramatic invention it was. The changes made by Handel’s librettist, Newburgh Hamilton, closely followed Milton’s ideas, some of which were uncongenial to Handel. The gallant musician, fond of women, could not sympathize with Milton’s misogyny, nor could he hate the Philistines with Milton’s fervor. The musician chose not to wrestle intellectually, theologically, and artistically with the poet, but contented himself with Milton’s general outline of the drama and especially with his rich language, trying to sustain the rather over-spacious and leisurely form in which the librettist unfolds the story.
Considering all this, one wonders why Handel went to Milton for a work that was to follow Messiah. Apparently it was Hamilton who was responsible for the choice of the Miltonian subject. His first venture, L’Allegro ed il Penseroso, was successful, but that was the poetry of Milton’s youth, most inviting to Handel, whereas Samson was the old poet’s moral philosophy, altogether unshared by Handel. Though the poet and the composer had some traits in common and possessed similar and unparalleled artistic recuperative powers, what primarily attracted Handel to Milton was his poetic language. Milton’s visual imagination was so powerful that it was at times a disadvantage to his poetry, from which the sense of mystery fled when it was most needed. T. S. Eliot, in his Note on the Verse of John Milton, maintains that Milton’s poetry appeals to the ear alone, and that his involved syntax is deliberately introduced for the sake of pleasing sound. No one could better appreciate whatever truth may be in this opinion than a composer with Handel’s ear for pleasing sound.
Samson Agonistes is a Greek tragedy only in ideal form and intensity of expression. As Hamilton’s preface shows, this was clearly recognized in Handel’s time: “That Poem indeed never was divided by him into Acts and Scenes, nor design’d for the Stage, but given only as the Plan of a Tragedy with Chorus’s, after the manner of the Antients.” Hamilton did not do a bad job. His addition of a second chorus, that of the Philistines, as a foil to Milton’s chorus of the Israelites, was an excellent dramatic idea, and since the confidant or companion, so necessary in musico-dramatic works, was missing in Milton’s closet drama, Hamilton resourcefully borrowed Micah from another part of Judges. The rest he executed with skill and piety. The recitatives and choruses are all Milton’s, taken, if not from Samson Agonistes, then from other poems, and the patchwork quilt of sentences from here and there was as neatly stitched as Jennens’s similar operation in Messirth.
So far so good, but even though Hamilton greatly reduced
the original work, he did not altogether succeed in eliminating its basic longueurs, nor the occasional didactic tone, always a trap for Handel’s imagination. The drama gets under way with difficulty and builds rather gradually before erupting with tremendous intensity in the third act. Dr. Johnson had a very low opinion of Samson Agonistes, a drama in which “the intermediate parts have neither cause nor consequence,” he said; Percy Young avers that “any mise en scène is superfluous,” and that Handel’s Samson is as “unstageable” as Milton’s original drama. At first glance, both seem to be right; Samson is blind and in chains, immobilized almost to the very end of the work. Yet it is obvious that both Hamilton and Handel looked at the subject with the theatre in mind, and in recent times staged performances of Samson have proved to be not only feasible but a means of blanketing the work’s minor faults with its major force.
While on a colossal scale, Samson is readily intelligible in its musical-dramatic form. What it offers is not so much a full-sized drama as an incident—a highly dramatic incident, it is true, but one considered in isolation. With suitable pruning and editing the oratorio displays its composer’s characteristic qualities: his power to impart vitality to his dramatic figures, his capacity for warm, rich, and expressive music. Though there is scarcely a plot outside the hero’s fate, the dramatic interest steadily rises, and the close of the work is chilling in its tragedy, shot with flashes of fearful beauty. The tragedy of Samson has a terrible grandeur. Overthrown and in bondage, he still kept the vision and the dream, and conquered amidst the collapse of hope. That agony is his triumph. At his first appearance, he calls out from the shadow of eternal twilight. As the drama unfolds, he reaches a passionate inward peace, understanding and reaching out towards his fate. Still, it is undeniable that the choice of Milton’s drama was not a felicitous one; Handel the dramatist was not interested in castigating sin; he did not want to set to music moral issues; he was interested in character.
Manoah, Samson’s father, is a typical figure of the paternal fidelity that Handel always venerated. Micah, the friend and companion, did not interest Handel very much; for the better part of the work Handel gave him a role of passivity, though a very melodious passivity, for some of his songs are fine indeed. Harapha, the Philistine giant, is fully realized. He is gross and loud-mouthed, but not really wicked; that every one saw a bit of Polyphemus in him is not insignificant. Dalila shows to what pains Handel went to remove Milton’s ideological wires, strand by strand. Everything in his life and character indicates that many aspects of Milton’s poem were distasteful to him, who was not plagued with the problems of sin nor particularly attracted by chastity. He approached this situation as he did every other, as a dramatist, and the first thing he did was to transform Milton’s despicable harlot into a persuasive woman of beguiling femininity.
The result caused discomfort to the guardians of morals, both in England and Germany. The discrepancy between Milton’s conception and Handel’s music was glaring and called for corrective commentaries. Even the usually clear-headed Streatfeild tried to invest Handel with Miltonian moral views: “The disgust with which he regarded sensuality that he saw rampant around him is, I think, to be read in Samson.” But he goes even further: “turning with loathing from the sordid and sensual amours of Samson and Dalila, he lifts his voice in a triumphant paean in praise of chastity.” Percy Young also is convinced that Handel, a man of moral strength, abhorred the sensuality of the pair, though he admits that the music illustrates Dalila’s “blatant charms.” Young’s subsequent remarks, approving Handel’s celibacy—indeed, he finds that in Samson Handel expressed his pride in bachelorhood—makes one wonder how the English nation managed not only to survive but to multiply. Perhaps Hans Joachim Moser’s conclusion is the most curious. To him the scene where the “hypocrite, Dalila,” appears is “undesirably operatic,” though he must have been aware of Schering’s logical finding that Dalila is indeed an operatic type for which there are many precedents in Handel’s operas. But then curious things can happen when Milton and Handel are presented as an integral part of a Geschichte der deutschen Musik. It is most interesting to compare the views of these scholars, learned in historical detail and obedient to the moral precepts of their society but insensible to poetry and the theatre, with those of musical laymen who, stumbling left and right in technical matters, nevertheless grasp the dramatic-poetic meaning. Wilhelm Dilthey, the great German philosopher, can be utterly naive in matters musicological, but he cannot be fooled by preconceived attitudes. To him Handel’s Dalila was not a harlot but the type of seductress who could be moved to tears, could touchingly plead, and could be gentle—if she cared to.
Since Samson was repeatedly reworked, with many changes, subtractions, and additions, our description will be somewhat arbitrary, both incomplete and generous, for at times one must choose between as many as three arias. Since no “definitive” edition of the score exists, and both the Händelgesellschaft and the Novello scores are tentative and heavily manhandled, we have attempted to hew to a reasonable compromise version.
After a fine overture, pleasantly adorned with horn parts, we witness a scene that is a reflection of the Epinicion in Saul: the Philistines are rendering homage to their god, Dagon. While it does not reach its prototype’s freshness, this is a good opening scene; the chorus is brisk and the trumpets lively. The Philistine Woman’s aria “Ye men of Gaza,” interpolated between two choruses, is charmingly lilting. It offers Samson’s first example of the unaccompanied beginning of an aria or arioso, a device later frequently used, even to the point of setting the motto to be sung by the naked voice, the orchestra taking up the ritornel afterwards. This procedure, heretofore seen occasionally, is quite characteristic of this work and is particularly effective when the betrayed and despairing hero sings, all alone, forsaken even by the orchestra. Handel bogs down a little as a Philistine (tenor) sings a long aria, followed by still another by the Philistine Woman. The music, especially hers, is pleasant, but the drama fails to get underway. It is still static in Samson’s first recitative, but “Torments, alasl” is made of sterner stuff; the many pauses in the melody give this arioso a truly grieving quality. Samson, a blinded, helpless prisoner, broods bitterly over his fate, accusing himself for yielding to a woman and forfeiting his God-given strength. Micah, the confidant, sings his first aria. It is once more good music, and the accompaniment is finely worked, but it does not contribute to the drama.
Following a dialogue in recitative, Handel begins in earnest: Samson’s arioso-aria “Total eclipse” is one of those pieces that baffle one’s understanding. It is as simple as anything could be, yet its pathos is profoundly moving. The simplicity of sensation passes beyond the understanding into the simplicity of imagination. The following chorus, “Oh first created beam,” a superb piece beginning homophonically but ending in a short fugue, so impressed Haydn that he quoted the line “Let there be light” practically verbatim in The Creation. The effect is, indeed, magnificent, especially since the outburst on “and light was over all” is preceded by a measure sung unaccompanied, piano. The fugal part becomes luminous when the treble sings the theme in augmentation, sounding like a chorale cantus firmus—in fact it does quote the first six notes of Aus tiefer Not. The loquacious Micah continues, regretting that Samson had not sought a woman from his own race. Manoah, the father, appears, appalled when he beholds the wreck of one who once was a great and forceful man. But before he can sing his first air, an Israelitish Man sings a little philosophical disquisition, “God of our fathers, what is man?” which, though a good piece, once more arrests the unfolding of the drama.
In the old man’s song “The glorious deeds,” the dramatist is completely in his element. The first part of this aria is a fairly routine operatic bass number with plenty of coloraturas, but the largo ending is very moving. What distinguishes the piece is the manner and form; it is through-composed, and every idea expressed or hinted at in the text is searchingly rendered in music. Man
oah, reminding his son of his glorious former prowess, makes a deeper impression on Samson than his friend Micah; we feel the first signs of something stirring in the giant’s despairing lethargy. Suddenly aroused, Samson, in an impassioned aria, lashes out against Jehovah’s indifference: “Why does the God of Israel sleep?” It is the old style rage aria traditionally reserved for the bass but here given to the tenor; Handel thus created not only one of the first principal tenor roles in dramatic music, but the first aria for a tenore di forza. He knew very well what he was doing; the ritornel is exceptionally elaborate and the challenge is hurled unaccompanied. That the tone was found blasphemous is clear from Handel’s subsequent alteration of the text to the less direct “Let not the God of Israel sleep.” In the chorus “Then shall they know that He whose name Jehovah is alone,” the crisp fugal work yields to a tremendous anthem-like homophonic exclamation: “Jehovah is alone.” The accompanied recitative “My genial spirits droop” vividly conveys Samson’s distress after the flareup. Micah now resumes his oration in an aria. Just as Milton said, in reference to his political tracts, that he “used only his left hand,” so Handel does in this aria, which is more interesting in construction than in content. But “Then round about the starry throne” is a typical act-ending chorus with Handel in full command; “The music seems to glow with a white heat of rapture,” says Streatfeild. It is a large anthem chorus, once more proceeding from bright homophony to a gradual polyphony and back to the chordal.
George Frideric Handel_Dover Books on Music Page 54