As I perceived, that joining good Sense and significant Words to Musick, was the best Method of recommending this to an English Audience; I have directed my Studies that way, and endeavour’d to shew, that the English Language, which is so expressive of the sublimest Sentiments is the best adapted of any to the full and solemn Kind of Musick.
Handel’s faith in “a Nation, whose Characteristick is Good Nature” was not disappointed; the response was instantaneous. In the very next issue of the paper several subscribers suggested that “with Justice to the Character of the Nation, and the Merit of the Man,” the subscribers should decline to withdraw the remainder of the fees. Indeed, the public’s response to this dignified manifesto was such that within a week Handel could announce in the Daily Advertiser that, moved by the generosity of the subscribers, he ought not content himself with “bare expressions” of his gratitude, but would proceed with the fulfilling of the originally announced obligations, at least to the extent it might prove feasible; “let the Risgue which I may run be what it will.” So a seventh subscription concert was announced for the 16th of February, featuring Hercules, but resumption of the concerts had to be postponed until March 1, when a safer course was followed. The popular Samson was substituted for the unappreciated Hercules, followed by Saul and Joseph. The “new Oratorio, call’d BELSFIAZZAR” was offered at the twelfth concert, March 27.
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WE HAVE touched upon the correspondence between Handel and Jennens concerning Belshazzar and have seen that in his impatience at his librettist’s tardiness Handel turned to the composition of Hercules. In the meantime, portions of Belshazzar began to arrive, and they caused him uneasiness as the proportions grew larger and larger. Jennens used twice as many words as the composer needed and even so felt that he had not yet said everything he wanted to say: one more scene, one more verse still seemed called for here and there. Handel was aghast at its length, and though he set the enormously long first act, he demurred about the rest, cautiously at first, as in general he showed surprising forbearance towards Jennens. In his letter of July 19, 1744, he accepted Jennens’s “reasons” for the length of the first act, but added “and it is likewise my Opinion to have the following Acts short Upon receiving the third act, however, he became worried and began to complain, though tactfully and with the help of a little flattery, praising the “sublimity” of Jennens’s work. “I retrench’d already a great deal of the Musick, that I might preserve the Poetry as much as I could,” wrote the composer, now making concrete suggestions for cuts. In the end he set the text the way he saw it, omitting about two hundred lines. Yet the book offered dramatic continuity and characterization and Handel was clearly aroused by it. If any proof is needed of his literary dramatic sense, a comparison of the libretto with the score will supply it. Handel cut words, lines, and whole airs whenever the pace of the drama seemed to him too slow. The cuts can be ascertained with accuracy; as in the past, Jennens’s admiration for Handel was not unconditional when his own literary effort was involved. While grudgingly accepting the cuts, he insisted that the printed libretto contain all his words, including the portions not set by Handel.
Belshazzar is a biblical drama inasmuch as the core of the story is taken from the Book of Daniel, but the chief protagonist comes not from the Bible but from Herodotus, from whom, together with Xenophon, Jennens drew with considerable skill and acumen. Even the historians’ account was used with the poetic license of the dramatist in order to create character, motivation, and a continuous action. Jennens may have been verbose, but by and large he provided Handel with a good dramatic libretto. He knew his classics and the Bible, as well as the august themes treated by these sources, and he also knew, like da Ponte half a century later, how his composer would react to a dramatic proposition. So the enormously long first act, with its dramatically unpromising social-philosophical observations, turned out to be a magnificent preamble to a tragic tale of fate within the spirit of the Attic drama.
At first sight the idea of a music drama whose background is historical-philosophical seems strange, if not altogether unfeasible. Carnal love is not involved in this drama, and consequently there is none of Handel’s exquisite love music, but there is again one of those towering matriarchs Handel was so fond of creating in music. And the antithesis of Jews, Persians, and Babylonians gave him an opportunity to employ the chorus for the most remarkably consistent musical characterization of different nations and cultures. After Semele and Hercules the style once more changes; it becomes thrusting, and brings back the grandiose imprecatory element of the Old Testament, the pronouncements of punishment and revenge.
The story is very simple. Nitocris, the Queen Mother, a spiritual disciple of the captive Jewish prophet, Daniel, contemplates with dismay the approaching collapse of Babylon. Cyrus and the Persian army are besieging the city, and aided by information obtained from Gobrias, who has abandoned Babylon to join the hosts of righteousness, the Persian king plans to enter the city by diverting the protective flow of the Euphrates. While this plan is hatched—indeed, while it is being carried out—Belshazzar is occupied in the drunken revelling of the Babylonian feast of Sesach. During the orgies of the feast “a hand appears writing on the wall over against him.” The king faints with fright, and upon recovery he commands the wise men to be summoned to explain the meaning of the message on the wall. They being unable to solve the riddle, Daniel is sent for, and he tells the King that he and his empire are doomed. The Persians break into the city and slay Belshazzar, but Cyrus is magnanimous towards the conquered, professes his faith in Jehovah, and promises the Jews freedom and the rebuilding of their temple in Jerusalem.
No libretto is more than a potential living drama until it is realized in music. Out of this story Handel made an almost savagely powerful, robust, and severely sumptuous score. Belshazzar is a stirring and spirited work, a masterpiece of eloquence and sympathy as well as incisive skill. The book is well constructed, and there is just enough psychological observation to deepen the interest without overburdening the plot. The narrative, in the smooth corpulence of its phrasing, shows a readiness, at times really extraordinary, to accommodate itself to musical treatment.
Nitocris is a tremendous figure, like Dejanira, though quite a different woman. A patriot and mother, she is not carried away by senseless passion; rather she is possessed by an intelligence clarified by suffering. Her despairing sagacity, her Cassandra-like clearsightedness, warn her that her son’s acts are ruining the realm, and she tries, though without confidence, to change his course. At the same time her love for her son adds a moving note that sounds from true human depths, from a heart wrung with pity and stricken with loss. The antinomy that confronts Nitocris exercised a spell upon Handel; the conflict remained as strenuous to him as to Nitocris. Handel did not bother to make Belshazzar really interesting, he is only the traditional biblical lawbreaker, for his role is nothing but to be destroyed. He is not a tragic hero but someone who seeks his own downfall without reason. Yet, as with Harapha and some others, Handel did not make an out-and-out villain of Belshazzar; he is a drunkard, an irresponsible satrap. Cyrus is an unusual warrior, beneficent, remote, and serene, who takes his emotions with a priestly solemnity. His utterances are at once delicate and determined. That the role was originally composed for a soprano, rather suprisingly at this stage of Handel’s career, offers a stumbling block for modern theatrical performance, as does to a lesser degree the alto of Daniel. But Handel helps here, for when he was forced to reshuffle the parts for lack of a suitable prima donna, he gave it to the bass Reinhold!
The Prophet Daniel has an attitude so rigid that his personality makes little impression. He luxuriates a little in his elevated sentiments; nevertheless, he has a solid core, though one is brought to it slowly; Handel entrusted some very great music to him. Gobrias is an honest old man, torn by the same problems faced by Nitocris. Though a moving figure—Handel always endows his old men with warmth—he does not have the Queen’s sta
mina and flees from the tyrant. Now under Cyrus’s protection, he has to work up his anger anew. Belshazzar has not one but three choral groups—Jews, Babylonians, and Persians. Every one of them receives music of its own: the Jewish choruses are richly contrapuntal and elaborate, the Persian brilliant, and the Babylonian roisterous in an attractive way.
The fine overture, with its startling, sudden interruptions, is no doubt programmatic in intent, for which reason Handel omits the customary minuet or gavotte at the end. Handel holds on to the somber E minor as he embarks on the difficult dramatic assignment of the opening scene. Nitocris, wise in the ways of men and their political creations, contemplates the laws of the rise and fall of empires. Thus the drama commences with a philosophical meditation on the “fluctuating state of human empire,” which one would think could hardly amount to more than a preparatory statement. But Nitocris is deeply concerned, and Handel translates her philosophy into vibrant dramatic music. Nitocris asks Daniel whether there is any remedy for the situation. Daniel answers, perhaps a little professionally, that the only remedy is to submit to God. His following aria, “Lament thus not, oh Queen,” is, however, a fine piece. The second scene is merely another grand choral number in the concert hall, but in the theatre, where the Babylonians hurl their taunts at the besieging Persians from the battlements, it is stirring music drama. Handel gives a superb musical rendition of the text; the smugly confident Babylonians sing flowing garlands of tone that sound like laughter. The choral writing is as airy as in any of the “duet” choruses, yet there is a certain massiveness in this wonderful piece. Gobrias’s air, “Oppress’d with never ceasing grief,” is a little complete drama in itself as the plaintive beginning gradually recedes before rising anger, ending in stark vindictiveness.
Now Cyrus appears. First he accepts Gobrias’s motif, counselling “haste, your just revenge to speed,” but in the following accompanied recitative he shows his ultimate magnanimity; he wants neither ransom nor prisoners. The latter half of this recitative is again pure theatre as Cyrus elicits combat intelligence from Gobrias. “Behold the monstrous human beast” is again one of those utterly simple yet powerful deceptive pieces where unadorned unison is more eloquent than the most expressive harmonies. In Gobrias’s song the wastrel is more graphically before us than in Belshazzar’s own acts. After listening to the old man’s description of Belshazzar, Cyrus sings a noble prayer, the scene ending with another fine chorus. “All empires upon God depend” begins with a homophonic introduction, but at “Begin with prayer” Handel proceeds to an extraordinary choral fugue built on a gigantic theme and elaborated with all manner of combinations. Now Daniel, who is given an entire scene in three parts, rises to eminence. First he sings a fine largo, followed by a recitative and by a most impressively constructed passacaglia. The unison strings introduce the ostinato, whose elaboration remains largely independent of the rhetorical voice part, though here and there the latter takes up bits of it. There is solemn drama when Daniel declares that “from the rising sun to the setting sun, the nations may confess, I am the Lord”; the inexorable ground bass is interrupted, the voice, accompanied by simple chords, dominates. The chorus of the Jews is jubilant. Preceded by a long ritornel, it begins hymnically, ending with a triumphant Hallelujah-Amen.
Handel surmounted every difficulty threatened by the philosophical musings of the opening scenes; the tone is one of grandeur, and the musical substance inspired. Now he has a chance to vary the grandeur with some of the vulgar tones of earthly existence. Belshazzar appears, surrounded by his people, inviting all to take part in the saturnalia of Sesach: “Let festal joy triumphant reign.” The gestures remain large, however: the ritornel is thirty-six measures long, almost a sinfonia. That Belshazzar begins alone serves to enhance the boisterous quality of the dance—Sesach is the Babylonian god of debauchery. Nitocris, in “The leafy honours of the field,” really a simile aria but in this case quite appropriate, tries to forestall the orgy. The piece is of course descriptive, but also highly poetic. Nitocris fails, and as Belshazzar orders the sacred vessels from the temple to be used as wine cups, the Jews, horrified at his sacrilegious intentions, warningly urge him to reconsider. “Recall o King thy rash command,” in the dark key of F minor, is built with a shrewdly effective dramatic sense. The six-part chorus presents men and women antiphonally; they sing unaccompanied until on the word “Jehovah” the orchestra joins them with heavy C minor chords. Throughout this remarkable piece harmony, dynamics, and pauses are used for dramatic ends.
Nitocris is stirred by the Jews’ plaint and warns Belshazzar anew, but he is tired of “frivolous dispute” and wants to proceed with the feast. Mother and son now confront each other in a magnificent duet. Each of the participants contends at length, but Handel gradually diminishes the distance between entries, the phrases become shorter and tighter, and presently the two parts are interwoven. The chorus of Jews re-enters, this time more solemn than excited and thereby more dramatically taut. The pattern is familiar: from homophony to polyphony, but in the mighty fugue that ends the act, Handel knows how to be pictorial within the framework of intricate counterpoint.
The second act opens with a large chorus of Persians. They have carried out Cyrus’s stratagem of diverting the Euphrates. Though quite different from the tremendous closing chorus that precedes it, “See from his post Euphrates flies” is equally as accomplished. In the large tripartite construction the counterpoint is deliberately small-jointed, and as the independence of the parts decreases so the impact of the homophonic ejaculations increases. We are in the presence of a duet-chorus: Handel derived this fine piece from his chamber duet Fronda leggiera e mobile (1743), and the transformation is once more a stunning piece of craftsmanship and imagination. This time the airy theme exactly fits the situation: the coloraturas on “mobile” could nicely serve for “[Euphrates] flies” without the changing of one note-value; the notion of borrowing this piece must have been spontaneous. The tone is a beguiling scherzando, and the ever-changing combination of voices keeps the piece indeed leggiera e mobile. The Babylonians, represented by a three-part chorus of women’s voices, deplore the river’s “faithlessness” in simple chordal style. The Persians’ chorus of men answers in the same style. The concluding double fugue has a lucid structure in which the strongly contrasting themes are elaborated with a freedom that must have chagrined theorists and pedagogues then as it does now.
Cyrus orders the advance through the dry riverbed. His long da capo aria “Amaz’d to find the foe so near” is a little misplaced at this juncture, and though it contains fine music, it could be cut out. A short martial sinfonia calls the Persians to arms, while the Babylonians, not yet aware of their danger, indulge in their orgiastic feast. The boisterous tone returns in “Ye tutelar Gods of our Empire”; the ponderously jolly theme is catchy, the phrases drunkenly asymmetric, the melodic convolutions capricious but always in a good popular vein, all of which adds up to a powerful piece. The same tone lingers in Belshazzar’s aria “Let the deep bowl thy praise confess.”
As he defies the God of Judah, there begins the most extraordinary scene in all the oratorios. It is largely lost unless the work is staged, for as in Verdi’s Macbeth, the King’s retinue does not see the apparition until after the King recovers from his faint. The excited chorus wonders “why our mirth so sudden ends”; then they discover the writing on the wall. The panic and consternation are masterfully rendered. The King, a little more composed, sends for the Chaldean sages to interpret the meaning of the message. At this point Handel borrows from Telemann’s Musique de Table (1733) a posthorn signal. Entitled “Allegro Postillons,” the sinfonia, a program piece, describes the mission of fetching the seers, but it also admirably serves to enhance the suspense.99 The wise men are baffled, and now fear descends on the courtiers as a wailing, piercing cry, “nor God nor man affords relief,” passes from voice to voice. Upon Nitocris’s recommendation Daniel is consulted. Daniel’s aria and recitative again exhibits the ad
mirable new device of forming larger units by connecting two or more pieces through the symphonic elaboration of themes common to them. In the aria, reproachful and haughty, the postillion motif lurks in the background, a reminder that the wise men could not interpret the meaning of the writing. The customary order of recitative and aria is reversed for dramatic emphasis; the interpretation of the fatal message demands the freedom of the recitative. Now it is the authentic prophet who speaks, predicting Babylon’s doom.
Nitocris’s despair does not take the form of an accompanied recitative, as one would expect in such a scene of shattering conflict. Handel has her sing “Regard o son my flowing tears” in a siciliana whose normally smooth flowing lines are studded with the large intervals of sixths and sevenths. The mother’s song has a crushing effect on Belshazzar, who is silent. Meanwhile the Persians are advancing on Babylon, with Gobrias acting as their guide. Cyrus’s aria “O God of truth” shows his determination to advance. It also shows that he tends to be somewhat sententious, though his counsel of moderation and the avoidance of “needless slaughter” is of course a most commendable quality in a conquering general. The Persians acclaim their “glorious prince” in a fine large anthem, which again represents the aggregate of three distinct pieces, ending in a splendid fugue. One does not mind the almost didactic tone of the text, for Handel’s imagination is at white heat, the richness and variety of choral detail are captivating, and the great double fugue rises to majestic height.
The third act, though well planned by Jennens, could easily have degenerated into watery sentimentalism—it is perilously undramatic. Handel brought it off magnificently, once more demonstrating that in a music drama it is the musician who gives the text its meaning. That Handel was conscious of the pitfalls is demonstrated by the existence of two or even three versions of almost all the important pieces in this act, and our choice is made difficult because all of them are excellent. The act begins with another fine piece by Nitocris. “Alternate hopes and fears distract my mind,” sings the Queen, but the grieving mother, who sees her son’s unavoidable fate, recognizes the moral justification of the impending tragedy. There are two versions of this appealing piece, but surely the second, which uses the thematic material of the E minor recitative that opens Belshazzar, should be preferred. Nitocris, in a brief secco, asks Daniel whether there is any hope for her son. The prophet’s continuo aria, “Can the black Aethiop change his skin?” is obviously a simile aria, a little smug, and not up to the level of Daniel’s best music.
George Frideric Handel_Dover Books on Music Page 59