The opera seria did not have true ensembles, nor did the early intermezzo and opera buffa; this development came after the middle of the 18th century. Leo and Vinci, both intent on ensembles, nevertheless had difficulty in arranging them because the construction of the librettos required the figures of the drama to fade away one by one. Furthermore, these composers (like Lully and Handel) could reach a dramatic crest with the single voice. Nothing could surpass in power and eloquence such a scene as the ending of the second act in Handel’s Orlando (see p. 242). The presence of duets in the opera is understandable in view of the long-standing popularity of “twin singing,” which had flourished ever since the villanella and the madrigaletto. The chamber duet was particularly favored in the 17th and 18th centuries and found its way quite naturally into the opera from its beginning. But these were, as a rule, dialogue duets, the singers sharing the same musical material; the dramatic kind, involving two distinct personalities, evolved gradually. Handel had his models in Scarlatti and Steffani; Giulio Cesare shows him a master of the operatic variety of the duet, far in advance of his contemporaries.142 Though it may seem simple, the road from dramatic duet to trio or quartet is a very long one. This larger ensemble, the crowning glory of opera, for which there is no parallel in the theatre, was strenuously objected to on logical grounds. Baron Grimm, with typical French esprit, still inveighs against the “preposterous idea” of several persons speaking simultaneously. But the objections were made by men of letters who looked at the ensemble from the point of view of the spoken theatre; they could not understand that music is capable of presenting the simultaneous self-expression of several dramatic figures. In view of the rarity of ensembles beyond duets, it is astonishing to see how modern and prophetic Handel’s few ensembles are. The trio in Tamerlano (1724), “Vogli stragi,” reaches a long way beyond the limits of Baroque opera; it is a true dramatic ensemble that presents three recognizable characters simultaneously. There is a remarkable, if brief, quartet in Partenope (1730). Later, in the great oratorio ensemble, Handel created dramatic pictures that remained unexcelled until the advent of Mozart (Examples 33, 34.)
The act-ending ensembles are another matter. They are neither finales nor choruses, but “tuttis” by the assembled soloists. The introduction of the finale is generally ascribed to Nicola Logroscino in the late 1740s, but though a feeling for the spirit and function of the finale was unmistakably present even in the ’30s, it is difficult to find any specific work with a genuine finale before Piccinni’s La buona figliuola of 1760. The character of the finale—that is, an elaborate compound piece made up of integrated recitatives, ariosos, and ensembles—is already present in Tamerlano, again showing Handel in the van despite his generally conservative adherence to the Venetian-Neapolitan operatic pattern.
Ex. 33 The Choice of Hercules
Ex. 34 Susanna
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IN CONSIDERING Handel’s creative processes, we must now move into a less charted and more controversial region, into that province where a musical idea derives its contours from the words. Being a dramatic composer, Handel naturally depended a great deal on the words he set to music. His musical imagination was first kindled by a plot, personality, or idea, but he was highly susceptible to the pictorial and symbolical imagery of even single words. Music operates with symbols, which acquire a communicative meaning that transcends the purely acoustic phenomenon. The imagery is in the main dramatic in its intention, and a proper appreciation of this must precede any further inquiry.
The visual arts are fundamentally representational; music is fundamentally abstract. “The musician should always attempt to convey feelings rather than depict their actual causes; he should present the state of mind and body rather than that matter itself.” This was the opinion of Johann Jakob Engel, expressed in his essay Über die musikalische Malerey (1780), and the statement reflects a conception that gained wide acceptance in what we call the Classic era.143 The tendency to impose the representational on music is fraught with dangers, yet representation is not only possible but under certain conditions is an essential element in music. During the Baroque an illustrative symbolism derived from the text of vocal works was foremost in the minds of composers, and its association with the technical means of musical representation was intimate and pervasive. To us this is alien territory in which the expressive and the constructive elements are so intertwined that they virtually constitute an unknown language. Listening to music is a productive occupation, however; it calls for reasoning, conclusions—that is, participation—even though for the last century and a half we have been told that listening to music requires complete surrender of the mind to feeling. But music is a man-made art, its conventions are man-made and therefore accessible to our intellect. Caroline Spurgeon, in her Shakespeare’s Imagery, revealed that a poet’s imagery is a part of his expression that can be studied, and profitably studied, by itself. This is true, mutatis mutandis, in the case of musical poets too. Even the untutored layman, in constantly searching for some “meaning” or emotion hidden behind a piece of music that bears the simple superscription “allegro assai,” is recognizing implicitly that in a musical composition there is a premeditated will and intention at work.
The only trouble is that what we call “spontaneous expression” is difficult if not impossible to analyze, whereas the constructive-technical features do lend themselves to fairly unequivocal analysis. Dissatisfied with this uncertainty in dealing with the symbolic-metaphoric-descriptive aspects of music as opposed to the well-settled procedures followed in the theoretical aspects (harmony, counterpoint, and so on), musicologists decided to search for ways to deal with the problem in a systematic way. They knew that for centuries, and up to about 1770, vocal composers considered it their main task to express the sense of the words and to express the “affections” of the human soul. Indeed, the expression of the sense of the words, that is, text-interpretation in and by music, was one of the most important categories of Baroque musical thought. Since the means of attaining such expression in music were not always obvious and were mixed with what Hawkins calls “the common places,” with the clichés of the reigning style, the musical interpretations themselves had to be interpreted conceptually and verbally. At the turn of our century hermeneutics was established as a branch of musicology affiliated with a sort of applied psychology. We have noted above (p. 344) that both the term and the methodology were borrowed from theology, but its transference to music was accompanied by a good deal of confusion concerning the boundaries of its new domain. In speaking of musical symbolism, a proponent may be referring to an advanced form of rationalism or to a simple interpretation of the theories of the Affektenlehre, the Baroque “doctrine of the affections.” At any rate, hermeneutics usually denotes a synthesis of the conceptual with the autochthonously musical. The partisans of musical hermeneutics maintain that sound, like color, is inconceivable apart from objects, and that there can be no “pure” music devoid of associations. This symbolism takes the form of melodic, rhythmic, harmonic, and dynamic motion and configuration, but also uses the far more subtle means of form and organization.
Zarlino had already stated that “if any word expresses complaint, grief, affliction, sighs, tears, and other things of this sort, the harmony will be full of sadness.” Morley, having thoroughly fortified himself by reading Zarlino, goes a step farther when he quotes intervals and progressions appropriate for each affect. “You must have a care that when your matter signifieth ‘ascending,’ ‘high,’ ‘heaven,’ and such like you make your music ascend; and by the contrary where your ditty speaketh of ‘descending,’ ‘lowness,’ ‘depth,’ ‘hell,’ and other such you must make your music descend.” These general suggestions the Baroque developed into an elaborate system of musical turns, figures, motifs, and chord progressions standing for a certain symbolic conceptuality that acquired a convention-sanctioned “meaning.” Many of these symbols survive the particular time in which they flourished and are still underst
andable to us. Take for instance the falling chromatic bass of Bach that induced the feeling of pain and sorrow; it is still grasped instantly without the need of explaining the symbol. But many others are lost on the uninformed listener, for musical symbols are highly perishable. The decorative allegory and symbolic ornamentation of Baroque architecture show analogous traits in terms of particular esthetics of architecture. Today much of this is lost to us, yet the symbols live as architectural elements. So the musical symbolism, which similarly has lost most of its erstwhile meaning, lives on as elements of musical construction.
With the end of the Baroque the elaborate edifice built on the doctrine of affections collapsed and was soon forgotten. With it was forgotten its most notable exponent, Sebastian Bach. Handel survived because he was turned into a national-religious institution, but his musical imagery itself was also largely lost. Symbolism cannot attain its aims if the symbols used are private and therefore incomprehensible. The listener must either take such symbolism as expressed in descriptive music without reference to its intended meaning or occupy himself with a baffled search for an inaccessible meaning. Since with the great masters the link between symbol and the thing symbolized is often subtle, even disguised, it became an accepted scholarly pursuit to read all sorts of meanings into the simplest of melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic progressions, and exegetic ingenuity has been carried, notably in Germany, to fantastic extremes. There is always a danger of reading more into an old score than the composer could possibly have intended, and one may properly hestitate to accept a symbolic interpretation of a passage that has other functions that are quite clear and direct. A lavish application of hermeneutics encourages queer and unlikely analogies, and the whole thing can easily turn into a polite parlor game, such as one can find on almost every page of Serauky’s Händel. Musical hermeneutics has, indeed, a dangerous attraction for the type of mind to which the appeal of mysticism is stronger than that of reason. The fatal mania of the Bacon-Shakespeare school of interpretation of seeing anagrams, acrostics, and cabalistic word jugglery in the most unlikely places has its counterpart in music.
Hermeneutics, while popular, also had and has its opponents. Many have refused to grant validity to what seemed to them no more than speculation. The simplest argument is, of course, that Affektenlehre is one thing, a great composer’s poetry quite another. To turn the imagination of such musical poetry into a quasi psychic science, and its metaphors into statements of fact, has been viewed as being pretty close to an unscientific spiritualism. If one reads Ilmari Krohn’s recent Anton Bruckners Symphonien, one must conclude that only a ouija board could have produced the results of these analyses, but the Bach, Handel, Beethoven, and Wagner literature, too, is rich in examples that come close to Krohn’s spiritualism. Any explanation of content of the type hermeneutics indulges in seems to lift music from the sphere of esthetics and places it in the psychological orbit of everyday life; meaning is being forced upon things that have no logical meaning. An attendant danger is that one will take for a phenomenon of life what is an esthetic symbol. It can forcefully be argued that it is difficult to attribute esthetic value to phenomena that require pragmatic interpretation; because the ear as a sense organ is indifferent to symbolism, any such use of music involves all sorts of mediating factors.
This opposition is not recent; long before Hanslick’s celebrated treatise, voices were raised not only against the interpretation of symbolic and descriptive passages, but against the propriety of the composer’s use of music for such purposes. Charles Avison (An Essay on Musical Expression, 1752) indignantly censured the composer who “for the Sake of some trifling Imitation, deserts the Beauties of Expression.” He found it inexcusable that so great a composer as Handel should “condescend to amuse the vulgar Part of his Audience by letting them hear the Sun stand still [in Joshua].” Sir John Hawkins, like Avison an admirer of Handel, was also embarrassed that this distinguished musician “has too much affected imitation,” particularly regretting the attempt to “express the hopping of frogs and the buzzing of flies [in Israel in Egypt].”
It is true, of course, that “the charms and excellence of music are intrinsic, absolute, and inherent” (Hawkins), but we cannot simply dismiss musical hermeneutics, for it is often in the light of such explanations that what we call in our everyday vocabulary the “beautiful” in art becomes clear. To give up hermeneutics altogether would mean to restrict all writing about esthetics, and that surely would be an unreasonable sacrifice. While overindulgence in fantastic conjectures is by no means rare even today, we have settled down to a sane and intelligent appraisal of the system of symbolic expression that constitutes an interesting and vital element in Baroque music and are able to recapture some knowledge of it.144
We may recognize the esthetic value of the Romantic view that music excludes anything purely intellectual, but we must immediately contradict it in some aspects. During the act of composition—that is, the actual “putting together” of the work—the prevailing feeling may be suspended in the working out of detail in order to make certain configurations more plastic. There are illusions in music not unlike optical illusions in function, and they force the composer to correct apparent distortions. The taper and the entasis of the Parthenon shafts are well known, but the architect’s distant colleague, the composer, also deals with entasis, and none more skilfully than the Baroque composer. His fugal entrances, to mention one example, often require considerable adjustments. There can be no question that many a transition and development section, as well as clauses and cadences and a legion of formulas, can be such purely intellectual, feeling-free operations. One might go so far as to say that composition is in essence the constant alternation and mixture of the symbols of such objective and subjective processes, that in this musical symbolism and pictorialism there is a perpetual interplay of private and public meaning. The moment when apprehension passes through judgment into action cannot be exactly gauged; the coincidence between apprehension and art is so close as to be almost simultaneous. Exactly in what this mode of apprehension, which is neither truly conceptual nor merely emotional, consists remains obscure, but it is clear that emotion is not the only, the essential, unifying feature in this process; it is merely one link in the chain from cognition to conation.
The artist wants to make himself understood, and utilizes all possible ways to do so. Symbolic image and pure music come from the same creative mind. The difficulty for us is that the ratio and quality of these elements, which are of the utmost importance to both understanding and enjoyment, change, often radically, within a generation or two. Furthermore, the hermeneutical variability of musical constellations, such as intervals, rhythms, and harmonies, is very considerable, if not infinite. Some often-used symbols become practically immanent, but the rest depend on the particular situation and context in which they are used. Such musical metaphors and similes can be extraneous, inorganic, and altogether ornamental; on the other hand, a purely intellectual descriptive symbol, such as “falling” or “rising,” or playful garlands of ornaments, can become entirely emotional in the proper context. The 18th century had far subtler means than the 19th to achieve translation of the optical or intellectual into the acoustical. This is a different musical language, for not even the polarity of major and minor, which the 19th century invariably interpreted as happy and sad, heroic and tragic, is unconditionally valid in Baroque music. But all this can become a direct and instantaneous experience once the symbols become assimilated.
It is clear, then, that to speak of music as the “katexochen art of feeling” is an untenable postulate. We are dealing, especially in Baroque music, with known intentions and acts; hermeneutics is therefore justified because these intentions are analyzable to a considerable degree. We realize that there is no musical concept that could have the unequivocal validity of a linguistic concept such as “cat.” Even such expressions as “sorrow” or “jubilation,” long and widely used in music, are lacking in any but conventi
on-sanctioned precision of meaning. But the illusion of such conceptual meaning can successfully be created, and this was the main concern of all Baroque vocal composers. Daniel Webb, in his Remarks on the Beauties of Poetry (1762), expressed this cogently. He denies that music alone can express passions, “but let Poetry co-operate with Music, and specify the motive of each particular impression, we are no longer at a loss ... general impressions become specific indications.” The crucial requirement remains that all the musical elements employed to convey symbols should be capable of an autonomous expressive life even when freed of the conceptual. No matter how commanding the psychological situation, it should never threaten the supremacy of the esthetic. When Handel expresses the madness of Orlando by a constantly modulating, insecure tonality, he is almost graphically suggestive without ever straying from sound musical sense and logic; he merely uses analogies that can be symbolized. And since the symbols are idealized, their recognition is not absolutely necessary for the enjoyment of the music, though only by understanding them can we reach a truly penetrating insight. With Handel the auditive function of the symbol almost always remains purely musical, often achieving an intensity and a precision all the more arresting for its apparent casualness. Bach found in the final depths of the subjective something objective, an inner artistic conscience untouched by any external purposefulness. This is true of The Art of Fugue, but it is also true to a considerable extent of the first Kyrie in the B minor Mass and not a few other vocal works. To Handel this was something totally alien; he depended on the words. Nevertheless, when Bach set to music a text more elaborate than the few words of the Kyrie, he usually was entirely within the symbolic world of the Affektenlehre.
The other extreme, as represented by Rameau, who once said “Give me the Gazette d’Hollande and I’ll set it to music,” was equally foreign to Handel. While the great passions of love, hatred, and jealousy were his principal regions and he could be deeply stirred by them, the very imagery of words—even of single words—often sufficed to release his creative energies. In the midst of a dull piece he suddenly comes upon an expressive or picturesque word and instantly his imagination catches fire. Morell was aware of this and in order to keep the fire going often borrowed sentences or words from the great English poets, splicing them into his own pedestrian text. They served their purpose well.
George Frideric Handel_Dover Books on Music Page 83