George Frideric Handel_Dover Books on Music

by Paul Henry Lang

  But all this is deceptive. The supposed insignificance of Handel’s instrumental music is not even relatively so, for we are dealing with some fifty chamber-music compositions, dozens of concertos, various orchestral suites, and harpsichord music. Moreover, much of this music was composed for Handel’s own use with the pressure of commission or competition absent. Indeed, instrumental music was not Handel’s petite luxe. He combines the primal delight in music making with the sensitivity of an old and noble musical civilization, the Italian, to create sonatas, trios, and suites. This chamber music is not modern for its day, and in this respect Handel shows a kinship with Bach. Both carried the old style to its culmination, though each in his own way, at a time when everything around them was beginning to change; and together they represent the apex of Baroque chamber music. Handel’s instrumental compositions are not pièces d’occasion, the asides, as it were, of the dramatic composer: they are genuine, independent, legitimate, idiomatic, and solid. In them speaks a master who forms an integral link in the chain that begins with Corelli, and the musical values are absolute. As to the orchestral works, notably the Twelve Grand Concertos, Opus 6, they are among the most powerful and significant works of their kind of the entire Baroque era. As a composer for orchestra, Handel was bold and forward-looking; nevertheless, the opinion that all this is of small significance, that Handel “hardly goes beyond Corelli,” is still held by some. So early an admirer as Burney had to defend Handel against those who considered the latter’s concertos inferior to those of the Italians, but his colleague, Hawkins, sided with the critics. He was convinced that Handel’s concertos “will stand no comparison with the concertos of Corelli, Geminiani, and Martini,” adding flatly that “in general they are destitute of art and contrivance.” Curiously, Hawkins endorsed the harpsichord pieces, among which there are few comparable to the concertos, as “the most masterly productions of their kind that we know in the world.”

  Behind these views is the circumstance that by the time Handel came upon the scene the forms of instrumental music had become rather stereotyped; they were standardized parts to be assembled by any skilled craftsman. Handel accepted the conventional forms and stayed within the spirit of tradition, but the letter he did not observe. “No great music has been more derivative,” says Basil Lam, “yet none bears more firmly the impression of personality.” We should complement this succinct characterization with a statement by Mainwaring, which, though it concerns Handel’s playing, is equally valid applied to the composer: “Handel had an uncommon brilliancy and command of finger; but what distinguished him from all other players who possessed the same qualities, was that amazing fulness, force, and energy, which he joined with them.” Even if many of the ideas in Handel’s sonatas and concertos are the stock formulas of the period, their manipulation and the elasticity of form and procedure are altogether and unmistakably personal.

  The Italian influence is strong so far as style and idiom are concerned; everywhere one feels the overwhelming desire for bright, sensuous sound, the glorious sound of the Italian violin school. Yet Handel’s music also differs from that of Corelli and the older Italians because, especially in the mature concertos, it no longer reflects their serenity within a well-defined and, for the Italians, inviolate framework. Handel is adventurous, like Vivaldi, though in a different way, and, as we have remarked earlier, it is puzzling that Vivaldi exerted so small an influence on him. One would think that Vivaldi’s boldness, capriciousness, his ready exploitation of stray ideas and impressions, would have struck an echo in Handel, the great improviser. Handel’s abiding sense for the organic even in the improvisatory must have made him a life-long worshipper of the “classic” Corelli, whose influence is ever present. Like Corelli he likes to stay within the general outlines of the genre, and, unlike Vivaldi’s, his conception is cyclic.

  While in the slow movements his instruments sing, in the dances and fugues the writing becomes entirely instrumental, the whole apparatus, technique, proportions, stylistic turns exude the spirit of instrumental music. The most characteristic trait of his construction is motivic unity; the stylized turns of melody have as much formal significance as the simplest melodic idea. In technical ability Handel matches anything the period offers; the harmony is well planned, and there is a readiness for polyphonic configurations, though this tendency is often tantalizingly felt rather than executed, giving piquancy to the music. The dance pieces are flexible, colorful, of many shades, and with their warm tones, frequent asymmetry, and unconventional rhythms, are sharply differentiated from the formality of the actual dances. In matters of polyphony—there are many fugal movements in this music—Handel is not amenable to any restriction either. Even the traditional place of the fugue in suites or concertos is ignored; the fugal movement can be the first, second, third, or fourth.

  As we have said, Corelli remained Handel’s model throughout his life, but one important statute in the code was ignored. Corelli separated the instrumental genres into solo sonata, the two varieties of trio sonata, and concerto, which nevertheless were united in comprehensive opera. Handel accepted the distinctions, but within the individual species he went his own way with remarkable freedom. What attracted him most in the music he heard in Italy was the Italians’ concentrated power in shaping plastic thematic material in their sonatas and concertos. This is also what attracted Bach, who liked to borrow such themes from Italian composers. Handel, to whom this ability was native, only requiring release, could immediately plunge into the Italian style with kindred and even more concentrated ideas, but while this concentration is generally relaxed by the Italians once the thematic subject has been launched, it is seldom dissolved with Handel, no matter how improvisatory the process.

  Though his treatment of the instruments is highly idiomatic and the spirit of string music is dominant, Handel’s mode of composition, with some exceptions in his keyboard music, was not governed by the requirements and possibilities of the instruments, as was the music of Locatelli or Geminiani. Double stopping and all the other violinistic techniques so adroitly exploited by Corelli’s disciples did not interest him. Nor did he care for the German variety of violin technique, with its dense polyphonic writing, scordatura, and other devices, or for the mysticism of such composers as Biber. This brings us to the unavoidable comparison with Bach.

  In Bach’s chamber music the dominating thought is the multilinear and, paradoxically, it is even more so when the medium of performance is reduced to a single unaccompanied string instrument. The unaccompanied sonatas and partitas are the last outposts of the musically feasible, a region congenial to Bach, but incomprehensible to Handel. It would never have occurred to him to compose a four-part fugue for a solo violin; he would not have put up with the severe restrictions such writing places on the composer. Hans Mersmann expressed this well when he characterized older German instrumental music as being an art in which “the idea is stronger than the need for effect, and is carried out without any concessions, even at the cost of the shape of things.” Bach seeks even in the dances a polyphonic-spiritual core, where Handel finds motion, euphony, and function. They differ fundamentally from each other precisely because of Handel’s unwillingness to tax the musical ear with more than it can naturally take in. This once more testifies to the absence of any form of mysticism in Handel; he composes only what he perceives, what sounds well, what can stand by itself. Euphony was a conditio sine qua non for him, influencing even the turn of his counterpoint. Both composers wrote concertos and both used the same Italian sources, but upon comparison we see that the only thing they wholeheartedly shared was the love of the genial manipulation of a given musical substance; the execution of this penchant was another matter. Handel kept the substance flowing with little regard for linear logic, whereas Bach sought to develop it according to much more severe principles of musical architecture. Thus once more the two musicians are too different to be comparable.

  When Handel went to Italy, he found that because of the
strong attraction exerted by the concerto, a recent development in Italy and as yet little known in Germany, the various genres were beginning to be blended. Corelli’s concerti grossi, for instance, represent an amalgam of suite and concerto, but the concerto had a more pronouncedly orchestral quality than the suite Handel knew at home. Corelli liked a substantial string body, at times approaching the size of our modern orchestra. Handel witnessed all this while in Rome and Venice, and acquired a taste for the distinctly orchestral as opposed to the enlarged chamber music that was the German suite. While he liked wind instruments and used them with skill, the German wind suite did not interest him at all, even though he appreciated its out-of-doors quality. We have seen that he objected to King George’s request to write the Royal Fireworks Music for winds alone and at the first opportunity added strings to the suite.

  The Germans were by preference keyboard composers; outstanding violinists, like Biber or Pisendel, were few, and their violin playing was specifically German, quite different from the Italian. By the time German instrumental ensemble music began its spectacular rise that eventually was to lead to world hegemony, Handel had long since left the German orbit. Nevertheless, he must have heard a great deal of chamber and orchestral music while still in Germany. Since only one of Zachow’s chamber-music compositions survives, a fine trio sonata for flute, bassoon, and thoroughbass, we cannot form a judgment of his influence on Handel in this particular regard, though it must have been a factor. On the other hand, the chamber music of Krieger, Buxtehude, Pachelbel, and others, which he must have heard in the Zachow circle, left no perceptible traces in his music. Curiously, as Handel shied away from Vivaldi, so he did, again unaccountably, from the magnificent romanticism of Buxtehude, though the reason may have been the same: his innate leaning to thematic-formal cohesion. Buxtehude’s sonatas were printed in 1696 and thus were available to the young Handel, and he knew Reinken’s Hortus Musicus of 1687, but all this music was displaced by the Italian experience. The more recent and numerous German concertos of Johann David Heinichen and Christoph Graupner, which are richly orchestrated with woodwinds and brass, or Mattheson’s he could not have known, though Telemann’s Musique de table (1733) he certainly knew because he borrowed themes from it, if for different purposes. This particular score was undoubtedly sent to London by his old friend and correspondent. Thus Arthur Hutchings (as well as a number of German authors) is somewhat off the mark when he names German composers as the primary influences on Handel’s instrumental music, though he is right when he mentions French suite music as a source (The Baroque Concerto). Kusser’s collection of orchestral suites (“suivant la méthode française”) was published in 1682, and other collections followed in 1700. The French influence was considerable in Germany and most composers were touched by it, but a particular place must be reserved for Georg Muffat (c. 1645-1704). Muffat was not a “systematic” composer, like Froberger; his suites contain a great variety of dance forms that pay little attention to the order set by either the older German suite or the French variety. This is really theatre music, ballet, and it must have been this quality that drew Handel to Muffat. In addition Muffat was a good melodist, wrote fluent light counterpoint, and though Gallicized in his technique and elegance, could be varied in mood. His Florilegium set an example for the newer German orchestral suite. Handel also certainly knew the works of the composers who followed Muffat’s lead, such as Philipp Heinrich Erlebach and Johann Kaspar Ferdinand Fischer, for their collections were published while he was under Zachow’s tutelage. His almost exclusive interest in the French overture is surely attributable to youthful impressions, because all German composers around the turn of the century were under the influence of Lully, whose ambassador to Germany was Muffat. To this French streak were later added elements from English instrumental music, not only the occasional hornpipe but all manner of other English folk and dance tunes and patterns.

  But the overwhelming experience, as we have said, was his acquaintance with Italian instrumental music, and this too antedates his trip to Italy. Torelli’s Opus 6, Concerti musicali, was published in Germany in 1698. These were the first true orchestral concertos unless Corelli’s great set printed in 1712 was really ready in 1682, as Muffat, who studied with Corelli, maintains. While this is unlikely, it is a fact that Corelli’s concertos were known a few years before their publication. Since Torelli resided in Germany, and not far from Halle, in Ansbach, he could hardly have escaped the inquisitive Zachow’s attention. Albinoni’s Opus 2, a set of very attractive concertos, was also available around the turn of the century, together with Vivaldi’s first opus, though the latter Handel perhaps did not hear until he visited Venice. Albinoni particularly fascinated Bach, but his popularity in Germany began after Handel’s departure.

  Despite his acquaintance with most of this music, Handel’s instrumental works, especially the concertos, are a highly personal achievement, in which Corelli remained the dominating influence. The hallmarks of Corelli’s style, the dynamic contrasts (which Corelli indicated with detailed instructions, unusual for the time and paralleled only by Handel’s similarly elaborate superscriptions), the solemnity and grandeur of the slow movements, the rousing vitality of the allegros, and the always magnificent string sound, are all there. The Italian models were pervasively present in London too. Geminiani and Veracini, both exponents of Corelli’s art, were resident in London, and there was no dearth of published scores. Albinoni’s Opus 2 was published there as early as 1709, Veracini’s Opus 3 in about 1714, Corelli’s Opus 6 in 1730. Many additional Italian works in Dutch contraband editions circulated freely in London’s musical circles. Geminiani in particular interested Handel, for this Italian was a faithful disciple of Corelli, in some aspects surpassing his master, as in his skill in developing his materials and in his somewhat ampler fugal writing. Though in the main “conservative,” like Handel, he also liked to step outside the codified style, as when he made the concertino into a full-Hedged quartet by the addition of a viola. Perhaps it was Geminiani’s example of using wind instruments in some of his concertos that prompted Handel to add oboe parts to his Twelve Grand Concertos; but, after reworking the first few, he abandoned the project.

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  HANDEL’S chamber music—some fifty compositions—amounts to a far from negligible repertory. He likes the stateliness of the church sonata, but he also likes the dances; the combination is very attractive, especially when the long lines are relieved by little rhapsodic inserts. Euphony and melodic expressivity govern these pieces and there is a fine balance between forward movement and polyphonic manipulation. There are no “problems,” yet this kind of music, which appears here as slippered musical prose, easy and cool, there with the decorative briskness of the Italians, may be made to carry a considerable weight of seriousness without any disturbance of its smooth, conversational surface. At times a sonata promises little, then suddenly reveals, not indeed spectacular beauties but glimpses of tranquil loveliness. The pictorial quality so characteristic of Handel’s dramatic and pastoral music is not missing, but the main feature is stylistic security and consistency.

  As a rule, Handel relied altogether on the thoroughbass practice of his time; only one of these fifty works has a written-out continuo part. In the solo sonatas, treble and bass are carefully set down, but the rest was left to the harpsichordist, whose task was not made easier by the frequent absence of figuring. In the trio sonatas the three obbligato parts, even when elaborately polyphonic, give unequivocal indication of the harmonic procedure. Everywhere one notes the firm, often majestic, bass; constantly on the move and alive, it is not a mere harmonic support, but intimately concerned with the convolutions of the other parts.

  The solo sonatas with basso continuo have fine melodies, richly embroidered instrumental arias, and vivacious dance movements. The collection, designated as Opus 1 and first printed in Amsterdam in 1724, was later republished by Walsh, who added a few items. The publication contained twelve sonatas for reco
rder or transverse flute (“German flute”) or violin, and basso continuo. It is impossible to date these works. One or another may be from Handel’s early youth, but the elegance, poise, and secure shaping of most of them palpably express the art of a much more mature composer. The trio sonatas for two oboes and thoroughbass Chrysander definitely assigns to the Halle period, but as we have remarked in the chapter dealing with this period, these also must be considered the works of the master musician of later years. If they were originally composed in Halle, which is quite possible, the version we possess is undoubtedly a somewhat later reworking. Opus 2, Nine Sonatas or Trios for Two Violins, Flutes, or Hoboys with a Thorough Bass for the Harpsichord, published in 1733, contains what we may safely regard as works of art. The seven trio sonatas in Opus 5, for violins or German flutes and harpsichord, are remarkable too. All of them are outside the German orbit because of their pronounced melodic quality; they have often been converted into vocal pieces. The spirited fugal writing made subsequent transference to oratorio overtures also readily feasible. All of these sonatas reflect the genius of the Italian trio sonata, the upper parts entwined in flowing melody or brisk imitative runs, the bass shepherding them with constant vigilance. From Opus 5 onward Handel combines the sonata with the suite, the gathered gravity and resonance of the one freshened with the lighter dances of the other. The exquisitely turned trios of Opus 5 stand, with Bach’s trio sonatas, at the head of Baroque chamber-music literature.