George Frideric Handel_Dover Books on Music

by Paul Henry Lang

  We have discussed the fundamental English opposition to opera and have seen that while Locke’s or Lawes’s music is well made, it is clearly in the service of the play rather than a conversion of the play into music. Nevertheless, while the vital element of dramatic expressiveness and tension is missing in this song-lyricism, its faithful musical prosody and its tunefulness were not wasted on succeeding generations of musicians. Humphrey, Blow, and Purcell do reach an essentially operatic language, but English opera still failed to materialize, with the exception of Purcell’s one authentic masterpiece.

  The penchant for the theatrical, for the dramatic, for the stage, is an English quality that appears at all stages of English history, in all walks of English life, and in all English arts. We do not have to hold forth on the English theatre; it is, of course, part of our own, and well enough known in our country. But let us look at their painters, at Hogarth, Gainsborough, and Reynolds. Only in the latter’s landscapes, and even there not always, is a mimic quality missing. But the English, ever since Steele and Addison, would not accept theatre without spirited dialogue and a more or less complicated psychological plot. They saw in the lyric stage a positive danger to the spoken theatre and were not willing to accept such an extension of the meaning of “theatre.” All they were prepared to admit was incidental music as a form of decoration to the play, indeed, as animated decor. Purcell, though antedating the days when the critique of operatic dramaturgy became articulately formulated by the literary men, shows a reticence entirely in accord with these ideas.

  Handel knew Purcell and knew him well; the 17th-century English composer’s influence on the 18th-century German was strong. Right from the beginning of the latter’s career in England, with the first ceremonial pieces, the Purcellian tone is unmistakable, yet it was much later, in his English dramatic music, that Handel really came to grips with Purcell. Perhaps at first this was no more than self-encouragement, in order to follow his own new path with more security, but there is ample evidence to show that he deliberately tried to solve questions raised by Purcell. Still, when he actually reached the point of grappling with English opera, when he was a stone’s throw from achieving it, he turned aside. English opera was “in the air,” a number of musicians were working at it, but the titles themselves show that they were still inhibited; obviously, English opera “in the Italian manner” could not lead to a real national genre. There was no operatic tradition in England, and in the century during which the innovation coming from Italy had been rejected only a genius of the stature of Purcell had been able to master the opera, and then only once.

  It seems to this writer that Handel, who reacted to stylistic essences like a seismograph, detected something in Purcell that made him hesitate about English opera. Dido and Aeneas he admired, for the opera presents genuine human characters, and Handel must have found it to his liking that Dido is a stronger figure than Aeneas—his own heroines are often superior to their lovers or masters. But he knew that this opera was an exception, and Purcell’s other theatre music, while congenial to the English, did not suit the Italian-trained, confirmed operista. Purcell remained emotionally somewhat remote from his themes, seldom living the life of his figures. Handel is close to them, he learns from his themes, their change and development is his own development, he is more subjective, extrovert, and excitable than is the Apollonian Englishman. The true tragic tone that Purcell can find only exceptionally—he died so young—is second nature with Handel. The center of the work is always kept visible by Purcell; Handel is easily carried away by a developing dramatic situation which will shift the center as individual points attain comprehensive unity of their own. Handel’s drama is colorful and lively, while Purcell’s is at times a little bare, but both share a feeling for the monumental and for the intimate.

  Purcell’s dilemma was even greater than Handel’s. He came on the scene at a moment when even the choice of a new direction, let alone its realization, was a problem. What he achieved was so entirely a personal artistic feat, so exclusively valid for him only, that it really constituted no solution at all. Handel found Purcell’s musical language most attractive but palpably felt the absence of primary thrust, concentration, and tension, which to him was the essence of the music drama. While he gladly accepted the language, he did not follow the form. In addition, the peculiarly English quality of Purcell’s music, the gently sensuous melancholy, present even in the ceremonial pieces, initially baffled the German-Italian composer accustomed to the directness of “basic affections.” It took him a long time to penetrate to the essence of Purcell’s style, and by the time he mastered it the die was cast: the Purcellian qualities went into Handel’s English pastorals and oratorios. Though he swung back more than once in the direction of English opera, he could not overcome the earlier impressions. By that time there was no turning back; Handel had absorbed enough of the English psyche to share some of the attitudes and feelings that were native to his adopted countrymen. Opera was Italian and remained so; when the singers sang in English it had to be something else. In the end, neither geography nor anthropology nor racial psychology can entirely explain the reasons for the failure of English opera in the 17th and 18th centuries; national feelings, even national ideals, have their mystic regions.

  It cannot, then, be often enough repeated that the course of events did not originate with Handel; he found the tradition fully formed and in reality could neither oppose nor bypass it, not even with many great Italian operas. He did, nevertheless, involuntarily contribute to the throttling of the modest efforts of the elder Arne and others who tried to do something about the English lyric stage. Unfortunately, the way they went about it, by trying to use some of Handel’s own works, touched Handel at his most sensitive spot: he would not endure piratical competition. By hurriedly revamping Esther, and a month later Acis and Galatea (1732), which the freebooting company headed by the senior Arne proposed to produce, and by using a resplendent cast of singers, he defeated them. But he also defeated their hopes of producing English opera. This seems to be an academic question, however; it is doubtful whether they ever could have succeeded. For while England was not really bereft of composers who understood the issues and were willing to deal with them, this was an era of modest talents; the great comprehensive conceptions and the ability to encompass the entire horizon of a drama were missing. The English composer of the early 18th century could compose good music, but he could not create a musical poetry that epitomized the nation’s genius; that had passed with Purcell. Otherwise musical life in England in Handel’s time was extensive and industrious, and Handel contributed to it materially. Hawkins reports that “Covent-Garden Theatre was an excellent seminary; and by the performances of the oratorios there, the practice of music was greatly improved throughout the kingdom.” There were numerous amateur and semi-amateur choral and instrumental societies, not only in London but also in the provinces. They kept alive the ancient English proficiency in choral singing, and many of them took readily to Handel, though of course not to his operas, which they could not perform anyway for lack of the specific type of singers needed for Baroque opera. But the oratorios and anthems, as well as the instrumental music, including many of the overtures, soon became popular.

  Those who have found Handel’s autocratic reign the chief deterrent to the rekindling of native English music do not seem to have noticed the presence of numerous foreign musicians of eminence. After all, Ariosti, Loeillet, Bononcini, Porpora, Porta, Geminiani, Galuppi, Locatelli, Gluck, and many others lived and worked intermittently in London and had their ardent partisans. As a matter of fact, complaints about the country being overrun by foreign musicians started long before Handel’s arrival. John Playford, in A Briefe Introduction to the Skill of Musicke (1654), deplores the decline of a pure English style. “Our late and solemn artistic Musicke, both Vocal and Instrumental, is now jostled out of esteem by the new Corants and Jigs of Foreigners, to the grief of all sober and judicious Understanding of that for
merly solid and good Musick.” A few years later he added, “nor is any Musick rendered acceptable, or esteemed by many but what is presented by Forreigners.” Matthew Locke, and others, also showed a measure of xenophobia, from which it can be seen that besides those who admired French and Italian music and endeavored to acclimatize it—Humphrey, or Blow, or Purcell—there were others who deplored its presence.

  Hawkins says that Handel “totally extinguished emulation,” but surely this is again one of those generalizations that must be qualified. Maurice Greene and William Boyce composed oratorios with very attractive music, and while others, such as Defesch, J. C. Smith, Jr., and Stanley, did not reach this level, their oratorios were not behind the ordinary German or Italian products of the times. Dean calls Greene’s Deborah, which preceded Handel’s oratorio of the same title, “a better work than Handel’s.” If the statement is surprising, it is borne out by the vocal score published by Schott. Similarly good quality can be found in instrumental music too. Burney reports that Boyce’s Twelve Sonatas or Trios for Two Violins and Base (1747) “were longer and more generally purchased, performed, and admired, than any production of the kind in this kingdom, except those of Corelli.” Among others, Arne, fils, in particular deserves to be better known, for in the midst of the Handelian domination this fine composer showed independence and a particularly English quality, which goes to show that real talent cannot be snuffed out, even when toiling in the shadow of an overwhelming genius. The other new genre created by Handel, the organ concerto, also found enthusiastic followers; even Dr. Burney tried his hand at it.

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  WHILE IT was not given Handel to found a dynasty of English composers there were good reasons for this. He brought the peculiarly national species he created, the English oratorio, to a peak, from which further development was not possible. This parallels the fate of the Passion in Germany, where with Bach’s great works the species reached its unsurpassable end. There was no issue, nor could there be, any more than there was or could be issue to the Wagnerian drama—both were utterly personal and original conceptions and achievements that could not be continued, nor even imitated. The truly creative influence of Handel must be sought among later composers outside of England, in the works of Haydn, Mozart, Mendelssohn, and a few others, but that is a topic that requires an essay by itself and cannot be dealt with here. Suffice it to say that in these composers it is not imitation that we see; the Handelian influence was considerable, but it was completely digested and transformed into a personal style and utterance. Any such living continuation of Handel’s legacy was doomed in England by the capital misconception of the nature of his oratorio as sacred music. Handel’s imitators tried to follow him for a century and a half, but in their worshipful hands the biblical heroes became provincial church elders whose passion and vigor was lumpish and sententious. Throughout the 19th century every church organist, every music professor considered it his duty to compose “sacred oratorios,” and every one of them was convinced that he was following in the master’s footsteps. But even so fresh and original a musical mind as Sullivan’s had to succumb to the hardness of the oak pew in which he was forced to compose his oratorio. It was Elgar who first broke through the old barriers, rising above this distressing “tradition”; he once more brought life and honest passion to the oratorio.

  A contributing factor in this sad situation was the manner in which these worthies were educated for the office of composer. The peculiar conservatism of English music of the 19th century was undoubtedly a by-product of the unique situation whereby composers were trained in the universities rather than in free conservatories or the opera pit. Hawkins indignantly protests this penchant for academicism, which seems to have been strong in his day and whose beginnings he places in the Handelian era. He praises the quality of the performance of music, but

  as to its precepts, the general opinion was that they needed no further cultivation : Dr. Pepusch had prescribed to the students in harmony a set of rules, which no one was hardy enough to transgress; the consequence thereof was a disgusting uniformity of style in the musical productions of the time; while these were adhered to, fancy laboured under the severest restrictions, and all improvement in the science of composition was at a stand.161

  The situation must have been bad if Hawkins, a confirmed conservative, found it “disgusting.” But, it sank still lower in the 19th century. English musicians tried to satisfy the strict and stifling requirements for the Bachelor and Doctor of Music degrees, which had become something quite different since the days of Drs. Bull, Blow, and Greene. This se-verely formal system of professional education for the creative artist was a strong support for the latter-day “Handelian style,” repressing what little imagination the hopeful novice brought to the university. Later in the century this academic isolation was lessened as more and more English musicians journeyed to what was then the Mecca of music for Germans and Englishmen, the Leipzig Conservatory, but the change only resulted in renewed foreign influence as Haydn’s mantle was transferred to Mendelssohn’s shoulders. The returning English musicians merely grafted German Romanticism upon the existing post- and pseudo-Handelian style, composing “sacred oratorios,” anthems, and organ music. But university conservatism would not go along even with the “radicalism” of the hardy Mendelssohnians, and the good Victorian music professors were so shocked by Purcell’s almost two-hundred-year-old harmonic and contrapuntal audacities, which defied the guidelines of current academic music theory, that in the early Purcell Society volumes all the “mistakes” were piously corrected. The decisive change came only at the end of the century, but the real renewal of English music is the work of our century. In this new atmosphere Handel is beginning to be seen in his true colors, and perhaps what Oliver Goldsmith wrote in the British Magazine in 1760 will now be accepted as the reasoned verdict of Handel’s role in musical history. “Handel, in a great measure, found in England those essential differences which characterize his music,” said Goldsmith, declaring him, his German origin notwithstanding, “at the head of the English school.”

  EPILOGUE

  CONCLUDING MY HANDELIAN WAYFARING, HOW SHALL I now, at the end of my journey, compose that last ringing sentence? What shall be its principal part, the enriching clauses, the colorful interpolations? I have tried to penetrate beyond what is known of this great life to open a few secret drawers. In its final synthesis, however, the critic-biographer’s truth is determined by what he likes. I know how elusive is the giant I have momentarily netted and how difficult it is to avoid disaster with this boundless subject. But I do like him, and I hope that, though perhaps inked in with blots and shaky line, my way of liking him has shown a great man and artist, and not a figure in inferior stained glass.

  I trust that the false colors of the composer’s commonly accepted picture, as well as its unhistorical distortion, are open to dispassionate contemplation, as analyses of the creative personality are to challenge and change. We know that this picture was different in Handel’s time, and we know that some of the greatest musicians of the 18th and early 19th centuries saw Handel the composer free from the amorphous legend that early began to envelop him. When in 1745 he was elected to the Societat der musikalischen Wissenschaften, founded by Lorenz Mizler, the learned musicians in the group gave their unanimous vote not to a legendary plaster saint but to the admired worldly maestro. Mizler’s “Association for Musical Science” was made up of musicians respected for their “science,” i.e. their highly developed skill. Bach, who became a member after Handel (though Mizler was Bach’s disciple), submitted a six-part canon and the canonic variations on Vom Himmel hoch to qualify for membership. Handel was not even required to compete; he was made an honorary member—the only one—and the Society awarded him its gold medal. Haydn said to William Shield, one of his English musician friends, that before hearing Joshua in London “he had long been acquainted with music but never knew half its power.” His oratorios composed after the London visits eloque
ntly testify to his indebtedness to Handel, as do Mozart’s choral works. Gerhard von Breuning relates the seriously ill Beethoven’s delight at receiving the forty volumes of Samuel Arnold’s edition of Handel’s works, published as the first “complete” edition in 1787-97. This was in December, 1826, after Beethoven’s first operation, and his young friend describes how the composer propped up the volumes on his sickbed, saying “I have long wanted them, for Handel is the greatest, the ablest composer that ever lived. I can still learn from him.” Nevertheless, Handel’s discovery and acceptance in Germany was slow, and his Mendelssohn was an Englishman, Arne, whose performance of Messiah in Hamburg (1772) was the first Handelian oratorio heard in Germany. The Handel cult started in earnest with Hiller, who seems to have been inspired by the London commemoration ceremonies. Ironically enough, Hiller’s first performance of Messiah in Berlin Cathedral (1786) was in Italianl

  Today we ask the question, “Can that understanding and admiration be recaptured, shall we attain an intelligent and more durable appreciation?” The opinions of later musicians are by no means as unanimous as those we have just mentioned. Berlioz saw in Handel nothing but “pork and beer,” and in our day Stravinsky writes that “Handel’s reputation is a puzzle ... [his] inventions are exterior; he can draw from an extensive reservoir of allegros and largos, but cannot pursue a musical idea through an intensifying degree of development” (Exposition and Developments). The palm, however, goes to Cyril Scott (Philosophy of Modernism):