George Frideric Handel_Dover Books on Music

by Paul Henry Lang

  74 Percy M. Young, in his The Oratorios of Handel, rejects, as recently as 1950, the staging of Saul and the other oratorios as being “aesthetically inadvisable.” But his old-fashioned bias is immediately evident from the sentence that precedes this judgment: “It is fascinating to bribe sensuousness into acceptance of Handel the oratorio writer by staging, as operas, his oratorios.”

  75 That the Dead March is not in minor but in C major has caused as much uneasiness as fancy explanations. Aside from the fact that the march is clearly a Tod und Verklärung piece, only one of the Romantic worriers noticed that C major is the principal key in Saul.

  76 Brahms, a great admirer of Handel, and in particular of Saul, conducted the oratorio in 1873, during his first season as musical director of the Gesellsehaft der Musikfreunde. Interesting hints can be gleaned from the cuts he made. See the Brahms Briefwechsel, III, p. 53.

  77 Walter Serauky’s interpretation certainly oversimplifies the problem. “We must assume,” he says in his biography, “that Handel composed this oratorio responding to a profound inner religious motive.” Neither Handel nor any other 18th-century composer did any such thing; they were professionals who worked for specific occasions.

  78 This organ piece, though printed in 1686, was probably taken from Handel’s childhood notebook. See p. 13.

  79 Handel did not waste any time. Muffat’s work came from the printer’s shop in the first part of the very same year! Componimenti Musicali per il Cembalo is available in a modern edition; see Denkmaler der Tonkunst in Österreich, III, 3.

  80 It defies the imagination how a serious scholar could see in this lilting English pastoral direct connections with Leibniz and his philosophical order of the universe. Even more amazing is that “From Harmony” is seen as a manifestation of the maternal strain in Handel’s ancestry, of the Evangelical pastors, “lovers of church music, whose spirit guided our Handel from opera to the oratorio.” This nonsense was not written by a Romantic patriot a century ago but by Walter Serauky in 1956.

  81 We shall follow Milton’s original spelling rather than the corrected “Pensieroso.”

  82 See the excellent study of the musical accomplishments of the elder Milton, John Milton the Elder and his Music, by Ernest Brennecke, New York, 1938.

  83 April 4, 1741. Full text in Deutsch, p. 515.

  84 It was in England that “subscription” opera and concert series originated, an example later emulated wherever music became an organized business, wrapped in social amenities.

  85 Theodora, the other “Christian” oratorio, was not, of course, derived from Scripture but from a 17th-century historical novel. It goes without saying that La Resurrezione (p. 84), apart from being a youthful work, cannot be counted among the English oratorios.

  86 The stories that Mrs. Cibber and Handel travelled together to Dublin are obviously apocryphal. Because of adverse winds, Handel was detained for several days in Chester, where the future historian, Charles Burney, then fifteen, was at school. Burney, who “watched him narrowly as long as he remained in Chester,” would surely have discovered such a celebrated companion.

  87 Grattan Flood, in his Fishamble Street Music Hall, reports that as a departing gesture Handel presented an organ to the Hall; it was used when the new season of the Charitable and Musical Society opened on October 8, 1742.

  88 Kretzschmar flatly stated that “Handel himself put together the biblical text,” adding that it was only his modesty that made him acknowledge full honors to Jennens. But surely the same man who gruffly told the Bishop of London that he did not need his help in selecting passages from the Bible for Queen Caroline’s funeral anthem would not have hesitated to disavow Jennens’s claims. But Kretzschmar was not the first one to disregard all evidence. In 1822 Zelter simplified everything by declaring that Messiah was put together “aus Lutherschen Bibelworten” and was astounded that it should be sung in English.

  89 Steglich thought that he had discovered a basic motif in Messiah upon which the whole work rests. It is the interval of the fourth, which he calls Gewissheits-quarte, the “Fourth of Certitude,” presumably referring to Redemption or Salvation. If so, it is astounding that the Italian duet, scolding Love as “too treacherous, too charming a deity,” should also be based on this motif.

  90 Von Deutscher Dichtung und Musik.

  91 This lively interest in the classics remained unbroken, and one encounters its manifestations in the most surprising places. Gladstone, to mention an example, was a Homeric scholar, the possessor of a library in which translations of Homer in the languages of five continents formed a truly magnificent collection.

  92 Sir Leslie Stephen, English Literature and Society in the 18th Century.

  93 See, about Racine and his Esther and Athalie, p. 285 f.

  94 Gravina was one of the founders of the Roman Academy of Arcadians, and Handel should have met him there before Gravina left for the Academy of Quirina, a secessionist organization. There is no record of his having met Maffei (for whose learning Bumey is full of admiration), although the latter visited London. The works of Zeno were well known to Handel, also those of Metastasio, at least up to the late thirties.

  95 Friedrich Schleiermacher’s theological school declared the Old Testament a collection of folkloristic tales.

  96 One may of course argue that while morality is not identical with religion, it is directly involved in the religious attitude, and, conversely, the genuinely moral attitude, the recognition of moral obligations, directly involves religion. When a man believes in God his belief inevitably affects his conduct, and to affirm duty is implicitly to affirm God. But religious relationship to God comes with prayer, and “it may be held,” said Coleridge, “that the most deep and original moral interpretation is not likely to be that which most shows a moral purpose.” Moreover, Hutcheson’s motto, “the greatest happiness for the greatest number,” announces a practical result of moral steadfastness independent of religion. Thus divine ethics is converted into human law bound to material things instead of the hereafter. But this characteristic English compromise in ethics and religion has only brought the English into subjection to the theory of material necessity and the practical sway of Mammon.

  97 The sanctity of private property is one of the Commandments, the Tenth, which English Protestants significantly retained in its Hebrew form, the neighbor’s real estate, livestock, and wife being on the same list of prohibited covetousness. Lutherans and Catholics separated goods from the neighbor’s wife by dividing the Commandment into the Ninth and Tenth.

  98 This picture was not altogether unfamiliar to Handel, for he had witnessed the vociferous quarrels of Lutherans and Pietists in his youth in Germany. Equally familiar was the thoroughly materialistic attitude of faithful churchgoers in Hamburg, who transacted business right in the pews. In the end, materialism is characteristic of all well-organized mercantile societies, where wealth, and political influence to protect and promote it, is in a curious way combined with religion.

  99 For those who want to study the mysteries of the creative process, a comparison of Telemann’s original with Handel’s version offers an enlightening lesson. Max Seiffert gives a good analysis of this piece in Bulletiu de la Société Union Musicologique, IV (1924).

  100 In 1749, when Jennens rebuilt his Gopsall residence in a princely manner, he asked Handel to design the organ to be erected there. Handel’s letter is polite but contains nothing beyond strictly business matters relating to the instrument. Yet he remembered Jennens years later, bequeathing him two fine pictures by Balthasar Denner.

  101 In Hoclgkin Manuscripts, published by the Historical Manuscripts Commission.

  102 One can imagine the trouble the German translators had with Morell’s verbiage. “Fromme Andacht” certainly does not come close to “pious orgies,” but then we ourselves could not come close to such freaks.

  103 Concerning the share of the middle classes in this final triumph of Handel, we must call attention to the observation
s of that excellent and critical interpreter of documentary evidence, William C. Smith, who claims that this question is by no means as yet fully elucidated. Handel’s admission fees had always been and still were at this date scaled far more to the purse of the aristocratic patron than to that of the man in the street—half a guinea or more was a large sum of money for an ordinary citizen. The fees charged by Handel for his oratorio performances were actually higher than those obtaining at the King’s Theatre with its expensive Italian singers and costly décors and machines. Smith throws in a new idea worth investigating, namely that this policy may have been “a very important factor in Handel’s struggle.” (Concerning Handel.)

  104 William C. Smith thinks it likely that part of Handel’s convalescence in the fall of 1745 may have been spent in Salisbury.

  105 Händel in seiner Zeit, in Wege zu Händel, Halle, 1953.

  106 This wondrous piece caused an amusing contretemps for some of the exegetes. B minor is supposed to be the Schmerzenstonart, the key of grief and pain, yet Handel here contradicts all authorities—and Bach himself—by using B minor for warm, happy, and ravishing love music.

  107 We cannot blame Handel’s contemporaries, however, when two hundred years later one of Britain’s leading musicians, Sir Thomas Beecham, completely misjudged this glorious score. His recording of Solomon, the first to reach countless listeners unacquainted with Handel’s works outside of Messiah, Israel in Egypt, and Judas Maccabaeus, is a capital crime by any artistic code. The smugly superior baronet, always ready to deal cavalierly with defenseless composers, outdid himself by excising the entire judgment scene, thereby demolishing the core of the drama. Other numbers were shifted helter-skelter out of context, the entire score reorchestrated in the most conventional 19th-century Kapellmeistermusik style, with juicy harmonies, senseless doublings, and ridiculous thematic imitations added. The recitatives are elephantine, the retards asthmatic, the cadences brutal, and such cheap effects as cymbal clashes complete this incredible travesty.

  108 Theodora, a Christian martyr during Diocletian’s rule, died in 304. She should not be confused with Theodora, the more famous and notorious wife of Justinian (6th century), a courtesan become empress. The confusion, which is frequent, comes from the fact that the latter’s body lies in Corfu Cathedral as St. Theodora. Piquant, if Procopius told the truth about Justinian’s consort.

  109 This assumption is given support not only by the part that Handel composed for Guadagni in Theodora but also by some of his subsequent acts. The Tenbury manuscript of Messiah contains a version of “Thou art gone up on high” that Handel composed for the revival of Messiah in May, 1750, in which Guadagni sang. It is bedecked with runs and ornaments. The castrato was so indelibly associated with formal opera seria, and the style of writing for his kind of voice so stereotyped, that it was difficult for Handel to dismiss from his mind the habit of many decades. He admired great singing, and once he set his mind on using Guadagni, some of the idiosyncrasies of style also had to come back. We have seen that he could not altogether free himself from the similarly stereotyped effects of the rage aria, vestiges of which remain in many a fine bass number in the English oratorios, not least in Messiah.

  110 Bach’s Hercules auf dem Scheidewege (Schmieder 213) was called a dramma per musica. It was, like a number of his secular cantatas, a little Baroque serenata-opera, though to designate it as such is not looked upon with favor. There are some aspects of Bach and his music that are as much in need of reinterpretation by the removal of pious mystifications as is the case with Handel. Bach’s Choice of Hercules shared the fate of Handel’s, though in reverse: a good deal of its music was bodily transferred to the Christmas Oratorio.

  111 Flower has Cuzzoni sing in Messiah, evidently confounding the benefit concert with the Foundling Hospital events. His story was duly repeated with proper embellishments by all popular biographers. Handel was charitable by nature and instinct, and he undoubtedly contributed to Cuzzoni’s benefit, but he drew the line where artistic capability was concerned. Cuzzoni, a shadow of the great diva, could no longer sing such an exacting part. The poor woman soon disappeared, ending her life in Italy as a buttonmaker.

  112 This sort of history is further complicated by some recent lexicographical gaffes. The new Riemann Musik Lexikon (1959) dutifully cites Handel’s indebtedness to Habermann’s six Masses, adding a list of works in which Handel made use of them. The list begins with Agrippina (1709)!

  113 The comparison has occurred to others, too, and we think it justified. But to call Handel’s recitative a Vorahnung of Beethoven’s is neither criticism nor history but spiritualism.

  114 The Angel’s aria found great favor with the latter-day or neo-Victorians. Suggestions have been made for the performance of this song—and from respectable quarters—that even Hollywood would envy. A recent German book dealing with choral works proposes to have the Angel sing da lontano, with organ accompaniment, and with an “ethereal voice.”

  115 I am amazed that no one has yet tried to make a metaphysical case of this melody; its resemblance to the Passion chorale. O Hauvt voll Blut. is unmistakable.

  116 The annotation is in German with a curious English twist: “biss hierher komen den 13 Febr. 1751 verhindert worden wegen des gesichts meines linken auges so relaxt.” See the illustration on Plate xv.

  117 The English calendar changed on September 3, 1752; henceforth our dates follow the “New Style.”

  118 John Stanley (1713-1786), blind from childhood, nevertheless received a thorough musical training. Gainsborough’s portrait shows a pensive, sensitive person who, according to Burney, was an excellent and exacting musician. Stanley, with John Christopher Smith, the younger, became Handel’s chief exponent, conducting various performances of his works during his last years and after his death.

  119 These effects included all of Handel’s original scores, which the younger Smith eventually surrendered to King George III, an ardent Handelian, who settled a pension on him.

  120 In the gradual appreciation of Rembrandt, England played an honorable part. From the first quarter of the 18th century there was a lively interest in the painter among English collectors, the unwanted corollary to this interest being the production of forged Rembrandts as early as 1750. That the authenticity of one of Handel’s Rembrandts was questioned even then is shown by Handel’s wording of the bequest. “I give to Granville Esquire of Holles Street the Landskip, a view of the Rhine, done by Rembrand, & another Landskip said to be done by the same hand.” The second

  121 The Life of the Countess of Huntingdon, London, 1844.

  122 This undoubtedly refers to John Christopher Smith, the elder; we are not aware of any other reconciliation.

  123 This is a mistake, only one of the pictures was a gift.

  124 See J. M. Coopersmith’s List of Portraits, Sculptures, etc., of Georg Friedrich Handel, in Music & Letters, 1932. Aside from the curious clinging to the German spelling of Handel’s name by an American in an English publication, this is an excellent summary of the subject. (As early as 1715 the composer signed himself George Frideric Handel.) the fine chapter on Handel’s portraits in W. c. Smith’s Concerning Handel (1948) contains valuable additions to the reconstruction of Handel’s physical appearance.

  125 “Among the few amusements he gave into, the going to view collections of pictures upon sale was the chief” (Hawkins).

  126 Incidentally, the Wyches and the Granvilles were related and one wonders whether Handel’s early acquaintance with Mary and her family was not due to some recommendation from Hamburg.

  127 This misinformed view was shared by the present writer in his younger years (Music in Western Civilization).

  128 See Robert Manson Myers, Fifty Sermons on Handel’s Messiah, in The Harvard Theological Review, October 1946.

  129 As a matter of fact, by this time the conversion theory was made retroactive, applied to Handel’s entire oeuvre. A good example of this is furnished by Robert Falkener, author of
Instructions for Playing the Harpsichord (London 1774): “The immortal Handel, in whatever Pieces he composed for the Entertainment of the Public was extremely cautious not to admit any thing that might excite either mean or lewd Ideas.”

  130 It was for the same reason that full scores were not printed, only “favourite songs” and “symphonies” in reduced score, so as to prevent performing material from getting into the hands of unauthorized persons.

  131 Nor are cases of willingness to permit ridiculous travesties of an original work unknown among other composers. In a letter to Zelter (May 25, 1823) Beethoven calmly tells the director of the Berlin Singakademie that “large portions” of his Missed Solemnis “could be performed a cappella,” adding that in such a case “the whole work would have to be revised.” He was careful, however, to indicate that this unenviable—in fact, impossible—task he expected Zelter to perform.

  132 Plagiarism and Imitotion during the English. Renaissance, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1935.

  133 Friedrich Blume in MGG. See also Arnold Schering, Über Bach’s Parodieverfahren, in Bach Jahrbuch, 1921.

  134 The designation “Venetian” or “Neapolitan” must be understood in a rather elastic sense, for neither Scarlatti nor Steffani nor Handel fits unconditionally in the scheme.

  135 Handel was familiar with the family novel because Mrs. Delany was a great admirer of Richardson. A trace of this acquaintance does show through occasionally, as for instance in Solomon.

  136 While Italian oratorio was unknown in England, Carissimi’s music was not entirely unfamiliar. Pepys describes an evening spent “in singing the best piece of musique counted of all lands in the world, made by Signor Charissimi, the famous master in Rome” (July 22, 1664).

  137 Nevertheless, Handel was well acquainted with traditional German contrapuntal procedures; significantly, he used them only as examples—not in his compositions but in his didactic work. That Handel took the trouble to prepare such examples may come as a surprise because we know that he loathed teaching. Jakob Wilhelm Lustig, Mattheson’s scholar, who visited Handel in London in 1734, reports that Handel emphatically declared to him that since Hamburg “no power on earth would move me to accept pupils.” But he made some exceptions, notably in the case of Anne, “the flower of all Princesses.” He also taught the other princesses, and undoubtedly John Christopher Smith, Jr. Alfred Mann, in Händel Jahrbuch, 1964/65, pp. 35-57, thinks that a batch of manuscripts in the Fitzwilliam Museum served as exercises for his few disciples. One of the leaves carries the superscription “Madame,” obviously referring to Princess Anne. Mann neatly proves that when all these pieces are put together one discerns a sort of graduated course in harmony and counterpoint. Moreover, the sonatas for recorder, also in this collection, must have formed part of the “course,” for they seem to incorporate the principles presented in the exercises. Mann remarks that nowhere else is Handel’s writing as tidy and legible as in these pieces—they were not meant for the copyist. In the exercises the old German tradition is preserved to a remarkable degree.