Shooting Stars: Ten Historical Miniatures

by Stefan Zweig

  Or no: not bare! Wasn’t there something white and papery shining in the bright rectangle of light? Handel reached for it. It was a package, and he felt that it contained written papers. He quickly broke the seal. A letter lay on top, a letter from the poet Jennens who had written the libretti for his Saul and Israel in Egypt. Jennens wrote to say that he was sending Handel a new poem, and he hoped the great genius of music, phoenix musicae, would look graciously on his poor words and carry them up on his wings through the ether of immortality.

  Handel started as if something terrible had touched him. Did this Jennens too mean to mock him, a dead and crippled man? With a violent movement he tore the letter in two, threw the crumpled remains on the floor and stamped on them. “The blackguard! The scoundrel!” he bellowed; the uncouth fellow had probed his deepest, burning wound and pierced him to the quick, to the bitterest gall of his soul. Angrily he blew out the light, groped his way confusedly to his bedroom and flung himself on the bed; tears suddenly broke from his eyes, and his whole body trembled in the rage of his impotence. Woe to this world, where the robbed are mocked and the suffering tormented! Why appeal to him now that his heart was frozen and the strength had gone out of him, why demand another work from a man whose soul was numbed and whose mind was powerless? All he wanted now was to sleep, unfeeling as a beast, to be forgotten, to be no more! The disturbed, ruined man lay heavily on his bed.

  But he could not sleep. There was a restlessness in him, whipped up by his anger like the sea by a storm, a malignant and mysterious restlessness. He tossed from left to right and then from right to left again, becoming ever more wakeful. Perhaps he should get up after all and look at the libretto? But no, what could words still do for him, a dead man? There was no comfort for a man whom God had allowed to fall into the abyss, removing him from the sacred stream of life! And yet a power was still throbbing in him, strangely curious, urging him on, and in his helplessness he could not resist it. Handel rose, went back into his study and once again lit the candle with trembling hands. Had not a miracle raised him once before from the paralysis of his body? Perhaps God knew of healing and comfort for the soul as well. Handel moved the light towards the written sheets of paper. Messiah, read the first page. Another oratorio! The latest had failed! But, restless as he was, he turned over the title leaf and began to read.

  At the first words he started up. “Comfort ye,” began the libretto. “Comfort ye!”—it was like magic, that phrase—no, not a phrase, it was an answer divinely given, the cry of an angel calling from the overcast skies to his despairing heart. “Comfort ye”—how the words resounded, how they shook his subdued soul, those creative, fertile words. Already, although he had hardly read it, hardly sensed it, Handel heard the phrase as music, as hovering, calling, rushing, singing notes. O joy, the gates were flung wide, he could feel and hear in music again.

  His hands shook as he turned page after page. Yes, he had been called, summoned, every word entered into him with irresistible force. “Thus saith the Lord”—was that not spoken to him and him alone, was not the same hand that had struck him down now raising him from the earth in bliss? “And he shall purify”—yes, he was purified; all at once the darkness was swept from his heart, brightness had dawned, and the crystalline purity of resonant light. Who had lent such rousing verbal force to the pen of poor Jennens, the poetaster of Gopsall, if not he who alone knew the composer’s need? “That they may offer unto the Lord”—aye, a flame of offering had been lit in the smouldering heart, a sacrificial fire leaping to the sky in answer, responding to that magnificent cry. It was spoken to him, to him alone: “Lift up thy voice with strength”—yes, lift it up with the power of the sounding trumpets, the surging chorus, the thunder of the organ, so that once again, as on the first day of creation, the Word, the sacred Logos, might wake mankind, all humanity, all those still despairing in the dark; for truly, “Behold, darkness shall cover the earth”, and they know nothing yet of the bliss of redemption granted him in this hour. And no sooner had he read the cry of thanks than the music surged up in him, fully formed: “Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty God”—yes, praise him, the Wonderful, the Counsellor who acted to bring peace to the distraught heart! “And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them”—aye, it had indeed come down into this room on silver pinions, had touched him and redeemed him. How could he not give thanks, rejoice and hail the Lord with a thousand voices in his own, his sole voice, how could he not sing and praise God, saying: “Glory to God in the highest!”

  Handel’s head was bent over the sheets of paper as if bowed by a stormy wind. All his weariness was gone. He had never before felt his powers so strongly, never before known the joy of creation streaming through him like this. And again and again the words poured over him like torrents of warm, redeeming light, each going straight to his heart, an invocation liberating him. “Rejoice greatly!”—as that magnificent chorus burst forth he involuntarily raised his head and his arms spread wide. “He is the righteous Saviour”—aye, and he, Handel, would bear witness to it as no mortal man ever did before, he would raise his testimony like a shining sign above the world. Only one who has suffered deeply knows joy, only one who has been through tribulations can guess at the ultimate mercy of forgiveness, and it is for him to bear witness to the resurrection before men, for his sake who died. When Handel read the words: “He was despised”, sad memories returned to him, transformed into dark, oppressive sound. They had thought he was defeated, they had already buried him alive, hounding him with their mockery—“All they that see him, laugh him to scorn”—yes, they had laughed at the sight of him. “But there was no man, neither found he any to comfort him.” No one had helped him, no one had offered comfort in his helplessness, but there came a wonderful power: “He trusted in God”, and God had delivered him. “But thou didst not leave his soul in hell.” No, God had not left his soul in the tomb of his despair, in the hell of his impotence, a man in bonds, cast out, no, God had called him once again to carry the message of joy to mankind. “Lift up your heads”—how that music broke forth from him now, a great command to proclaim the word of God! And suddenly he shivered, for there, in the hand of poor Jennens, he read: “The Lord gave the word.”

  He held his breath. Here was the truth, spoken by any chance-come human mouth: the Lord had given him the word; it had come down to him from on high. “The Lord gave the word”; yes, the word was his, the sound was his, the grace was his! And it must go back to God, be raised to him by the overflowing heart; it was every creative artist’s duty and desire to sing his praise. Ah, to grasp and hold and raise and wield the word, to draw it out, extend it to the width of the world, embracing all the joy of being, as great as God who gave it—ah, to change the word, the mortal, transient word, back into a thing of eternity through beauty and endless ardour! And behold, there the word was written, there it rang out, a word that could be repeated and transformed for ever: “Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!” Ah, to bring all the voices of this earth together in that word, high and low, the firm voice of a man, the yielding voice of a woman, to make them abundant, enhance them and vary them, bind them and loose them in rhythmical chorus, send them up and down the Jacob’s ladder of the scale, soothe them with the sweet sound of strings, rouse them with ringing fanfares, bring them to burst forth in the thunder of the organ: “Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!” Ah, to take that word and that thanksgiving, and make it into jubilation echoing back from this earth and rising to the Creator of the universe!

  Tears blurred Handel’s eyes, so mighty was the fervour in him. There were pages still to read, the third part of the oratorio. But after that “Hallelujah! Hallelujah!” he could read no more. The words of rejoicing filled his inner being, drew him out, expanding him, burned like liquid fire trying to flow, to stream out of him. And how that jubilation urged him and surged within him, for it wanted to break out, to rise and return to heaven. Hastily, Handel picked up his pen and began setting down notes, forming sign after
sign with magical speed. He could not stop, it carried him away like a ship with all sail spread running before a stormy wind. The night around was silent, the humid darkness lay quiet over the great city. But the light poured out within him, and the room echoed, unheard, to the music of the universe.

  When his manservant cautiously entered the room next morning, Handel was still sitting at his desk writing. He did not reply when his secretary Christof Schmidt timidly asked whether he could be any help in copying the music, just uttered a low and dangerous growl. No one ventured to approach him again, and he did not leave the study for three weeks. When they brought him food, he hastily broke off a few crumbs of bread with his left hand while the other went on writing. For he could not stop; it was as if some mighty inebriation had seized upon him. When he rose and walked up and down the room, singing aloud and beating time, there was a strange look in his eyes; when anyone spoke to him he started, and his answer was uncertain and confused. Meanwhile, his manservant was not having an easy time. Handel’s creditors came demanding payment of his debts, the singers came asking for a festival cantata, messengers came inviting Handel to the royal palace; the servant had to turn them all away, for if he tried to exchange even a word with the composer, who was working so furiously, his incensed master’s anger was vented on him like the rage of a lion. George Frideric Handel knew nothing of the time and the hour in those weeks, he made no distinction between day and night, he lived entirely in the sphere that measures time only by musical beat and rhythm, he moved only with the torrents that surged from him ever more wildly, ever more urgently as the work flowed closer to the sacred rapids of its conclusion. Absorbed in himself, he paced up and down the self-appointed dungeon of his study with pounding, rhythmical steps; he sang, he touched the harpsichord, then he sat down again and wrote and wrote until his fingers were sore; never in his life had he felt such surging creativity, never had he lived and suffered like this in music.

  At last, after just three weeks—a space of time still incredible today and for all eternity!—at last, on 14th September, the work was finished. The word had become music; what was only dry, sere language before now blossomed and sang, never to fade. The miracle of the will had been worked by the inspired soul, just as the paralysed body had once worked the miracle of resurrection. It was all written down, formed and constructed, rising and unfolding in melody—just one word still remained, the last in the work: “Amen”. And now Handel seized upon that “Amen”, those two brief, quick syllables, to build them into a stairway of music reaching to the sky. He cast them from voice to voice in alternating chorus, he drew those two syllables out and wrenched them apart again and again, only to merge them anew into yet more ardent sound, and like the breath of God his fervour flowed into that concluding word of his great prayer, so that it was wide as the world and full of its abundance. That one, last word would not let go of him, nor would he let go of it either, building up the “Amen” in a magnificent fugue from the first vowel, the echoing A, the primeval first note, until it was a cathedral, full and resonant, with a spire reaching to the heavens, rising higher and higher, falling again and rising once more, and finally seized upon by the stormy organ, flung up over and over again by the power of the united voices, filling all the spheres, until it was as if the angels themselves joined in that paean of thanksgiving, and the rafters were splintered overhead by that eternal “Amen! Amen! Amen!”

  Handel rose to his feet, with difficulty. The pen dropped from his hand. He did not know where he was. He saw nothing, he sensed nothing, all he felt was exhaustion, immense exhaustion. He was so dizzy that he had to lean on the walls. The strength had gone out of him, his body was tired to death, his mind confused. He groped his way along the wall as a blind man might. Then he fell on his bed and slept like the dead.

  His manservant knocked softly at the door three times that morning. The maestro was still asleep; his closed face was motionless, as if carved from pale stone. At midday the servant tried to wake him for the fourth time. He cleared his throat noisily, he knocked loudly. But no sound could penetrate the immeasurable depths of that sleep, no word could fall into it. In the afternoon Christof Schmidt came to the servant’s aid. Handel still lay motionless. Schmidt bent over the sleeping man, who lay there felled by weariness after his extraordinary feat, like a dead hero on the field of battle after gaining the victory. However, Christof Schmidt and the manservant knew nothing about the great deed and the victory; they felt nothing but alarm to see him lying there so long, so uncannily motionless; they were afraid he might have suffered another stroke. And when, for all their shaking, Handel still would not wake in the evening—he had been lying there sombre and still for seventeen hours—Christof Schmidt went for the doctor again. He did not find him immediately, for Dr Jenkins, making the most of the mild evening, had gone out to fish on the banks of the Thames, and when he was finally tracked down he grumbled about the unwelcome intrusion. Only when he heard that the patient was Handel did he pack up his rod and line, fetch his surgical instruments for the bloodletting that would probably be necessary—all this took a great deal of time—and at last the pony trotted off to Brook Street with the pair of them.

  But there was the manservant, waving to them with both arms. “He got up!” he shouted to them across the street. “And now he’s eating like six porters. He ate half a Yorkshire ham in no time at all, I’ve had to pour him four pints of beer, and still he asks for more.”

  Sure enough, there sat Handel like the Lord of Misrule before a groaning board; and just as he had made up for three weeks’ worth of sleep in a night and a day, now he was eating and drinking with all the relish and might of his gigantic body, as if to restore all at once the strength he had put into his work during those three weeks. No sooner did he set eyes on the doctor than he began to laugh, and it gradually became a vast, an echoing, a booming, a hyperbolical laughter; Schmidt couldn’t remember seeing a smile on Handel’s lips in all those weeks, only strain and anger, but now all the primeval, dammed-up joyousness of his nature burst forth like waves crashing against the rocks, foaming and breaking in rolling sound—never in his life had Handel laughed in so elemental a way as now, when he saw the doctor arriving just as he felt better than ever before, and the lust for life poured roaring through him. He raised his tankard and waved it at the black-clad doctor in greeting. “Devil take me!” cried Dr Jenkins in amazement. “What’s come over you? What kind of elixir have you drunk? You’re bursting with life! What happened to you?”

  Handel looked at him with a smile, his eyes sparkling. Then he sobered down again. Slowly, he rose and went to the harpsichord. He sat down, and at first his hands passed over the keyboard without touching the notes. Then he turned, gave a strange smile, and softly, half speaking and half singing, began the melody of the recitative “Behold, I tell you a mystery”—the words from Messiah, and he began them in jest. But as soon as he brought his fingers down through the mild air the music carried him away. In playing, Handel forgot the others and himself as his own current of music swept him gloriously along. Suddenly he was back in the middle of the work, he sang, he played the last choruses which he had written as if in a dream, but now he heard them waking for the first time: “O death, where is thy sting?” He felt the music within him, he was full of the fire of life, and he raised his voice higher, he himself was the rejoicing, jubilant chorus, and on he played and on, singing, all the way to the final “Amen, Amen, Amen”. The room was almost shattered by those notes, so forcefully and with such weight did he throw his strength into the music.

  Dr Jenkins stood there as if benumbed. And when Handel finally rose the doctor remarked with awkward admiration, just for something to say: “Good heavens, I never heard anything like that before. You must have been possessed by the Devil!”

  But at that Handel’s face darkened. He too was astonished by the work itself and the grace that had come upon him as if in his sleep. He too felt humbled. He turned away and said so softly that
the others could hardly hear it: “No, I think it was God who possessed me.”

  Several months later two well-dressed gentlemen knocked at the door of the house in Abbey Street, Dublin, at present rented by that distinguished visitor from London the great composer Handel. Respectfully, they put their request: during these last few months Handel had given the capital of Ireland the pleasure of hearing works more wonderful than had ever been performed in the country before. They had heard, they said, that he meant to stage the première of his new oratorio Messiah here too; it was no small honour that he did the city in planning to present his latest creation here, even before London heard it, and in view of the extraordinary nature of the concert large profits might be expected. They had come, they said, to ask whether the master, whose generosity was known to one and all, might not donate the takings of that première to the charitable institutions which they had the honour to represent.

  Handel looked kindly at them. He loved this city because it had given him its own love, and his heart was open. He would be happy to agree, he said smiling, let them just tell him which institutions were to profit by the performance. “The Society for Relieving Prisoners,” said his first visitor, a kindly, white-haired man. “And the sick in Mercer’s Hospital,” added the other. But of course, they said, this generous donation would be only the proceeds of the very first performance; profits from the others would still go to the master.

  However, Handel dismissed this idea. “No,” he said quietly, “no money for this work. I will never take money for it, never, I am too much in the debt of another. It shall always go to the sick and the prisoners. For I was sick myself, and it cured me; I was a prisoner and it set me free.”