Francis Hueffer and Donald Francis Tovey

“ No other great composer has ever so overcrowded his life with occasional and mechanical work as Handel, and in no other artist are the qualities that make the difference between inspired and uninspired pages more difficult to analyse. The libretti of his oratorios are full of absurdities, except when they are derived in every detail from Scripture, as in the Messiah and Israel in Egypt, or from the classics of English literature, as in Samson and L’Allegro. ”

“ And when the whole series of plagiarisms is studied, the fact forces itself upon us that nothing except themes and forms which are common property in all 18th-century music, has yet been discovered as the source of any work of Handel’s which is not felt as part of a larger design. Operatic arias were never felt as parts of a whole. The opera was a concert on the stage, and it stood or fell, not by a dramatic propriety which it notoriously neglected to consider at all, but by the popularity of its arias. There is no aria in Handel’s operas which is traceable to another composer. ”

“ In modern music such a relation between form and matter, prescribing as it does for every aspect at every moment both of the shape and the texture of the music, would exclude the element of invention altogether. In 16th-century music it by no means had that effect. An inventive 16th-century composer is as clearly distinguishable from a dull one as a good architect from a bad. The originality of the composer resides, in 16th-century music as in all art, in his whole work; but naturally his conception of property and ideas will not extend to themes or isolated passages. ”

“ In every art there is an antithesis between form and matter, which becomes reconciled only when the work of art is perfect in its execution. And, whatever this perfection, the antithesis must always remain in the mind of the artist and critic to this extent, that some part of the material seems to be the special subject of technical rule rather than another. ”

“ When we add to this the characteristics of a method like Handel’s, in which musical technique has become a masterly automatism, it becomes evident that our conception of originality must be at least as broad as that which we would apply in the criticism of architecture. The disadvantages of the want of such a conception have been aggravated by the dearth of general knowledge of the structure of musical art; a knowledge which shows that the parallel we have suggested between music and architecture, as regards the nature of originality, is no mere figure of speech. ”

“ But in spite of this, Handel will never cease to be revered and loved as one of the greatest of composers, if we value the criteria of architectonic power, a perfect sense of style, and the power to rise to the most sublime height of musical climax by the simplest means. ”

“ In the plastic and literary arts one type of this antithesis is more or less permanently maintained in the relation between subject and treatment. The mere fact that these arts express themselves by representing things that have some previous independent existence, helps us to look for originality rather in the things that make for perfection of treatment than in novelty of subject. But in music we have no permanent means of deciding which of many aspects we shall call the subject and which the treatment. ”

“ But the true plagiarist is the man who does not know the meaning of the ideas he copies, and the true creator is he in whose hands they remain or become true ideas. The theme “He led them forth like sheep” in the chorus “But as for his people” is one of the most beautiful in Handel’s works, and the bare statement that it comes from a serenata by Stradella seems at first rather shocking. But, to any one who knew Stradella’s treatment of it first, Handel’s would come as a revelation actually greater than if he had never heard the theme before. ”

“ That they are felt as absurdities and defects already shows that Handel created in English oratorio a true art-form on the largest possible scale.
There never has been a time when Handel has been overrated, except in so far as other composers have been neglected. But no composer has suffered so much from pious misinterpretation and the popular admiration of misleading externals. It is not the place here to dilate upon the burial of Handel’s art beneath the “mammoth” performances of the Handel Festivals at the Crystal Palace ”

“ No one has more successfully popularized the greatest artistic ideals than Handel; no artist is more disconcerting to critics who imagine that a great man’s mental development is easy to follow. Not even Wagner effected a greater transformation in the possibilities of dramatic music Handel as composer. than Handel effected in oratorio, yet we have seen that Handel was the very opposite of a reformer. ”

“ The music which Handel wrote for performance at “Cannons,” the duke of Chandos’s residence at Edgware, is comprised in the first version of Esther, Acis and Galatea, and the twelve Chandos Anthems, which are compositions approximately in the same form as Bach’s church cantatas but without any systematic use of chorale tunes. The fashionable Londoner would travel 9 miles in those days to the little chapel of Whitchurch to hear Handel’s music, and all that now remains of the magnificent scene of these visits is the church, which is the parish church of Edgware. ”

“ It must be remembered that at this time Handel had not yet asserted his greatness as a choral writer; the fashionable ideas of music and musicianship were based entirely upon success in Italian opera, and the contest between the rival composers was waged on the basis of works which have fallen into almost as complete an oblivion in Handel’s case as in Buononcini’s. None of Handel’s forty-odd Italian operas can be said to survive, except in some two or three detached arias out of each opera ”

“ Handel’s oratorio was reproduced in an enlarged version in 1732 at the King’s theatre: the princess royal wished for scenery and action, but the bishop of London protested. And the choruses, of which in the first version there are already no less than ten, are on the one hand operatic and unecclesiastical in expression, until the last, where polyphonic work on a large scale first appears; but on the other hand they are all much too long to be sung by heart, as is necessary in operas. ”

“ Moreover, these flourishes are more melodious than the broad and massive opening, instead of being, as in Urio’s scheme, incomparably less so. Lastly, Handel’s primitive opening rhythmic figures inevitably underlie every subsequent inner part and bass that occurs at every half close and full close throughout the movement, especially where the trumpets are used. And thus every detail of his scheme is rendered alive with a rhythmic significance which the elementary nature of the theme prevents from ever becoming obtrusive. ”

“ That man is entitled to an idea who can show what it means, or who can make it mean what he likes. Let him wear the giant’s robe if it fits him. And it is merely a local difference in point of view which makes us think that there is property in themes and no property in forms. ”

“ German court musicians, as late as the time of Mozart, had hardly enough freedom to satisfy a man of independent character, and the elder Händel had not yet given up hope of his son’s becoming a lawyer. ”

“ None is absolutely trustworthy, and those of the editor of the German Händelgesellschaft are sad proofs of the uselessness of expert library-scholarship without a sound musical training. Yet Chrysander’s services in the restoration of Handel are beyond praise. We need only mention his discovery of authentic trombone parts in Israel in Egypt as one among many of his priceless contributions to musical history and aesthetics. (D. F. T.) ”

“ In the short Carillon choruses in Saul where the Israelitish women welcome David after his victory over Goliath, Handel uses a delightful instrumental tune which stands at the beginning of a Te Deum by Urio, from which he borrowed an enormous amount of material in Saul, L’Allegro, the Dettingen Te Deum and other works. Urio’s idea is first to make a jubilant and melodious noise from the lower register of the strings, and then to bring out a flourish of high trumpets as a contrast. He has no other use for his beautiful tune, which indeed would not bear more elaborate treatment than he gives it. ”

“ Nero is lost, but Almira, with its mixture of Italian and German language and form, remains as a valuable example of the tendencies of the time and of Handel’s eclectic methods. It contains many themes used by Handel in well-known later works; but the current statement that the famous aria in Rinaldo, “Lascia ch’io pianga,” comes from a saraband in Almira, is based upon nothing more definite than the inevitable resemblance between the simplest possible forms of saraband-rhythm. ”

“ The share of the chorus increases in Saul (1738) ; and Israel in Egypt (also 1738) is practically entirely a choral work, the solo movements, in spite of their fame, being as perfunctory in character as they are few in number. It was not unnatural that the public, who still considered Italian opera the highest, because the most modern form of musical art, obliged Handel at subsequent performances of this gigantic work to insert more solos. ”

“ Handel impatiently snatched the violin to show Corelli how the passage ought to be played, and Corelli, who had never written or played beyond the third position in his life (this passage being in the seventh) , said gently, “My dear Saxon, this music is in the French style, which I do not understand.” In Italy Handel produced two operas, Rodrigo and Agrippina, the latter a very important work, of which the splendid overture was remodelled forty-four years afterwards as that of his last original oratorio, Jephtha. He also produced two oratorios, La Resurrezione, and Il Trionfo del tempo. ”

“ The ordinary choral resources of the time had perfect expressive possibilities where there were no actors to keep waiting, and where no dresses and scenery need distract the attention of the listener. ”