[194] It is the eternal struggle between the art of knowledge and the pseudo-popular art. It recurred again a little later with Rousseau. The principal difference between the two phases of the strife is that in the epoch with which we are occupied the champion of the anti-learned art was a well-instructed musician who did not uphold his cause by ignorance, but by laziness and by profligacy.

[195] “To study this more closely,” says Hugo Goldschmidt (Vocal Ornamentation, 1908), “Bononcini’s songs are really lieder, to which is applied, for good or evil, the old form of the Aria Da Capo, or the Cavatina: the taste for little airs in the form of a song spread itself widely during the end of the seventeenth century in Germany and in England.” Bononcini, who was always led naturally by fashion, and by his indolent facility, abandoned himself to it still more in England, and suited it to the English taste.

[196] The work had already been given in Italy about 1714. It was then that Lord Burlington heard it, and became the champion of Bononcini when he decided to come to England.

[197] Handel wrote the third act, Bononcini the second, the first had been already set by a certain Signor Pippo (Phillipo Matti?).

[198] The victory of Handel began for the most part with the engagement of his new interpreter, Francesca Cuzzoni, of Parma, a great and vigorous artist, violent and passionate, whose excellent soprano voice excelled particularly in pathetic cantabile music. She was twenty-two years old, and came to London, where she made her début in Ottone. Her quarrels with Handel, and how he treated her by threatening to throw her out of the window, are well known.

Handel gave again in May another opera, Flavio, of little importance. On his side Bononcini produced Erminia and Attilio, Aristosi, Coreolanus, in which the prison scene reduced the ladies to tears, and inspired numerous analogous scenes in the following operas of Handel.

[199] Bononcini gave his last piece, Kalfernia, on April 18, 1724. Ariosti says possibly in 1725. On the other hand, in 1725 there commenced to be played in London the works of Leonardo Vinci, and Porpora, patronized by Handel himself.

[200] Faustina Bordoni was born in 1700 at Venice. She had been educated in the school of Marcello. In 1730 she married Hasse. Her singing had an incredible agility. No one could repeat the same note with such rapidity, and she seemed able to hold on sounds to any extent. Less concentrated and less profound than Cuzzoni, she had an art more moving and brilliant.

[201] Two months before Handel had given the opera Scipione (March 12, 1726).

[202] The Director of the Drury Lane Theatre, Colley Cibber, produced, a month later, a farce called The Contretemps, or The Rival Queens, where the two singers were depicted tearing their chignons, and Handel saying in anger to them, whom he wished to separate, “Leave them alone, when they are tired their fury will spend itself out,” and, in order that the strife might be definitely finished, he wound it up with great strokes on the drum. Handel’s friend, Dr. Arbuthnot, also published on this subject one of his best pamphlets, “The Devil let loose at St. James’s” (see Chrysander, Volume II).

[203] The last representation at the Academy took place on June 1, 1728, with Almeto.

[204] Amongst others, the accompanied recitative, the air Da Capo, the opera duets, the farewell scenes, the great prison scenes, the inconsequent ballads. Pepusch even took an air of Handel and parodied it. In the second act a band of robbers came together in the tavern, and solemnly defiled before their chiefs to the sound of the March of the Crusaders’ Army in Rinaldo—The Beggar’s Opera, given for the first time on January 29, 1728, was played all over England, and aroused violent polemics. Swift became a passionate champion for it. After the success appeared in the following years a number of operas with songs—Georgy Kalmas has dedicated a very complete article to The Beggar’s Opera in his Sammelbände der I.M.G. (January to March, 1907).

[205] The first three books of the Dunciad of Pope appeared in 1728; The Voyages of Gulliver in 1726. Swift did not forget the musical folly in his satire on the kingdom of Lilliputia.

[206] The Coronation Anthems comprised four hymns, of which we do not know the exact order. Handel arranged for their presentation at Westminster by forty-seven singers, and a very considerable orchestra.

[207] Riccardo I, played in November of the same year (see p. 81), was also a national opera, dedicated to King George II, and celebrating, apropos of Richard Cœur de Lion, the annals of Old England.

[208] See page 48, note 4, the opinions held by Séré de Rieux.

[209] Séré de Rieux: les Dons les infants de Latone; la Musique et la Chasse du cerf, poems dedicated to the King, 1734, Paris, p. 102-3.

[210] During this voyage, where he sojourned a considerable time at Venice, he learned that his mother was stricken with paralysis. He hastened to Halle, so that he might see her again, but she could no longer see him. For several years she had been blind. She died the following year, December 27, 1730. Whilst Handel was at Halle watching over his mother, he received a visit from Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, who came on behalf of his father, to invite him to come to Leipzig. One can well understand that Handel declined the invitation under his sad circumstances.

[211] Born in 1690 at Strongoli in Calabria, he died in 1730. He was the master of the Chapel Royal at Naples, where he preceded Pergolesi and Hasse. I have spoken of Vinci in another volume.

[212] Acis and Galatea was reproduced in 1731, then given again in 1732, at the Haymarket Theatre, with the scenery and costumes, under the title of An English Pastoral Opera. The representation had taken place without the consent of Handel, who in response to the event, gave the work himself a little later. As for Esther, a member of the Academy of Ancient Music, Bernard Gates who had formerly sung in the piece at the Duke of Chandos’ and who possessed a copy of it, produced it at the Hostelry of the Crown and Anchor, on February 23, 1732. In his turn Handel directed the work on May 2, 1732, at the Haymarket Theatre, under the title of English Oratorio. These presentations did not appease the interest of the public.

[213] In the “first place there were in all,” said a pamphlet, “260 persons, of whom many had free tickets, and others were even paid to come.” Handel tried to give the work again at reduced prices. This brought him no advantage. The English patrons repeated already their exultation over the Saxon, and caused him to return to Germany.

[214] Athaliah was written for the University feasts at Oxford, to which Handel had been invited. They wished to confer on him there the title of Doctor of Music. One does not know exactly what happened to Handel, having always refused the honour. It is certain, however, that Handel did not receive the title.

[215] Bononcini had been received into the Academy of Ancient Music at London. To secure his footing he offered the Academy in 1728 a Madrigal in five voices. Unfortunately for him, three years after, a member of the Academy found this Madrigal in a book of duets, trios, madrigals of Antonio Lotti, published in 1705 at Venice. Bononcini persisted in claiming the authorship of the work. A long enquiry was instituted, in which Lotti himself and a great number of witnesses were examined. The result was disastrous for Bononcini, who threw up all and disappeared from London towards the end of 1732—the whole of the correspondence relating to this affair was published by the Academy in Latin, Italian, French and English, under the title “Letters from the Academy of Ancient Music at London to Signor Antonio Lotti of Venice, with answers and testimonies, London, 1732.”

[216] Porpora was the most famous Italian teacher of singing of the eighteenth century. Hasse was himself a great singer, and married one of the most celebrated Prima Donnas who ever lived, Faustina.

[217] Contrast with the short and restricted phrases of Benedetto Marcello in his Arianna, the amplitude of Porpora’s treatment of the same subject.

[218] Chrysander, who did not know him well, speaks with a disdain absolutely unjustifiable.

[219] Handel’s Arianna, January 26, 1734. Porpora’s Arianna à Naxos, a little later.

[220] Thus the Invocation of Theseus to Neptune: Nume che reggi’l mare, and the air: Spetto d’orrore.

[221] Johann Adolf Hasse was born March 23, 1699, at Bergedorf, near Hamburg, and died on December 16, 1783, at Venice. He came to London in October, 1734, where he gave his Artaserse, which was played until about 1737. He also gave in England his Siroé, 1736, and two comic intermezzi. I do not attach much importance to him, for his life and his art are a little outside the scope of this work. Despite the efforts of Handel’s enemies, Hasse always avoided posing as the rival of his great countryman, and their art remains independent of each other. I will hold over (till some time later on) the study of the work of this admirable artist, for posterity has been even more unjust to him than to Porpora, for no one had his wonderful sense of melodic beauty in such a degree, and in his best pages he is the equal of the very greatest.

[222] She was Handel’s pupil and friend. An excellent musician, she conducted the orchestra at public concerts given by her every evening in Holland.

[223] Handel composed for the marriage of the Princess Anne The Wedding Anthem (March 14, 1734), which is a pasticcio of old works, especially Athaliah. He gave also for the marriage fêtes the serenata, Parnasso in festa, and a revised form of Pastor Fido, with choruses.

[224] It was John Rich who had produced here the Beggar’s Opera of Gay and Pepusch in 1728—that parody of Handel’s operas.

[225] She was the pupil of Mlle Prévost, and made her début in 1725 with Rich. See the study of M. Emile Dacier: Une danseuse française a Londres, au début du XVIII siècle (French number of the S.I.M. May and July, 1907).

[226] It is interesting to notice that it was with the same subjects of Pygmalion and of Ariadne that J. J. Rousseau and Georg Benda inaugurated in 1770-1775 the Melodrama or “opera without singing.”

[227] He has been accused of knowing it too well. The Abbé Prévost wrote exactly at this same period in Le Pour et le Contre (1733): “...Certain critics accuse him of having taken for his basis an infinite number of beautiful things from Lully, and especially from our French cantatas, and of having the effrontery of disguising them in the Italian manner....”

[228] “La Salle” returned to Paris, where she made her reappearance at the Académie de Musique in August, 1735, in les Indes galantes of Rameau. It is quite remarkable that some pages of this work, such as the superb chaconne at the end, have a character quite Handelian.

[229] Atalanta (May 12, 1736), Arminio (January 12, 1737), Giustino (February 16, 1737), Berenice (May 18, 1737), Faramondo (January 7, 1738), Serse (April 15, 1738), Imeneo (November 22, 1740), Deidamia (January 10, 1741).

[230] Especially in Serse and Deidamia.

[231] Dryden the poet wrote this brilliant poem in 1697 in a night of inspiration. Clayton had set it to music in 1711; and again about 1720 Benedetto Marcello wrote a cantata in the ancient manner on an Italian adaptation of the English ode by the Abbé Conti. A friend of Handel, Newburgh Hamilton, arranged Dryden’s poem with great discretion for Handel’s oratorio.

Handel had already written several times in honour of St. Cecilia. Some fragments of four cantatas to St. Cecilia are to be found in Vol. LII of the great Breitkopf edition (Cantate italiane con stromenti). They were all written in London, the first about 1713.

[232] Alexander’s Feast (January, 1736), Atalanta (April), Wedding Anthem (April), Giustino (August), Arminio (September), Berenice (December).

[233] June 1, 1737. But on June 11 the rival opera also closed its doors, ruined. Handel, like Samson, dragged down in his own fall the enemy whom he wished to annihilate.

[234] On November 15, 1737, Handel commenced Faramondo; from December 7 to 17 he wrote the Funeral Anthem. On December 24 he finished Faramondo. On December 25 he commenced Serse.

[235] He said that these kinds of concerts were but a way of begging.

[236] Vauxhall was a beautiful garden on the Thames, the meeting place of London Society. Every evening except Sunday from the end of April to the beginning of August, vocal, orchestral, and organ concerts were given. The manager of these entertainments, Tyers, caused a white marble statue of Handel by the sculptor Roubiliac to be placed in a niche of a large grotto. The same sculptor later on executed Handel’s statue for his monument in Westminster Abbey.

[237] In the first part of Israel in Egypt there is not a single solo air to be found. In the whole work there are nineteen choruses against four solos and three duets. The poem of Saul which Chrysander at first attributed to Jennens appears to have been, as he discovered later on, the work of Newburgh Hamilton. For Israel, Handel entirely dispensed with a librettist, taking the pure Bible text.

[238] Written between September 29 and October 30, 1739. Handel further prepared in November, 1740, the Second Volume of Organ Concertos (six). The same month he opened his last season of opera, giving on November 22 Imeneo, which was only played twice, and on January 14, 1741, Deidamia, which was only given three times.

[239] Especially in the Allegro and in certain Concerti Grossi.

[240] An anonymous letter published in the London Daily Post of April 4, 1741, alludes to a single false step made without premeditation.

[241] In the midst of his misery he still thought of those more miserable than himself. In April, 1738, he founded with other well-known English musicians, Arne, Greene, Pepusch, Carey, etc., the Society of Musicians for the succour of aged and poor musicians. Tormented as he was himself, he was more generous than all the others. On March 20, 1739, he gave Alexander’s Feast with a new Organ Concerto for the benefit of the Society. On March 28, 1740, he conducted his Acis and Galatea and his little Ode on Cecilia’s day. On March 14, 1741, in his worst days he gave the Parnasso in festa, a gala spectacle very onerous for him with five Solo Concertos by the most celebrated instrumentalists. Later on he bequeathed £1000 to the Society.

[242] A clumsy friend tried to raise a public charity in an anonymous letter to the London Daily Post (see above). He made excuses for Handel, and thus gave the composer the most cruel blow of all. (The clumsiness of a bear!) This letter is found at the end of Chrysander’s third volume.

[243] On November 4, 1741, he still had time to see, before his departure, the reopening of the Italian Opera, under the direction of Galuppi, supported by the English nobility.

[244] Handel wrote the Messiah between August 22 and September 14, 1741. Certain historians have attributed the composition of the libretto to him. There is no reason for robbing Jennens, a man of intelligence, author of the excellent poem of Belshazzar, of this honour, and of that shown by the fact that Handel changed none of the text which Jennens gave him. A letter of March 31, 1745, to a friend (quoted by Schoelcher) shows that Jennens found the music of the Messiah hardly worthy of his poem.

[245] The great Musical Society of Dublin, the Philharmonic, gave only benevolent concerts. For Handel they made a special arrangement. It suited them that Handel reserved one concert for charity. Handel was engaged there with gratefulness by promising “some better music.” This “better music” was the Messiah. See an article on Music in Dublin from 1730 to 1754 by Dr. W. H. Gratten-Flood, I.M.G. (April-June, 1910).

[246] But not at London, where Handel gave the Messiah only three times in 1743, twice in 1745, and not again until 1749. The cabals of the pious tried to stifle it. He was not allowed to put the title of the oratorio on the bills. It was called A Sacred Oratorio. It was only at the close of 1750 that the victory of the Messiah was complete. Handel all his life preserved his connection with charitable objects. He conducted it once a year for the benefit of the Foundling Hospital. Even when he was blind he remained faithful to this noble practice, and in order to better preserve the monopoly of the work for the Hospital he forbade anyone to publish anything from it before his death.

Since then one knows what a number of editions of the Messiah have appeared. The Schoelcher collection in the Paris Conservatoire has brought together sixty-six published between 1763-1869.

[247] The character of Delilah is one of the most complex which Handel has created, and the parts of Samson and Harapha require exceptional voices.

[248] Milton’s poem had been adapted by Newburgh Hamilton.

[249] The Battle of Dettingen took place on June 27, 1743. Handel had already finished on July 17 his Te Deum, which was solemnly performed on the following November 27 in Westminster Abbey.

[250] Too slowly for the liking of Handel, who composed it bit by bit as the acts were sent him. There are five letters from him to Jennens dated June 9, July 19, August 21, September 13 and October 2, 1744, where he presses him to send at once the rest of the poem, expressing his own admiration for the second act, which he said provides new means of expression and furnishes the opportunity of giving some special ideas, “finally asking him to cut down the work a little, as it was too long” (see Schoelcher).

[251] Handel wrote it during the forced pauses in the composition of Belshazzar, and produced it at the commencement of 1745.

[252] The letters quite recently published throw much light on this troublous period in Handel’s life (William Barclay-Squire: Handel in 1745, in the H. Riemann Festschrift, 1909, Leipzig).

[253] Two examples of the song appear in the Schoelcher Collection at the Paris Conservatoire.

Handel also wrote in July, 1746, for the return of the Duke of Cumberland, a song on the victory over the rebels by His Royal Highness the Duke of Cumberland, which was given at Vauxhall (a copy of this song also appears in the Schoelcher Collection).

[254] Finished in the early days of December, 1745, and given in February, 1746. The text was founded partly on the Psalms of Milton and partly on the Bible. Handel inserted in the third part several of the finest pages from Israel in Egypt. In one of the solos the principal theme of Rule Britannia which was later to be composed by Arne appears.

[255] The poem, very mediocre, was by the Rev. Dr. Thomas Morell, who was the librettist for the last oratorios of Handel.

[256] It was not one of Handel’s oratorios, of which the style was in the popular vein, and where one finds further grand ensembles and solos closely connected with the Chorus.

Gluck journeyed to London at the end of 1745. He was then thirty-one years old. He gave two operas in London, La Caduta de’Giganti and Artamene. (Certain solos from them are to be found in the very rare collection of Delizie dell’opere, Vol. II, London, Walsh, possessed by the library of the Paris Conservatoire.) This journey of Gluck in England has no importance in the story of Handel, who showed himself somewhat scornful in his regard for Gluck’s music. But it was not so for Gluck, who all his life professed the most profound respect for Handel. He regarded him as his master; he even imagined that he imitated him (see Michael Kelly: Reminiscences, I, 255), and certainly one is struck by the analogies between certain pages in Handel’s oratorios written from 1744 to 1746 (notably Hercules and Judas Maccabæus) and the grand operas of Gluck. We find in the two funeral scenes from the first and second acts of Judas Maccabæus the pathetic accents and harmonies of Gluck’s Orpheus.

[257] After 1747 Handel, abandoning his system of subscriptions, turned his back on his aristocratic clientèle, which had treated him so shamefully, and opened his theatre to all. It paid him. The middle classes of London responded to his appeal. After 1748 Handel had full houses at nearly all his concerts.

[258] Poem founded on the book of Maccabees by Thomas Morell. The first performance March 23, 1748.

[259] Poem by Thomas Morell, first performances March 9, 1748.

[260] The poem, apparently, by Thomas Morell, notwithstanding its want of mention in his notes. First performance March 17, 1749.

[261] The Firework Music has been published in Volume XLVII of the Complete Handel Edition. For the performance on April 27, 1749, the orchestra numbered one hundred. Schoelcher has published a correspondence on the subject of this work between Lord Montague, General-in-chief of the Artillery, and Charles Frederick, Controller of the King’s fireworks. One sees there that very serious differences arose between Handel and Lord Montague.

[262] The Foundling Hospital was founded in 1739 by an old mariner, Thomas Coram, “for the maintainance and education of abandoned children.” Handel devoted himself to this institution, and gave performances of the Messiah annually for its funds. In 1750 he was elected a Governor of the Hospital, after he had made it a gift of an organ.

[263] Vol. XXXVI of the Complete Handel Edition. The Foundling Anthem, of which more than one page is taken from the Funeral Anthem, finishes with the Hallelujah from the Messiah in its original form.

[264] The libretto was inspired by the Théodore vierge et martyre of Corneille.

[265] Written between June 28 and July 5, and produced on March 1, to follow Alexander’s feast as “a new act added.”

[266] A paragraph in the General Advertiser of August 21, 1750, tells us that Handel was very seriously hurt between La Haye and Amsterdam, but that he was already out of danger.

[267] The facsimile of the autograph manuscript was published by Chrysander, for the second centenary of Handel in 1885.

[268] Page 182 of MS.

[269] To occupy himself he directed two performances of the Messiah for the funds of the Foundling Hospital—on April 18 and May 16, “with an improvisation on the organ.” He also tried the cure at Cheltenham.

[270] Page 244 of MS.

[271] He underwent an operation for cataract, the last time on November 3, 1752. A newspaper stated in January, 1753: “Handel has become completely blind.”

[272] Written in 1708 at Rome.

[273] Handel had already regiven the Italian work with some rearrangements and editions in 1737. Thomas Morell adapted the poem to English, and extended the two acts into three.

[274] This will was written since 1750. Handel added codicils to it in August, 1756, March and August, 1757, April, 1759. He nominated his niece, Johanna Friderica Flœrchen, of Gotha, née Michaelsen, his sole executor. He made several gifts to his friends—to Christopher Smith, to John Rich, to Jennens, to Newburgh Hamilton, to Thomas Morell, and others. He did not forget any of his numerous servants. He left a fortune of about twenty-five thousand pounds, which he had made entirely in his last ten years; he possessed also a fine collection of musical instruments and a picture gallery in which were two Rembrandts.

[275] A monument, somewhat mediocre, was erected to him. It was the work of Roubiliac, who had already done the statue of Handel for the Vauxhall Gardens.

[276] They were celebrated in reality a year too soon. Burney devoted a whole book to describing these festivals.

[277] The number of performers never ceased to increase after the festivals of 1784, when there were 530 or 540, right up to the famous festivals in the Sydenham Crystal Palace, when the number reached 1035 in 1854, 2500 in 1857, and 4000 in 1859. Remember that during the lifetime of Handel the Messiah was performed by thirty-three players and twenty-three singers. They manufactured for these gigantic performances some monster instruments; a double bassoon (already invented in 1727), a special contrabass, some bass trumpets, drums tuned an octave lower, etc

[278] These arrangements, executed for the Baron van Swieten, are far from being irreproachable, and show that Mozart, despite the assertions of Rochlitz, had not a deep understanding of Handel’s works. However, he wrote an “Overture in the style of Handel,” and suddenly remembered him when he composed his Requiem.

[279] The first was the Singakademie of Berlin, founded in 1790 by Fasch.

[280] In the Harmonicon of January, 1824, one finds Beethoven’s opinion (quoted by Percy Robinson): “Handel is the greatest composer who has ever lived. I should like to kneel at his tomb.” And in a letter from Beethoven to an English lady (published in the Harmonicon of December, 1825): “I adore Handel.” We know that after the 9th Symphony he had the plan of writing some grand oratorios in the style of Handel.

[281] Schumann wrote to Pohl in 1855, that Israel in Egypt was his “ideal of a choral work,” and, wishing to write a work called Luther, he defined this music thus, of which he found the ideal realized by Handel: “A popular oratorio that both country and town-people can understand.... A work of simple inspiration, in which the effect depends entirely on the melody and the rhythm, without contrapuntal artifice.”

Liszt, apropos of the Anthem Zadock the Priest, goes into ecstasies over “the genius of Handel, great as the world itself,” and very rightly perceives in the author of the Allegro and of Israel, a precursor of descriptive music.

[282] See, in Chrysander’s work, an article by Emil Krause, in the Monatshefte für Musikwissenschaft, 1904.

[283] A Société G. F. Handel was founded in Paris in 1909, under the direction of two conductors full of zeal and intelligence, MM. F. Borrel and F. Raugal. It has already done much to awaken the love of Handel in France by giving the large works hitherto unknown in France, such as Hercules, the Foundling Anthem, and the model performances of the Messiah at the Trocadero.

[284] Lessing, in the Preface to his Beiträge zur Historie und Aufnahme des Theaters (1750), gives as the principal characteristic of the German, “that he appreciates whatever is good, particularly where he finds it, and when he can turn it to his profit.”

[285] See the Voyage en Italie, May 18, 1787, letter to Herder.

[286] French Songs (MSS. in Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge): copies in the Schoelcher Collection, in the library of the Paris Conservatoire.

[287] See the Abbé Prévost: Le Pour et le Contre, 1733.

[288] These are not traits special to Handel alone. The double stream—encyclopædic and learned on the one hand, popular or pseudo-popular on the other—was found in an even greater degree in London amongst the musicians of Handel’s time. In the circle of the Academy of Antient Musick there was quite a mania of archaic eclectism. One of these members, the composer Roseingrave, even went to the length of having the walls of his rooms and all his furniture covered with bars of music, extracted from the works of Palestrina. At the same period there was felt all over Europe a reaction of popular taste against that of the savants. It was the day of the little lieder by Bononcini or by Keiser. Handel took sides with neither extravagances, but chose whatever was alive in both movements.