[101] Mainwaring relates that Handel arrived incognito at Venice, and that he was discovered in a masquerade where he was playing the clavier. Domenico Scarlatti cried out that it must either be the celebrated Saxon, or the devil. This story, which shows that Handel was celebrated already as a virtuoso, accords very well with his taste for mystifying people, a marked trait in his character.

[102] This appears thoroughly established by recent researches, and contradicts the statement of Chrysander that Handel’s Agrippina had been played at the commencement of 1708 at Venice. All the documents of that time agree in placing the first production of Agrippina at the end of 1709 or at the beginning of 1710.

[103] An autograph cantata by Handel, which is found in London, was dated Rome, March 3, 1708.

[104] This Academy was founded at Rome in 1690 for the production and exposition of popular poetry and rhetoric.

[105] Amongst the “shepherds” of Arcadia were counted four Popes (Clement XI, Innocent XIII, Clement XII, Benoit XIII), nearly all the sacred colleges, the Princes of Bavaria, Poland, Portugal; the Queen of Poland, the Grand Duchess of Tuscany, and a crowd of great lords and ladies.

[106] Scarlatti under the name of Terpandro; Corelli under that of Archimelo; Pasquini as Protico; Marcello as Dryanti. Handel was not inscribed on the Arcadia list because he was not yet of the regulation age, twenty-four years.

[107] Cardinal Ottoboni was a Venetian, and nephew of the Pope Alexander VIII. A good priest, very benevolent, and ostentatious art patron whose prodigalities were celebrated even in England, where Dryden eulogised them in 1691 in the Prologue of Purcell’s King Arthur. He was a great dilettante, and even wrote an opera himself, Il Columbo, overo l’India scoperta, 1691. Alessandro Scarlatti set to music his libretto of Statira, and composed for him his Rosaura, and his Christmas Oratorio. He was particularly intimate with Corelli, who lived with him.

[108] Corelli took the first violin, and Francischiello, the violoncello.

[109] At one meeting of the Arcadia in April, 1706, Alessandro Scarlatti seated himself at the keyboard, whilst the poet Zappi improvised a poem. Hardly had Zappi finished reciting the last verse than Scarlatti improvised music on the verses—similarly at Ottoboni’s house Handel improvised many secular cantatas whilst the Cardinal Panfili improvised the verses. It is related that one of these poems constituted a Dithyrambic eulogy, and that Handel, unperturbed, amused himself by setting it to music, and doubtless singing it.

[110] The manuscript of The Resurrection bears this superscription: April 11, 1708, La Festa de Pasque dal Marche Ruspoli (The Easter Festival at the Marquis Ruspoli’s).

[111] They occupy four volumes in the great Breitkopf edition—two volumes of cantatas, of solo cantatas, with single bass for clavier, and two volumes of cantatas Con stromenti, of which certain are serenatas for two or three parts.

[112] The Armida abbandonata. The copy, very carefully penned in the writing of Bach, is now lodged in the house of Breitkopf.

[113] It is related that at one of the Ottoboni evenings there was a contest on the clavier and on the organ between Domenico Scarlatti and Handel. The result was undecided on the clavier, but for the organ Scarlatti himself was the first to declare Handel the victor. After that, whenever Scarlatti spoke of him he always made the sign of the Cross.

[114] Scarlatti was attached to the Royal Chapel of Naples as principal Organist in December, 1708. Then he was reinstated in this post in January, 1709, and in the course of the same year he was nominated master of the Conservatoire of Poveri di Gesù Cristo.

[115] All his life one of his chief hobbies—as with Corelli and Hasse—was to visit picture galleries. It is necessary to note this visual intelligence with the great German and Italian musicians of this period, since one does not find it with those of the end of the eighteenth century.

[116] One of his cantatas is preserved, Cantata spagnola a voce sola a chitarra (Spanish Cantata for solo voice and guitar, published in the second volume of Italian cantatas Con stromenti), and seven French songs in the style of Lully, with accompaniment of Figured Bass for the clavier. One copy of these songs is found in the Conservatoire Library, Paris (Fonds Schoelcher).

[117] One of them forms the inspiration for the Pastoral Symphony of The Messiah. Handel also acquired in Italy his taste for the Siciliano, which became the rage in Naples, and which he used, after Agrippina, in nearly all his operas, and even in his oratorios.

[118] The Acis and Galatea of 1708 has no relation to the one of 1720, but in taking up the later work in 1732 Handel made a rearrangement of his Italian serenade, and gave it in London, mingling with it the English airs of his other Acis.

[119] Concerning Steffani, see page 51 and following. It seems quite compatible with this meeting with Handel at Rome in 1709 to relate the story made by Handel of a concert at Ottoboni’s, where Steffani supplied the improvisation of one of the chief singers with a consummate art. Chrysander places this story at the time of the second Italian journey of Handel in 1729, but that is impossible, for Steffani died in February, 1728.

[120] That is to say on December 26, 1709. That is the date which the recent researches of Mr. Ademollo and Mr. Streatfeild have established in accordance with the indications of the contemporary histories of Handel by Mattheson, Marpurg, and Burney, of the date inscribed on the libretto itself. This contradicts the statement of Chrysander adopted on his authority by most of the musical writers of our own time, stating that Agrippina was played at Venice in the Carnival of 1708.

[121] There was so much probability of this that he tried his hand on the French vocal style by writing seven French songs, of which the manuscript was carefully revised by him, for the sheets contain evidences of a close revision in pencil. How changed things would have been there if he had really come and settled in the interregnum between Lully and Rameau. He had that quality which none of the French musicians possessed—a superabundance of music, and he had not that which they had got—lucid intelligence and a penetration into the true need of the musical drama and its possibilities. (It was at that time that Lecerf de la Viéville wrote his Comparaison de la musique française et de la musique italienne, of which certain pages forestall the musical creed of Gluck.) If Handel had come to France, I am convinced that that reform would have been brought about sixty years sooner, and with a wealth of music which Gluck never possessed.

[122] It is the language which he used in his correspondence, even with his own family, and his style, always very correct, had the fine courtesy of the court of Louis XIV.

[123] Esther, Athalie, Theodore, Vierge d’Martyre.

[124] Even in 1734 Séré de Rieux wrote of Handel: “His composition, infinitely clever and gracious, seems to approach nearer to our taste than any other in Europe” (p. 29 of Enfants de Latone, poems dedicated to the King). Handel particularly pleased the French because his Italianism was always restrained by reason, and French musicians loved to think that logic was totally French.

[125] See the book abounding in picturesque documents by Georg Fischer, Musik in Hannover, Second Edition, 1903.

[126] In 1676, Leibnitz was then thirty years old. He received the title of Councillor and President of the Library at the Castle.

[127] Moreover, by the quaintnesses of the Treaties of Westphalia, this Protestant Princess found herself under the care of the Catholic Bishop of Osnabruck.

[128] Madame Arvède Barine has given an amusing portrait of her, although a little severe, in her charming studies on Madame Mère du Regent, 1909 (Hachette). See particularly the Memoirs of the Duchess Sophia, written by the same author in French.

[129] Thus a French traveller, the Abbé Tolland, in 1702, expresses it.

[130] Created Duke in 1680, he left the same year for Venice. He returned there at the end of 1684, and remained there until about August, 1685. He returned three months later, in December, and only left it in September, 1686. He lived at the palace Foscarini, with a numerous following, his ministers, his poets, his musicians, his chapel. He spent enormous sums. He gave fêtes to the Venetians, and took boxes by the year in five theatres in Venice. In return he lent his subjects as soldiers to Venice; and his son, Maximilian, was a General in the Republic. When the Grand Marshal of the Court of Hanover wrote to the Prince of the discontent of his people, Ernest Augustus answered: “I very much wish that Monsieur the Grand Marshal would come here, then he would no longer write so often to me about coming home. M. the Grand Marshal can have no idea how amusing it is here, and if he only came once he would never want to return to Germany.”

[131] Barthold Feind says in 1708: “Of all the German opera houses, the Leipzig one is the poorest, that of Hamburg the largest, the Brunswick the most perfect, and that of Hanover the most beautiful.” The Opera of Hanover had four tiers of boxes, and was capable of accommodating 1300 people.

[132] The orchestra was composed chiefly of French musicians, and they were conducted by a Frenchman, Jean Baptiste Farinel, son-in-law of Cambert.

[133] A. Einstein and Ad. Sanberger have just republished in the Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Bayern a selection of Steffani’s works. Arthur Neisser has devoted a little book to Steffani. Apropos of one of his operas Servio Tullio, Leipzig, 1902. See also the studies of Robert Eitner in the Allg. Deutsche Biographie; of Chrysander in his Haendel (Volume I), and also Fischer in his Musik in Hannover.

[134] Munich had become the centre of Italian music in Germany since the Prince-Elector Ferdinand had married in 1652 an Italian princess, Adelaide of Savoy. See Ludwig Schiedermair: Die Anfange der Münchener Oper (Sammelb. der I.M.G., 1904).

[135] In 1680.

[136] One finds the list of Steffani’s operas, together with an analysis of the Servio Tullio, in the book of Arthur Neisser.

[137] This opera was played for the fifth centenary of the Siege of Bardwick by Henry Lion-heart in 1089. The Elector of Brandenburg was at the first representation. Steffani treated other German subjects, such as the Tassilone of 1709.

[138] The manuscripts of most of these operas are preserved in the libraries of Berlin, Munich, London, Vienna, and Schwerin. It is astonishing that they have never been published, notwithstanding their importance in the history of German opera. Chrysander has given some specimens of the libretti. The music has only been slightly studied by Neisser, who makes the mistake of not knowing the music of the contemporaries of Steffani, and in consequence is frequently at fault in his appreciation of him.

[139] Leibnitz neither, although he had certain intuition of what was possible in this style of theatre-piece, which united all the means of expression: beauty of words, of rhymes, of music, of paintings and harmonious gestures (letter of 1681). In general he regarded music from the attitude of our Encyclopædists at the time of Rameau. His musical ideal was simple melody. “I have often remarked,” says he, “that men of note have little esteem for things which are touching. Simplicity often makes more effect than elaborate ornaments” (letter to Henfling).

[140] The testimony of his contemporaries agrees in depicting him as a man of agreeable physique, small, of a debilious constitution, which the excess of study had aggravated, of a superior nature, but altogether lovable in his manners, full of wit and of gentleness, clear and calm in speech, possessing exquisite tact and perfect politeness, from which he never departed, an accomplished man of the court, and further very well informed, passionately interested in philosophy and mathematics. Leibnitz taught him German political law. We find in Fischer’s Musik in Hannover a reproduction of a very rare portrait of Steffani in an episcopal costume.

[141] Bishop in partibus. Spiga was a district in the Spanish West Indies.

[142] He ended by abdicating his post as Vicar, which cost him more annoyance than pleasure. He travelled afresh in Italy in 1722. In 1724 he was nominated President for life of the Academy of Ancient Music, founded in London by his pupil, Galliard. He dedicated to the Academy several of his compositions, but since he was made Bishop he no longer signed them; they appeared under the name of his secretary, Lagorio Piva. He returned to Hanover in 1725, after having lived on a grander scale than his revenues sufficed to maintain. He became embarrassed, and had to sell his beautiful collection of pictures and statuary, among which were found, it is said, some of Michael Angelo’s. The English king settled some of his debts. Steffani died of apoplexy in the middle of a journey to Frankfort on February 12, 1728.

[143] A little work by him in the form of a letter is known. It is entitled Quanta certezza habbia de suoi Principii la Musica et in qual pregio fosse perciò presso gli Antichi, and was published in 1695 at Amsterdam. Again in 1700 in German. He therefore advanced the value of music not only as an art, but also as a science.

[144] His singing was celebrated. If his voice was feeble, the purity and finish of his style, his delicate and chaste expression, were incomparable, if we are to believe Handel.

[145] They caused in truth a grand gathering of singers. Servius Stallius alone required twenty-five, of which six were sopranos (Nicer). Op. cit.

[146] On the other hand, the symphonic pieces, and particularly the overtures, are in the Lully style, and afforded the models for Handel. The French style reigned in the orchestra at Hanover. Telemann says, “at Hanover is the art of French science.”

[147] Steffani seems to have written these duets as music master of the Court ladies, and several were composed for the Electress of Brandenburg, Sophia Dorothea. The poems were the work of the great lords, or the Italian Abbés. These duets were regarded in their time as masterpieces, and numerous copies were made of them. One finds the bibliography in the first volume of choice works of Steffani published by Breitkopf by A. Einstein and A. Zanberger. The Paris Conservatoire alone possesses six volumes of manuscript duets by Steffani.

[148] See the airs Lungi dall’idol, Occhi perche piangete, and particularly Forma un mare, which offer a striking analogy to one of the more beautiful lieder of Philip Heinrich Erlebach: Meine Seufzer (published by Max Friedlander in his History of the Song of the Eighteenth Century). There is every reason to believe that Steffani afforded one of the models for Erlebach.

One should notice the predilection of Steffani (like the great Italians of his time) for chromaticism and his contrapuntal taste. Steffani was one of the artists of the time nearest to the spirit of the ancient music, yet opening the way to the new, and it was characteristic that he was chosen as President of the Academy of Ancient Music of London, which took for its models the art of Palestrina and the Madrigalians of the end of the sixteenth century. I do not doubt that Handel learnt much, even in this, from Steffani.

[149] Henry Purcell was born about 1658, and died in 1695.

[150] See the Prelude or the Dance in Dioclesian and the overture to Bonduca.

[151] English art has never produced anything more worthy of being placed side by side with the masterpieces of the Italian art than the scene of Dido’s death.

[152] King Arthur: Grand Dance, or final Chaconne; Dioclesian: trio with final chorus.

[153] Particularly the famous song of St. George in King Arthur—“St. George, the patron of our isle, a soldier and a saint.”

[154] It was no longer French influence, which, very powerful at the time of the Stuarts, had very nearly disappeared during the Revolution of 1688; but the Italian.

[155] The celebrated pamphlet of the priest Jeremias Collier appeared in 1688: “A short view of the immorality and profaneness of the English stage with the sense of Antiquity,” had made an epoch because it expressed with an ardent conviction the hidden feelings of the nation. Dryden, the first, did humble penitence.

[156] See the Preface to his Amphion Britannicus in 1700. Blow died in 1708.

[157] There had been several efforts on the part of Italian opera companies in London under the Restoration of 1660 and 1674. None had succeeded, but certain Italians were installed in London, and had some success: about 1667 G. B. Draghi, about 1677 the violinist Niccolo Matteis, who spread the knowledge in English of the instrumental works of Vitali and of Bassani; the family of Italian singers, Pietro Reggio de Gênes, and the famous Siface (Francesco Grossi), who in 1687 was the first to give Scarlatti in London; Marguerita de l’Espine, who during 1692 gave Italian concerts; but it was in 1702 that the infatuation for the Italians commenced.

[158] He was the brother of the celebrated Bononcini (Giovanni).

[159] This was Rosamunde, played in 1707, which had only three representations. Addison, very little of a musician, had taken as his collaborator the insipid Clayton. His satires against the Italian opera appeared in March and April, 1710, in the Spectator.

[160] The struggle was put into evidence in 1708, three years before the Haymarket Theatre was founded under the patronage of the Queen, by the poet Congreve, who gave there the old English plays. In 1708 the English drama left the place and opera installed itself.

[161] Two German musicians established in England, and naturalized, Dr. Christoph Pepusch and Nichilo Francesco Haym, pushed certain of their compositions on to the Italian opera stage in London. They were found there later. Pepusch, founder of the Academy of Ancient Music in 1710, was badly disposed against Handel, whose operas he ridiculed in the famous Beggars’ Opera of 1728. Haym, who wished to publish in 1730 a great history of music, was one of Handel’s librettists.

The Library of the Paris Conservatoire possessed a volume of airs from the principal Italian operas displayed in London from 1706 to 1710 (London, Walsh).

[162] When the poet Barthold Feind gave in 1715 the translation of Rinaldo at Hamburg, he did not neglect to call him the universally celebrated Mr. Handel, known to the Italians as “l’Orfeo del nostro secolo” and “un ingegno sublime.”

[163] He did not hurry. He stayed at Düsseldorf with the Elector Palatine (A. Einstein, etc., April, 1907), then in the later months of the year he went to see his family at Halle.

[164] To speak truly, they were more like little cantatas than lieder. The Collection Schoelcher in the Library of the Paris Conservatoire possesses these copies.

[165] Volumes XXVII and XLVIII of the Complete Handel Edition.

[166] One sees by the letters of 1711 that Handel applied himself, even in Germany, to perfecting his knowledge of English.

[167] The House of Hanover was, as one knows, an aspirant for the succession to the throne of England, and it behoved it to keep on good terms with Queen Anne, who was partial to Handel.

[168] For his second version of this work in 1734 he then added some choruses.

[169] It is the only opera of Handel’s which is in five acts. The poem was by Haym.

[170] Purcell had written in 1694 a Te Deum and Jubilate.

[171] He wrote, it is said, for the little amateur theatre of Burlington an opera Silla, 1714, of which he reproduced the best parts in Amadigi. One can also date from this time a certain number of clavier pieces, which appeared in a volume in 1720.

[172] The legend records that Handel composed in August, 1715, the famous Water Music to regain the favour of the King. Installed on a boat, with a small “wind” orchestra, he had this work performed during one of the King’s state processions on the Thames. The King was delighted, and renewed his friendship with Handel. Unfortunately, the Water Music appears to have been written two years later than the return to Court of Handel, and the scene placed by Chrysander on August 22, 1715, in his first volume—in October, 1715, by Fischer, Musik in Hannover—is changed by Chrysander in his third volume to July 17, 1717, with a cutting from one of the newspapers of that time, which does not seem, however, convincing to the others. Be that as it may, the work is from this period, and the first publication of it appeared about 1720.

[173] Keiser in 1712, Der für die Sünden der Welt gemarterte und sterbende Jesus (Jesus Crucified and Dying for the Sins of the World). Then Telemann in 1716, some months after Handel’s arrival; a little later, Mattheson. Handel’s Passion was executed for the first time at Hamburg during Lent 1717, when Handel had already returned to England. The four Passions of Keiser, Telemann, Mattheson, and Handel, were given in 1719 at the Hamburg Cathedral, Mattheson being choirmaster.

[174] Handel and Mattheson exchanged some correspondence. Mattheson was about to engage in a musical polemic with the organist and theorist, Buttstedt. He proved the need of building on the sound foundations of the German music. He proposed a suggestion for an enquiry on the Greek modes of Solmisation. Handel, pressed on these questions, responded tardily in 1719; he sided with Mattheson, a declared modernist against the old modal period. Mattheson also asked for details of his life for the purpose of including him in his biographical dictionary which he had in view. Handel excused himself on account of the concentration necessary. He merely promised in a vague manner to relate later on the principal stages which he had taken in the course of his profession, but Mattheson drew nothing more from this source.

[175] At the end of 1716. In the course of this sojourn in Germany, where he had assisted the widow of his former master, Zachau, then fallen into great poverty, he also succoured at Anspach an old University friend, Johann Christoph Schmidt, who carried on a woollen business, and who left all—fortune, wife, and child—to follow him to London. Schmidt remained attached to Handel all his life, conducting his business affairs for him, recopying his manuscripts, taking care of his music, and afterwards his son, Schmidt (or Smith) Junior, took on the same good offices with equal devotion, a striking instance of the attractive powers which Handel excited on others.

[176] The Duke of Chandos was a Crœsus, enriched in his office of Paymaster-General to the army in the reign of Queen Anne, and by his vast speculations in the South Sea Company. He built a magnificent castle at Cannons, a few miles from London. He had the entourage of a prince, and was surrounded by a guard of a hundred Swiss soldiers. His ostentation, indeed, was a little ridiculous. Pope made fun of it.

[177] The Anthems occupied three volumes of the Complete Handel edition. The third is reserved for the later works of this epoch, with which we are concerned here. The two first volumes contained eleven Chandos anthems, of which two have a couple of versions and one has three. Handel wrote at the same time three Te Deums.

[178] Masques were secular compositions very much in the fashion in England at the time of the Stuarts. They were part played and part danced, as theatre plays, and partly sung as concert pieces (see Paul Reyher: Les, etc., Paris, 1909).

Handel took up his Esther in 1732 and recast it. The first Esther had a single part, it comprised six scenes. The second Esther had three acts, each preceded and terminated by a full chorus in the ancient manner. Some have asserted that the poem was by Pope.

[179] Later on, when he took up this work again in 1733, he called it an English opera.

[180] The pretty poem is by Gay.

[181] This was a society with a capital of £50,000 by shares of £100 subscribed for fourteen years, each share giving the use of one seat in the theatre. At the head of it, as President, was the Lord Chamberlain, Duke of Newcastle. (Until 1723, when he entered the Ministry, and was replaced by the Duke of Grafton.) The second President, the real director, was Lord Bingley. He was assisted on the Council of Administration by twenty-four directors re-elected yearly. The whole scheme was under the protection of the King, who paid £1000 a year for his box. The dividends paid to the shareholders reached in 1724 7%, but speculation endangered the work, and indeed led to its ruin.

Handel was charged with the complete musical direction until 1728, when he took on his shoulders the whole direction of the opera, financial and musical.

[182] This voyage took place from February, 1719, to the end of the same year. When Handel was staying at Halle, J. S. Bach, who was then at Cothen, about four miles away, was informed of it, and went there to see him, but he only arrived at Halle the very day when Handel was about to leave. Such at least is the story of Forkel.

[183] The poem was by Haym. From 1722 the work was given at Hamburg with a translation of Mattheson.

[184] Before him Domenico Scarlatti had already visited London, where he had given unsuccessfully an opera, Narcissus, 1720.

[185] He was born in 1671 or 1672, for his first opus appeared in 1684 or 1685, when he was little more than thirteen years old.

Giovanni Bononcini was far from being well known. He was not a celebrated musician, on which account there are many disagreements. Bononcini was the name of a long string of musicians, and one has been frequently confounded with the other. Such mistakes are found even in the critical work of Eitner (where they rest on a great error in reading) and in the most recent Italian works, as that of Luigi Torchi, who in his instrumental music in Italy, 1901, confounds all the Bononcini together. Luigi Francesco Valdreghi’s monograph I Bononcini in Modena, 1882, is more reliable, although very incomplete.

[186] Gianmaria Bononcini was Chapel-Master of the Cathedral of Modena, and attached to the service of Duke Francis II. A fine violinist, author of instrumental sonatas in suites, to which Mr. Torchi and Sir Hubert Parry attribute great historical importance. He had a reflective spirit, and dedicated in 1673 to the Emperor Leopold I a treatise on Harmony and Counterpoint, entitled Musico Practico, which was afterwards reprinted. He died in 1678, less than forty years old.

[187] Several of his early works are dedicated to Francis II of Modena, and his 8th opus, Duetti da Camera, 1691, is dedicated to the Emperor Leopold I, who caused him to be engaged for the Court Chapel.

[188] He was a celebrated violoncellist.

[189] Alfred Ebert: Attilo Ariosto in Berlin, 1905, Leipzig.

[190] See Lecerf de la Viéville: Eclaircissement sur Bononcini, published in the 3rd part of his Comparaison de la musique française avec la musique italienne (1706).

[191] “Like Corelli,” says Lecerf, “he had a few fugues, contra fugues, based on conceits, frequently in other Italian works, and he made many delicious things from all the lesser used intervals, the most valiant and the most strange. His dissonances struck fear.”

[192] See the gentle suspension of notes in the Cantata Dori e Aminta (manuscript in the Library of the Conservatoire of Paris), or the Cantata Care luci (ibid.).

[193] “What is necessary in music,” said The London Journal of February 24, 1722, “is that it should chase away ennui, and relieve clever men from the trouble of thinking.”