Handel Part 7

Then the broad subject of the Introduction recurs with its refrain of quiet joy, nature's own smile.[421]

Such works are truly pictures in music. To understand them it does not suffice to have quick ears; it is necessary to have the eyes to see, and the heart to feel.[422]

The Symphonies of the operas and oratorios of Handel are extremely varied. Still, the Lully form predominates.[423] This form consists, as is well known, of a first slow movement, grave, pompous, and majestic, followed by a second (quick) movement, full of life, and usually in fugal style, with a return to the slow movement for conclusion. It appears in the _Almira_ of 1705, and Handel uses it with variations in all the most celebrated works of his maturity, such as in the _Messiah_, and _Judas Maccabaeus_, and even has recourse to it again in his last work of all, _The Triumph of Time_ (1757), but he does not confine himself entirely to this form alone. The _Symphonia of Roderigo_ (1707) adds to the Lully-like overture a _Balletto_ in the Italian style, a veritable Suite of Dances: Jig, Sarabande, Matelot, Minuet, Bourree, Minuet, Grand Pa.s.sacaille. The Overture to _The Triumph of Time_ of 1708 is a brilliant Concerto, where the _Concertino_ and the _Grosso_ converse in a most entertaining and graceful fashion. The Overture to _Il Pastor Fido_, 1712, is a Suite in eight movements. That of _Teseo_, 1713, contains two Largos, each followed by a playful movement of imitation. That of the _Pa.s.sion after Brockes_, 1716, consists of a single fugued allegro,[424] which is joined to the first chorus by the link of a declamatory solo on the oboe.[425] The Overture to _Acis and Galatea_, 1720, is also a single movement. The Overture to _Giulio Cesare_, 1724, is joined on to the first chorus, which is in the form of the third movement, the Minuet. The Overture to _Atalanta_, 1736, has a charming sprightliness, similar to an instrumental suite for a _fete_, like the Firework Music, of which we shall speak later. The Overture to _Saul_, 1738, is a veritable Concerto for organ and orchestra, and the sonata form is adopted in the first movement.--We see then a very marked effort on the part of Handel, particularly in his youth, to vary the form of his Overture from one work to another.

Even when he uses the Lully type of Overture (and he seems to turn towards it more and more in his maturity) he transforms it by the spirit which animates it. He never allows its character to be purely decorative. He introduces therein always expressive and dramatic ideas.[426] If one cannot exactly call the splendid Overture to _Agrippina_, 1709, a Concert Overture of programme music, one cannot deny its dramatic power. The second movement bubbles with life. It is no longer an erudite _divertiss.e.m.e.nt_, a movement foreign to the action, but it has a tragic character, and the response of the fugue is apparent in the severe and slightly restless subject of the first piece. For conclusion the slow movement is recalled by a solo on the oboe, which announces it out in the pathetic manner made so well known in certain _recitatives_ of J. S. Bach.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Adagio_]

Many people have seen in the three movements[427] of the Overture to _Esther_, 1720, a complete programme, which Chrysander gives thus in detail: firstly, the wickedness of Haman; secondly, the complaints of Israel; thirdly, the deliverance. I will content myself by saying that the ensemble of this symphony is thoroughly in the colour and spirit of the tragedy itself--but it is not possible to doubt that, with the Overture of _Deborah_ and with that of _Belshazzar_ that Handel wished to work to a complete programme; for of the four movements of the _Deborah_ Overture, the second is repeated later on as the Chorus of the Israelites, and the fourth as the Chorus of Baal's priests. Thus in his very first pages he places in miniature in the Overture the duality of the nations, whose antagonism forms the subject of the drama.[428] It seems also true that the Overture to _Belshazzar_ aims at painting the orgy of the feast of Sesach, and the apparition of the Divine Hand which wrote the mystic words of fire on the wall. In every case dramatic intentions are very evident; by the three repeats; the interrupted flow of the orchestra is intersected by three short chords, _piano_; and, then after the sudden silence, three bars of solemn and soft music are heard like a religious song.[429]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Allegro_]

[Ill.u.s.tration]

We now come to our last cla.s.s of Handel's instrumental music, to which historians have given far too little attention, and in which Handel shows himself a precursor, and at the same time a model. I refer to the open-air music.

This took a prominent place in the English life. The environs of London were full of gardens, where, Pepys tells us, "vocal and instrumental concerts vied with the voices of the birds." Concerts were given at Vauxhall; at South Lambeth Palace on the Thames; at Ranelagh, near Chelsea, about two miles from the city; at Marylebone Garden; and Handel was always welcome there. From 1738 the proprietor of Vauxhall, Jonathan Tyer, erected in its gardens a statue of Handel, and this was hardly done when the _Concerti Grossi_ became the favourite pieces at the concerts of Marylebone, Vauxhall, and Ranelagh. Burney tells us that he often heard them played by numerous orchestras. Handel wrote pieces especially intended for these garden concerts. Generally speaking, he attached little importance to them. They were little symphonies or unpretentious dances, like the Hornpipe, composed for the concert at Vauxhall in 1740.[430] An anecdote related by Pohl and also by Chrysander, shows Handel pleasantly engaged on this music, which gave him no trouble at all.

But he composed on these lines some works tending towards a much vaster scale: from 1715 or 1717 the famous Water Music, written for the royal procession of barges on the Thames,[431] and the Firework Music made to ill.u.s.trate the firework display given in Green Park on April 27, 1749, in celebration of the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle.[432]

The Water Music has a grand Serenade in the form of a suite comprising more than twenty movements. It opens with a pompous Opera-overture; then come some dialogues, with echoes of horns and drums, where the bra.s.s and the rest of the orchestra, which are arranged in two sections, respond. Then follow happy and soothing songs, dances, a Bourree, a Hornpipe, Minuets, popular songs, which alternate and contrast with the joyful and powerful fanfares. The orchestra is very nearly the same as in his usual symphonies, except that considerable importance is given to the bra.s.s. One even finds in this work certain pieces written in the chamber-music style, or in the theatrical manner.

With the Firework Music the character of open-air music is even more definitely a.s.serted, quite as much by the broad style of the piece as by the orchestration, which is confined entirely to the wind instruments.[433] The composition is divided into two parts: an Overture which was to be played before the grand firework display, and a number of little pieces to be played during the display, and which corresponded to certain allegorical set pieces. The Overture is a sort of stately march in D major, and has some resemblance to the Overture of the _Ritterballet_ (Huntsman's Dance) of Beethoven, and which is, like it, joyful, equestrian, and very sonorous. The shorter movements comprise a Bourree, a _Largo a la Siciliana_, ent.i.tled _Peace_,[434] of a beautiful heroic grace, which lulls itself to sleep; a very sprightly _Allegro_ ent.i.tled _The Rejoicing_, and two Minuets for conclusion. It is an interesting work for the organisers of our popular _fetes_ and open-air spectacles to study.[435] If we have said that after 1740 Handel wrote hardly any other instrumental music than the Firework Music, and the two monumental concertos, _a due cori_ (for two horns) we have the feeling that the last evolution of his thought and instrumental style led him in the direction of music conceived for great ma.s.ses, wide s.p.a.ces, and huge audiences. He had always in him a popular vein of thought. I immediately call to mind the many popular inspirations with which his memory was stored, and which vivify the pages of his oratorios. His art, which renewed itself perpetually at this rustic source, had in his time an astonishing popularity. Certain airs from _Ottone_, _Scipione_, _Arianna_, _Berenice_, and such other of his operas, were circulated and vulgarised not only in England,[436] but abroad, and even in France (generally so unyielding to outside influences).[437]

It is not only of this popularity, a little ba.n.a.l, of which I wish to speak, which one could not ignore--for it is only a stupid pride and a small heart which denies great value to the art which pleases humble people;--what I wish to notice chiefly in the popular character of Handel's music is that it is always truly conceived for the people, and not for an _elite dilettanti_ as was the French Opera between Lully and Gluck. Without ever departing from his sovereign ideas of beautiful form, in which he gave no concession to the crowd, he reproduced in a language immediately "understanded of the people" those feelings in which all could share. This genial improvisor, compelled during the whole of his life (a half-century of creative power) to address from the stage a mixed public, for whom it was necessary to understand immediately, was like the orators of old, who had the cult of style and instinct for immediate and vital effect. Our epoch has lost the feeling of this type of art and men: pure artists who speak _to_ the people and _for_ the people, not for themselves or for their confreres. To-day the pure artists lock themselves within themselves, and those who speak to the people are most often mountebanks. The free England of the nineteenth century was in a certain measure related to the Roman republic, and indeed Handel's eloquence was not without relation to that of the epic orators, who sustained in the form their highly finished and pa.s.sionate discourses, who left their mark on the shuddering crowd of loiterers. This eloquence did on occasion actually thrust itself into the soul of the nation as in the days of the Jacobite invasion, where _Judas Maccabaeus_ incarnated the public feeling. In the first performances of _Israel in Egypt_ some of the auditors praised the heroic virtues of this music, which could raise up the populace and lead armies to victory.

By this power of popular appeal, as by all the other aspects of his genius, Handel was in the robust line of Cavalli and of Gluck, but he surpa.s.sed them. Alone, Beethoven has walked in these broader paths, and followed along the road which Handel had opened.