The Note-Books of Samuel Butler Part 21

And I have been as far as Hull to see What clothes he left or other property.

I am told that these lines occur in a poem by Wordsworth. (Think of the expense!) How thankful we ought to be that Wordsworth was only a poet and not a musician. Fancy a symphony by Wordsworth! Fancy having to sit it out! And fancy what it would have been if he had written fugues!

Sleeping Beauties

There are plenty of them. Take Handel; look at such an air as "Loathsome urns, disclose your treasure" or "Come, O Time, and thy broad wings displaying," both in The Triumph of Time and Truth, or at "Convey me to some peaceful sh.o.r.e," in Alexander Balus, especially when he comes to "Forgetting and forgot the will of fate." Who know these? And yet, can human genius do more?

"And the Glory of the Lord"

It would be hard to find a more satisfactory chorus even in the Messiah, but I do not think the music was originally intended for these words:

[Music score which cannot be reproduced]

And the glo-ry, the glo-ry of the Lord.

If Handel had approached these words without having in his head a subject the spirit of which would do, and which he thought the words with a little management might be made to fit, he would not, I think, have repeated "the glory" at all, or at any rate not here. If these words had been measured, as it were, for a new suit instead of being, as I suppose, furnished with a good second-hand one, the word "the"

would not have been tacked on to the "glory" which precedes it and made to belong to it rather than to the "glory" which follows. It does not matter one straw, and if Handel had asked me whether I minded his forcing the words a little, I should have said, "Certainly not, nor more than a little, if you like." Nevertheless I think as a matter of fact that there is a little forcing. I remember that as a boy this always struck me as a strange arrangement of the words, but it was not until I came to write a chorus myself that I saw how it came about. I do not suspect any forcing when it comes to "And all flesh shall see it together."

Handel and the Speaking Voice

[Music score which cannot be reproduced]

While now with-out mea-sure we re---vel in plea-sure.

[Music score which cannot be reproduced]

With--their vain mys--te--rios art;

The former of these two extracts is from the chorus "Venus laughing from the skies" in Theodora; the other is from the air "Wise men flattering" in Judas Maccabaeus. I know no better examples of the way Handel sometimes derives his melody from the natural intonation of the speaking voice. The "pleasure" (in bar four of the chorus) suggests a man saying "with pleasure" when accepting an invitation to dinner. Of course one can say, "with pleasure" in a variety of tones, but a sudden exaltation on the second syllable is very common.

In the other example, the first bar of the accompaniment puts the argument in a most persuasive manner; the second simply re-states it; the third is the clincher, I cannot understand any man's holding out against bar three. The fourth bar re-states the clincher, but at a lower pitch, as by one who is quite satisfied that he has convinced his adversary.

Handel and the Wetterhorn

When last I saw the Wetterhorn I caught myself involuntarily humming:-

[Music score which cannot be reproduced]

And the go-vernment shall be up-on his shoul-der.

The big shoulder of the Wetterhorn seemed to fall just like the run on "shoulder."

"Tyrants now no more shall Dread"

The music to this chorus in Hercules is written from the tyrant's point of view. This is plain from the jubilant defiance with which the chorus opens, and becomes still plainer when the magnificent strain to which he has set the words "All fear of punishment, all fear is o'er" bursts upon us. Here he flings aside all considerations save that of the gospel of doing whatever we please without having to pay for it. He has, however, remembered himself and become almost puritanical over "The world's avenger is no more."

Here he is quite proper.

From a dramatic point of view Handel's treatment of these words must be condemned for reasons in respect of which Handel was very rarely at fault. It puzzles the listener who expects the words to be treated from the point of view of the vanquished slaves and not from that of the tyrants. There is no pretence that these particular tyrants are not so bad as ordinary tyrants, nor these particular vanquished slaves not so good as ordinary vanquished slaves, and, unless this has been made clear in some way, it is dramatically de rigueur that the tyrants should come to grief, or be about to come to grief. The hearer should know which way his sympathies are expected to go, and here we have the music dragging us one way and the words another.

Nevertheless, we pardon the departure from the strict rules of the game, partly because of the welcome nature of good tidings so exultantly announced to us about all fear of punishment being o'er, and partly because the music is, throughout, so much stronger than the words that we lose sight of them almost entirely. Handel probably wrote as he did from a profound, though perhaps unconscious, perception of the fact that even in his day there was a great deal of humanitarian nonsense talked and that, after all, the tyrants were generally quite as good sort of people as the vanquished slaves.

Having begun on this tack, it was easy to throw morality to the winds when he came to the words about all fear of punishment being over.

Handel and Marriage

To man G.o.d's universal law Gave power to keep the wife in awe

sings Handel in a comically dogmatic little chorus in Samson. But the universality of the law must be held to have failed in the case of Mr. and Mrs. M'Culloch.

Handel and a Letter to a Solicitor

Jones showed me a letter that had been received by the solicitor in whose office he was working:

"Dear Sir; I enclose the name of the lawyer of the lady I am engaged to and her name and address are Miss B. Richmond. His address is W.

W. Esq. Manchester.

"I remain, Yours truly W. D. C."

I said it reminded me of the opening bars of "Welcome, welcome, Mighty King" in Saul:

[Music score which cannot be reproduced]

Handel's Shower of Rain

The falling shower in the air "As cheers the sun" in Joshua is, I think, the finest description of a warm sunny refreshing rain that I have ever come across and one of the most wonderfully descriptive pieces of music that even Handel ever did.

Theodora and Susanna

In my preface to Evolution Old and New I imply a certain dissatisfaction with Theodora and Susanna, and imply also that Handel himself was so far dissatisfied that in his next work, Jephtha (which I see I inadvertently called his last), he returned to his earlier manner. It is true that these works are not in Handel's usual manner; they are more difficult and more in the style of Bach. I am glad that Handel gave us these two examples of a slightly (for it is not much) varied manner and I am interested to observe that he did not adhere to that manner in Jephtha, but I should be sorry to convey an impression that I think Theodora and Susanna are in any way unworthy of Handel. I prefer both to Judas Maccabaeus which, in spite of the many fine things it contains, I like perhaps the least of all his oratorios. I have played Theodora and Susanna all through, and most parts (except the recitatives) many times over, Jones and I have gone through them again and again; I have heard Susanna performed once, and Theodora twice, and I find no single piece in either work which I do not admire, while many are as good as anything which it is in my power to conceive. I like the chorus "He saw the lovely youth" the least of anything in Theodora so far as I remember at this moment, but knowing it to have been a favourite with Handel himself I am sure that I must have missed understanding it.

How comes it, I wonder, that the chorale-like air "Blessing, Honour, Adoration" is omitted in Novello's edition? It is given in Clarke's edition and is very beautiful.

Jones says of "With darkness deep", that in the accompaniment to this air the monotony of dazed grief is just varied now and again with a little writhing pa.s.sage. Whether Handel meant this or no, the interpretation put upon the pa.s.sage fits the feeling of the air.

John Sebastian Bach