George Frideric Handel_Dover Books on Music Read online

  Copyright

  Copyright © 1966 W W Norton & Co., Inc.

  Copyright © renewed 1994 by Anne Lang.

  All rights reserved.

  Bibliographical Note

  This Dover edition, first published in 1996, is an unabridged republication of the book originally published by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, 1966. The map of London, reproduced on pp. 732-3, appeared as end papers in the original publication.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Lang, Paul Henry, 1901-1991

  George Frideric Handel / Paul Henry Lang.

  p. cm.

  Originally published: New York: W. W. Norton, 1966.

  Includes “Bibliographical note” (p. ) and indexes.

  9780486144597

  1. Handel, George Frideric, 1685-1759. 2. Composers—Biography. I. Title.

  ML410.H13L16 1996

  780’.92—dc20

  [B] 96-22869

  CIP

  MN

  Manufactured in the United States by Courier Corporation

  29227402

  www.doverpublications.com

  TO MY DAUGHTER

  Stephanie Martin

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  ILLUSTRATIONS

  FOREWORD

  INTRODUCTION

  I - 1685-1703

  II - 1703-1706

  III - 1706—

  IV - —1710

  V - 1710-1712

  VI - 1712-1720

  VII

  VIII - 1720-1728

  IX

  X - 1729-1737

  XI

  XII - 1737-1741

  XIII - 1741-1742

  XIV

  XV - 1742-1744

  XVI - 1744-1745

  XVII - 1745-1748

  XVIII - 1748-1749

  XIX - 1749-1750

  XX - 1751-1752

  XXI - 1752-1759

  XXII

  XXIII

  XXIV

  XXV

  XXVI

  XXVII

  EPILOGUE

  BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

  INDEX OF HANDEL’S WORKS DISCUSSED IN THIS BOOK

  GENERAL INDEX

  A CATALOG OF SELECTED DOVER BOOKS IN ALL FIELDS OF INTEREST

  ILLUSTRATIONS

  PLATES APPEAR BETWEEN PAGES 334 AND 335

  I

  Halle in the 17th century

  II

  Queen Anne, with the Duke of Gloucester

  King George I

  III

  King George II

  Queen Caroline

  IV

  George Frideric Handel

  V

  Handel’s house on Brook Street

  The first London announcement of Messiah

  VI

  Johann Mattheson

  Alessandro Scarlatti

  VII

  Thomas Arne

  John Christopher Smith, junior

  John Gay

  VIII

  Handel’s Competitors:

  Giovanni Bononcini

  Nicola Porpora

  John Christopher Pepusch

  IX

  Handel’s Singers:

  Susanna Maria Cibber

  Francesca Cuzzoni

  Faustina Bordoni

  John Beard

  X

  Page from the autograph manuscript of the oratorio Belshazzar

  Page from the autograph manuscript of the opera Tolomeo

  XI

  Page from the autograph manuscript of the anthem Have mercy upon me, O God

  Page from the autograph manuscript of the third Grand Concerto, Opus 6

  XII

  Title page of the first set of organ concertos, Opus 4

  Title page of Acis and Galatea

  XIII

  Title page of Walsh’s edition of the opera Rinaldo

  Title page of the libretto of Samson

  XIV

  The King’s Theatre in the Haymarket

  Interior of the Theatre in Covent Garden

  XV

  The page from Jephtha where Handel temporarily stopped composing

  XVI

  Charles Burney

  Sir John Hawkins

  Friedrich Chrysander

  FOREWORD

  EXPLANATION OF THE METHOD FOLLOWED IN AN ESSAY IS usually the enumeration of extenuating circumstances; here it is perhaps unnecessary because this study should not be judged for what it avoids or omits. It is neither my intention, nor is it possible within the framework of such a volume, to give a comprehensive, elaborate biographical portrait or a detailed analysis of the genesis and execution of every composition in the hundred volumes of Handel’s collected works. Nor shall I attempt, with the aid of dark, pithy sentences, to explain the inexplicable, any more than I wish to reduce to a comfortable format the art of an immense genius. What I have done is to endeavor to examine matters that influenced Handel’s development and art and that may explain how this man, whose life was so much of a piece, could touch the extremes of obloquy and veneration, and how the German immigrant became England’s national composer. Perhaps the reader will find this interesting.

  This book was not written yesterday but is the result of ideas carried in the literary valise from place to place for years. While I am much beholden to the critical work of others, I make little use of the usual form of documentation; wherever I have recourse to conjecture this is not concealed and is obvious to the reader. Such conjecture, when clearly indicated as such, has its necessary place in biography. The alternative, when documents are lacking that could fill the silences, is to present a mere skeleton of facts, which is only a caricature of reality. I have permitted myself to digress and to repeat, to select and omit, elaborate and wander as the spirit moved me. But I did not absolve myself of the responsibilities of the historian, remembering that the cause is as important to learn as the event, that all human history is one, and that though there is nothing new under the sun, the essence of history is asking questions. Others may have different ideas, but perhaps they will have patience with my view. I do not mind if some reject these thoughts as being “unscientific,” but hope that there will be others who may not find them foreign to their own thoughts. They may feel, as I do, that no biography can be “definitive”; there is always something for us to add from another angle. Finally, I hope that I may not be censured for attacking the venerable bulwarks of Handelian lore and for offending the accustomed attitude of piety.

  One is always indebted to colleagues, students, friends, and institutions. Among the latter I am especially grateful to the Guggenheim Foundation for its grant that enabled me to follow Handel’s tracks in Italy and study his original manuscripts in England. I should really cite the entire membership of Columbia University’s Seminar on the Eighteenth Century, for the deliberations of that admirable group of scholars, covering the whole range of 18th-century thought and history, helped me immeasurably to clarify many an obscure problem. Then there is the amiable crew that makes up W. W. Norton & Co., my publishers. Year after year I disappointed them (the book was planned for the Handel bicentennial in 1959!), but their patience and good will never gave out. Far from using pressure, they just urged me to continue in peace.

  And I have three large private creditors who must be publicly acknowledged. My literary vessel has a navigator, my wife, without whose guidance I would not venture beyond the breakwaters. In all fairness she should be named co-author, for there is not one paragraph in what follows that did not benefit from her discerning scrutiny. The vessel also has
an able engineer, Nathan Broder, my old friend and comrade in arms for over twenty years as Associate Editor of The Musical Quarterly. He keeps everything in good running order. Finally, my daughter Stephanie typed the whole manuscript, appending to every batch perceptive and useful comments that were not disregarded. In the end, however, even this powerful support cannot prevent faux pas, and they are my sole responsibility. Perhaps I may be permitted to quote Foulke Robartes, author of the Revenue of the Gospel, who so nicely apportions blame for mistakes:

  Who faulteth not, liveth not; who mendeth faults is commended: The Printer hath faulted a little: it may be the author oversighted more. Thy paine Reader is the least; then erre thou not most by misconstruing or sharpe censuring; least thou be more charitable than either of them hath been heedlesse.

  P.H.L.

  INTRODUCTION

  FAME,” SAYS RILKF, “IS NOTHING BUT THE SUM TOTAL OF MISUNDERSTANDINGS that cling to a name.” There is no more misunderstood and misrepresented composer in the history of music than Handel. With a few laudable exceptions the Handelian literature is selective, and the selection is not history and esthetics so much as edification, therefore his name has become a religious monument. But behind that name is the man and the musician who is the object of this study. I shall attempt to speak about Handel, not impartially, but with the objectivity of a faith that rests on firm conviction.

  How does one approach such a veiled and distant figure? Weighted down with a historical sense and obsessed with the idea of evolution and progress, we tend to see the past exclusively in the light of later development. We think that it is more important to know how the artist stands in relation to us than to himself. He becomes for us a bit of history. But his history cannot be understood, nor his relationship either to his own time or to ours, without knowing the man, his nature, his spirit. We like to proceed in inverse order, often mistaking results for intentions; and the outsider approaching a long-lost cultural era inclines to take the features he first perceives as the most important. Indeed, the farther removed we are from a period the less we separate material from spirit. We can hardly view Palestrina or Bach purely historically; we are compelled to see them immediately as the creators of works of art, their personality retreats behind their work and can be seen only through it.

  If one enters such an immense territory as Handel’s he must be careful to state at the outset what part of it he intends to traverse. The occasion does not permit a visit to every obscure corner, for, two hundred years after Handel’s death, only what is lasting is important. We propose to resort to that old-fashioned method of art criticism which seeks to understand not only the man from his works, but the works from the man. This does not entail a scientific case history. We shall never see the inner picture of the whole man; that could be divulged to us only by the artist himself or by a faithful Horatio. But Handel said very little about himself and had false, self-appointed Horatios. The regrettable and incredible fact is that the magnitude of Handel’s genius and the avalanche of great music he wrote is scarcely suspected today. True, he is always bracketed with Bach, but once we remove the brackets and omit Messiah and two or three other works, we have precious little left. We know that his was a purposeful life, that he went through heroic and incessant struggles, and that he finally came to rest with Britain’s great in Westminster Abbey. Little was accidental in his life, for Handel virtually controlled his fate. Yet, by merely following external criteria, using them for the measuring of personality, we can never arrive at a true appreciation of Handel.

  The central fact of a musician’s life is his music, and here the biographer is confronted with an obstacle unknown to his colleagues in other fields. It is extremely difficult to convey to the reader, instructed or uninstructed, just what constitutes the essential and particular quality of the musician’s thoughts, methods, speculations, and inventions. Yet his musical thought is the very core of his life story. Something may be made of tales of musical precocity, of the early struggles of genius, of the triumphs of the master, but the great man’s thought remains the root of his life, and an effort must be made to bring home to the reader a notion, however partial, however resistant to verbalization, of what lies behind the external events in the life of so colorful a man of action as Handel.

  Hero worship has dominated our musical outlook for over a century. It has caused untold damage, making the contemplation of the work of art in all its aspects virtually impossible. Fortunately, there are some who realize that even the work of genius can be viewed and examined with scholarly detachment—witness Winton Dean’s magnificent Handel’s Dramatic Oratorios and Masques and Otto Erich Deutsch’s invaluable Handel, a Documentary Biography.

  Sir Newman Flower has rightly said: “It is questionable whether any music, composed in England or imported into it, has reached the heart of the people so truly as Handel’s.” Yet, familiar as the picture of Handel is, some of its most vital aspects elude us. He has always been before us; we know his consummate confidence in himself; we know he had no illusions about either himself or his works; he chose his part and played it to perfection. It is his silence that is so baffling. No family doctor or lawyer, no father confessor was ever more close-mouthed about the confidences entrusted to him than Handel was about his own person and private life.

  We do not know the real reason for artistic creativity—and probably never shall know. We can find some similarities in the manifestations of creative force, which we then attempt to range into types, but the reasons for their differentiation are still largely unknown. It can be seen, then, that creative power itself cannot be espied in its secret functioning by any known method or science, yet we are always trying to do just that. This naive belief falsifies esthetics and musicological thought alike, while the psychologists have their own merry time by themselves. All we can do is to endeavor to follow the development of thought and technique, placing them in their proper environment, so that the image of the artist will appear before us. And since the scholar recognizes that this great musician’s portrait is covered by countless layers of overpainting, like a very old canvas, his true features indistinct and even distorted, the layers will have to be peeled off one by one.

  In the English-speaking Protestant world Handel is known by a portrait distinct, indeed, but painted in a later age without first-hand acquaintance with its subject. Here Handel is universally and uniquely known as the composer of Messiah. But it was not with Messiah that Handel first entered the ranks of the very great, though it was this work that made his name a household word. No matter what came before or after—and the masterpieces are legion—it is always Messiah that is immediately associated with his name whenever it is mentioned. For generations we have known the oratorio by heart, and Messiah is perhaps the only major work about which public sentiment is unanimous. Its freshness, its warmth, its beautifully rounded forms and sculptured melodies offer universal experience to men of all walks of life and all shades of faith. Handel achieved with this work the most widespread critical recognition ever accorded a composer, for among his acclaimers are not only every English-speaking church congregation, small or large, but also Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Brahms, and every musician who ever tried his hand at choral writing.

  Still, for all we know, Bacon may have composed the rest of the hundred volumes of the old Handelgesellschaft edition. No other great master is so narrowly known. His works have to be uncovered and washed free of the prejudices and falsifications that cling to them. Granted, no one can go through the entire work of Handel without admitting that a good deal of it has faded away, perhaps forever, and it is easy to suppose that he always owed his fame to one oratorio and half a dozen opera tunes that were turned into “sacred” songs. But we know that much contained in these volumes possesses real life, and it is shocking how reluctant the musical world is to investigate. (Anatole France says somewhere that the best way to travel to the land of immortality is with a small suitcase. This is hardly true: Bach, Mozart, and ma
ny others prove the contrary.)

  One of the important reasons for this regrettable situation is that the principal musical representatives of Handel’s generation were not primarily composers of suites, sonatas, and concertos—though they wrote them too—but of works for the lyric theatre and of concerted church music, which then was part of the great field of dramatic music. But both Baroque opera and concerted church music have long since faded from our world, and with a few exceptions their creators have either disappeared from the annals or, if like Vivaldi they also composed fine sonatas and concertos, they are remembered only for their instrumental works, which seem to stand for the whole era. As we look at this vast amount of music we seem to behold historical ruins, which one contemplates with a curiosity mingled with pity. Handel composed operas, dozens of them, for thirty-six years. To succeeding generations they appeared to have been composed in an idiom not only dead but quite safely buried. Surely, there must be more than a few among them that need only be excavated and cleaned to radiate that life we seek in a work of art. Unfortunately, those few operas that have been revived have been so badly mutilated that they were only a shadow of their original state. It is a pity that the “restorers” of these operas come either from the ranks of practicing musicians without adequate stylistic insight or from among men of letters unschooled in music. Oskar Hagen, the person who had the taste and foresight to start the Handelian opera renaissance in the 1920s in Göttingen, was an eminent art historian but an amateur in musicology, as the scores he edited prove conclusively. All these men have had the best intentions, but they worked under the terrible handicap of the cumulative force of prejudice and prohibition which made them helpless, panicky, and ruthless. Their fatal error was that they saw in Handel’s operas not things resurrected but things renovated.