Handel Part 3

But he was not yet sufficiently sure of his ground, nor of the public taste, to justify him in completely throwing over the Italian Opera, for he realized more than before the resources of the people and what he could do with them. Besides, the collapse of the London Academy of Opera had not touched his personal prestige. He was regarded, not only in England, but also in France, as the greatest man of the Lyric Theatre.[208] His London Italian operas became known all over Europe.

_Flavius, Tamerlan, Othon, Renaud, Cesar,_ _Admete, Siroe, Rodelinde, et Richard,_ _eternels monumens dresses a sa memoire,_ _Des operas Romains surpa.s.serent la gloire,_ _Venise lui peut-elle opposer un rival?_[209]

One can well understand, then, that Handel was tempted by the desire of taking on his own shoulders, without the control which hampered him, the complete enterprise of the Italian Opera. At the end of the summer of 1728 he went to Italy in search of new arms for the strife. In the course of this tour, which lasted nearly a year,[210] he recruited his singers, renewed his collection of _libretti_ and Italian scores. Above all, he refreshed his Italianism at the source of the new School of Opera, founded by Leonardo Vinci,[211] which reacted against the concert style in the theatre, and sought to give back to Opera a more dramatic character, even at the risk of impoveris.h.i.+ng the music.

Without sacrificing the richness of his style, Handel did not neglect to profit by these examples in his new operas: _Lotario_ (December, 1729), _Partenope_ (February, 1730), _Poro_ (February, 1731), _Ezio_ (January, 1732), which are notable (particularly the last two) by the beauty of the melodic writing, and the dramatic power of certain pages. The masterpiece of this period is _Orlando_ (January 27, 1733), of which the richness and musical perfection are on a level with the insight into the characters, and the spirited and pa.s.sionate life of the piece. If the _Tamerlano_ of 1724 awakens ideas of Gluck's tragedies, it is the beautiful operas of Mozart which come to mind in _Orlando_.

In continuation of the strife for the Italian Opera, Handel profited by the unexpected success with which the English people had met the reproduction of his _Acis and Galatea_ and his _Esther_,[212] written to English words, and he attempted again, in a more conscientious fas.h.i.+on than ten years before at Chandos', to found a form of musical theatre, freer and richer, where the lyricism of the choruses had free play. For the reproduction of _Esther_ in 1732 he introduced into the work of 1720 the most beautiful choruses from the Coronation Anthems. In the following year he wrote _Deborah_ (March 17, 1733), and _Athaliah_ (July 10, 1733), where the chorus took first place. These grand Biblical dramas would have been able to have awakened in the English nation an enthusiastic response, were it not that this attempt was damaged by a violent quarrel inspired by personal reasons, where art counted for nothing. A dead set was made against _Deborah_,[213] and though _Athaliah_ succeeded at Oxford,[214] Handel did not present it in London until two years later.

Once again Handel returned to Italian Opera. The public hatred pursued him here also. The royal family of Hanover was detested. It added to its own discredit by the scandalous disputes which took place between the King and his son. The Prince of Wales, in a spirit of petty spite against his father, who showed his affection for Handel, amused himself by attempting to ruin the composer. Encouraged by the opposition, and enchanted by the idea of making sport against the King, he founded a rival opera house, and as he could no longer set Bononcini up against Handel, as the former had been discredited by a case of flagrant plagiarism, which had an European circulation,[215] he approached Porpora, with a view to directing his theatre. "Then," says Lord Hervey, "the struggle became as serious as that of the Greens against the Blues at Constantinople under Justinian. An anti-Handelian was regarded as an anti-Royalist, and in Parliament, to vote against the Court was hardly more dangerous than to speak against Handel." On the other hand, the immense unpopularity of the King redounded on Handel, and the aristocracy combined to secure his downfall.

He accepted the challenge, and after a third tour in Italy during the summer of 1733, again to recruit more singers, he bravely took up the fight with Porpora, to whom was added Ha.s.se in 1734. They were the greatest rivals against which he had yet measured himself. But Ha.s.se and Porpora had strong dramatic feeling, and especially were they the most perfect masters of the beautiful art of Italian melody and singing.[216]

Nicolo Porpora, who came from Naples, was forty-seven years old. He had a cold but vigorous spirit, intelligent and possessing more than anyone else, except Ha.s.se, all the resources of the Italian singing. His style was very beautiful, and it was not less broad than that of Handel. No other Italian musician of his time had such ample breadth of phrasing.[217] His writings seem of a later age than Handel's, and approximate to the time of Gluck and Mozart. Whilst Handel, despite his marvellous feeling for plastic beauty, often treated the voices as an instrument, and in his development the beautiful Italian lines occasionally became weighed down by German complexity, Porpora's music always kept within the bounds of cla.s.sic purity, though the form was a little uninteresting in design. History has never done him sufficient justice.[218] He was quite worthy of measuring himself against Handel, and the comparison between Handel's _Arianna_ and that of Porpora, played at an interval of a few weeks,[219] did not prove to the advantage of the former. Handel's music is elegant, but one does not find the breadth of certain airs in Porpora's _Arianna a Naxos_. The form of these airs is perhaps of too cla.s.sic a correctness, but the right Grecian breezes blow across his Roman temples.[220] He has been claimed as an Italian disciple of Gluck--a curious criticism which is bestowed occasionally on precursors. It was so with Jacopo della Quercia, who inspired Michael Angelo, and to whom the latter seems to owe something.

Ha.s.se was even superior to Porpora in the charm of his melody, which Mozart alone has equalled, and in his symphonic gifts, which showed themselves in his rich instrumental accompaniments no less melodious than his songs.[221] Handel was not slow to discover the folly of striving with Ha.s.se on Italian ground. His superiority was with the choruses; he sought to introduce them into the Opera after the French model. The situation was even less promising for him on the departure of his best protectrix, the Princess Anne, sister of the Prince of Wales.[222] After having compromised Handel by the strong feeling which she had shown in defending him, she left him to the tender cares of the enemies which she had made for him. She left England in April, 1734, to join her husband the Prince of Orange[223] in Holland.

Handel came to be abandoned by his old friends. His a.s.sociate, Heidegger, the proprietor of the Haymarket Theatre, took the hall for a rival opera, and Handel, driven from the house in which he had worked for fourteen years, had to emigrate with his troupe to John Rich's place at Covent Garden[224]--a sort of music-hall where Opera took its turn with all kinds of other spectacles: ballets, pantomimes, and harlequinades. In Rich's troupe some French dancers were to be found, amongst whom was "_la Salle_,"[225] who was shortly to arouse great enthusiasm amongst the English public with two tragic dances: _Pygmalion_ and _Bacchus and Ariadne_.[226] Handel, who had known the French art[227] for a long time, saw how far he could draw on these new resources, and he opened the season of 1734 at Covent Garden with a first attempt in the field of the French ballet opera: _Terpsich.o.r.e_ (November 9, 1734), in which "_la Salle_" took the princ.i.p.al _role_. A month later a _Pasticcio_ followed, _Orestes_, where Handel gave a similar important part to "_la Salle_," and to her expressive dances.

Finally, he intermingled the dance and the choruses closely with the dramatic action in two masterpieces of poetry and beautiful musical construction--_Ariodante_ (January 8, 1735), and especially _Alcina_ (April 16, 1735).

Bad luck still pursued him. Some gross national manifestations compelled "_la Salle_" and her French dancers to leave London.[228] Handel gave up the ballet opera. To leave at this moment, if he was to continue the struggle with the theatre, went badly against the grain, and was tantamount to declaring himself vanquished. At the opening of his theatrical enterprise he had saved, so it is said, 10,000. All this was absorbed, and already he was 10,000 more to the bad. His friends did not understand his obstinacy, which seemed about to involve him in complete ruin. "But," says Hawkins, "he was a man of intrepid spirit, and in no ways a slave to mere interest. He raised himself again for the battle rather than bow down to those whom he regarded as infinitely beneath him." If he could no longer be conqueror, still less would he hand the reins to his adversaries. He overcame them--but a little more would have vanquished himself in the same stroke.

He persisted then in writing his operas,[229] of which the series spread out until 1741, marking work after work with a growing tendency towards the _opera-comique_ and the style of romances[230] so dear to the people at the second half of the eighteenth century. But since 1735 he felt more than ever that the true musical drama for him was the oratorio. He returned victoriously with _Alexander's Feast_, which was composed on the _Ode to St. Cecilia_, by Dryden,[231] and given for the first time on February 19, 1736, at the Covent Garden Theatre.

Who would have believed that this work, robust and sane throughout, was written in twenty days, that it was performed in the midst of his business worries, within an ace of ruin, and when he was threatened with that grave malady which was to throw the mind of Handel for evermore into gloom?

For several years trouble pursued him. Work and excessive worry had undermined an iron const.i.tution. He tried the baths at Tunbridge Wells during the summer of 1735, and probably also in 1736, but with no success. He could not sleep. His theatre was always on his mind. He made superhuman efforts to keep it going. From January, 1736, to April, 1737, he directed two seasons of Opera, two seasons of oratorio, and composed a song, an oratorio, a Psalm, and four operas.[232] On April 12, or 13, 1737, the machine broke down. He was smitten with paralysis, his right side was attacked, his hand refused all service, and even his mind was affected. In his absence his theatre closed its doors, bankrupt.[233]

During the whole of the summer Handel remained in a pitiful state of depression. He refused to care for anything; all hope was lost. Finally, his friends succeeded in inducing him, towards the end of August, to try the baths at Aix-la-Chapelle. The cure had a miraculous effect. In a few days he was restored. In October he returned to London, and immediately the refreshed giant resumed the struggle, writing in three months two operas, and the magnificent _Funeral Anthem_ on the death of the Queen.[234]

Sad days were in store, however. His creditors seized him, and he was threatened with imprisonment. Happily a sympathetic movement was inaugurated in favour of the artist so hara.s.sed by his kind. A benefit concert, to which his pride reluctantly submitted,[235] at the end of March, 1738, had an unexpected success. It freed him from the most pressing of his debts. In the following month a token of public admiration was given him. His statue was erected in the Vauxhall Gardens.[236] In the springtime of 1738 he began to feel, with returning strength, confidence in the future. The horizon cleared. He was encouraged by such faithful sympathy. He returned to life, and made his presence felt again.

On July 23 he commenced _Saul_; on August 8 he had written two acts of it; by September 27 the work was finished. On October 7 he began _Israel in Egypt_; by October 28 the work was achieved. Still pus.h.i.+ng strenuously forward, on October 4 he launched the first volume of his organ concertos with the publisher Walsh, and on the 7th he took to him his _Seven Trios or Sonatas in two parts, with ba.s.s_, Opus 5. For those who know these joyful works, which dominate like two Colossi the two oratorios of victory, this superhuman effort had the effect of a force of Nature, like a field which breaks into flower in a single night of springtime.

_Saul_ is a great epic drama, flowing and powerful, where the humorous and the tragic intermingle. _Israel_ is one immense chorale, the most gigantic effort which has ever been made in oratorio, not only with a single but with combined choirs.[237] The audacious originality of the conception and its austere grandeur almost stunned the public of his day. The living Handel breathes throughout the work.

The hopes which Handel had founded on England caused him fresh uneasiness. Times were hard. Since the winter of 1739, theatrical performances, and even concerts, were suspended for several months on account of the war, and the extreme cold. Handel, to keep himself warm, wrote in eight days the little _Ode to St. Cecilia_ (November 29, 1739); in sixteen days _L'Allegro_, _Il Penseroso_, _ed Il Moderato_ of Milton (January-February, 1740); in a month the _Concerti Grossi_, Opus 6.[238]

But the success of these charming works, graven out with loving care, into which Handel had perhaps put more than into any other his own personal feelings, his poetic and humorous reproductions of nature,[239]

was hardly sufficient yet to establish his affairs, at one time so embarra.s.sed. Once more, as in the time of _Deborah_ and _Arianna_, he was attacked by a coalition of fas.h.i.+onable people. One does not know how Handel had wounded them,[240] but they were resolved on his downfall. They avoided his concerts. They even paid men to pull down his placards in the streets. Handel, tired and disheartened, suddenly threw up the combat.[241] He decided to leave England, where he had lived for nearly thirty years, and where he had increased his fame so much. He announced his last concert for April 8, 1741.[242]

It is a remarkable thing that often in the lives of the great men, just at the moment when all seems lost, or things are at their lowest ebb, they are nearest to the fulfilment of their destiny. Handel appeared vanquished. Just at that very hour he wrote a work which was destined to establish permanently his immortality.

He left London.[243] The Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland invited him to Dublin to direct some concerts. Thus it was, so he said, "in order to offer this generous and polished nation something new" that he composed _The Messiah_ on a poem by his friend Jennens.[244] They had already given many of his religious works in Dublin for charitable concerts.[245] Handel was received enthusiastically. The letter which he wrote on December 29 to Jennens bubbles over with joy. The time which he pa.s.sed in Dublin was, together with his early years in Italy, the happiest in his life. From December 23, 1741, to April 7, 1742, he gave two series of six concerts, and always with the same success. Finally, on April 12, the first hearing of _The Messiah_ took place in Dublin.

The proceeds of the concert were devoted to charitable objects, and the success was very considerable.[246]

Eight days after having finished The _Messiah_ (that is to say, before he had yet arrived in Ireland) Handel had commenced _Samson_, which was finished in five weeks, from the end of September to the end of October, 1741. However, he did not give it in Dublin. Doubtless he could not find the interpreters which he desired for this colossal drama, rich in choral scenes and in difficult _roles_.[247] Perhaps also he reserved the work for the following season in Dublin, when he hoped to return, but the expected invitation which he awaited in London did not come, and it was in London that _Samson_ reached its first hearing on February 18, 1743.

To this heroic oratorio, based on the sublime _Samson Agonistes_ of Milton,[248] succeeded a light opera, which bore, nevertheless, the name of oratorio, the libretto of which was based on a poem by Congreve: _Semele_ (June 3 to July 4, 1743). It afforded a relief for him between these two Herculean works. In the same month in which he finished _Semele_, Handel wrote his monumental _Dettingen Te Deum_, to celebrate the victory of the Duke of c.u.mberland over the French.[249] _Joseph_, written in August and September of the same year, on a very touching poem by James Miller, reveals a sweet yet melancholy fancy, a little insipid, on which, however, the strong portrait of Simeon projects itself forcibly.

1744 was one of Handel's most glorious years from the creative point of view, but one of the most miserable in outward success. He wrote nearly simultaneously his two most tragic oratorios, the great Shakespearian drama of _Belshazzar_ (July-October, 1744), the rich poem of which was furnished for him by his friend Jennens;[250] and the sublime tragedy of the ancient _Hercules_, a musical drama,[251] which marks the culmination of the Handelian musical drama, and indeed one might say of the whole musical theatre before Gluck.

Never was the hostility of the English public more roused against him.

The same hateful cabal which had already thrice threatened to bring about his downfall again rose against him. They invited the fas.h.i.+onable world in London to their _fetes_, specially organised on the days when the performances of his oratorios were to have taken place, with the object of robbing him of his audience. Bolingbroke and Smollett both speak of the plots of certain ladies to ruin Handel. Horace Walpole says that it was the fas.h.i.+on to go to the Italian Opera when Handel directed his oratorio concerts. Handel, whose force of energy and genius had weakened since his first failure of 1735, was involved afresh in bankruptcy at the beginning of 1745. His griefs and troubles, and the prodigious expenditure of force which he made, seemed again on the point of turning his brain. He fell into extreme bodily prostration and lowness of spirit, similar to that of 1737, and this lasted for the s.p.a.ce of eight months, from March to October, 1745.[252] By a miracle he was able to rise out of this abyss, and by unforeseen events, where music was his only aid, he became more popular than he ever was before.

The Pretender, Charles Edward, landed in Scotland; the country rose up.

An army of Highlanders marched on London. The city was in consternation.

A great national movement arose in England, Handel a.s.sociated himself with it. On November 14, 1745, he brought to light at Drury Lane his _Song made for the Gentlemen Volunteers of the City of London_,[253]

and he wrote two oratorios, which were, so to speak, immense national hymns: the _Occasional Oratorio_,[254] where Handel called the English to rise up against invasion, and _Judas Maccabaeus_[255] (July 9 to August 11, 1746), the Hymn of Victory, written after the rout of the rebels at Culloden Moor, and for the _fete_ on the return of the conqueror, the ferocious Duke of c.u.mberland, to whom the poem was dedicated.

These two patriotic oratorios, where Handel's heart beat with that of England, and of which the second, _Judas Maccabaeus_, has retained even to our own day its great popularity, thanks to its broad style and the spirit which animates it,[256] brought more fortune to Handel than all the rest of his works together. After thirty-five years of continuous struggle, plot and counterplot, he had at last obtained a decisive victory. He became by the force of events _the national musician of England_.

Freed from material cares, which had embittered his life,[257] Handel took up the work of his composition again, with more tranquillity, and in the following years came many of his happiest works. _Alexander Balus_ (June 1 to July 4, 1747)[258] is, like _Semele_, a concert opera, well developed; the orchestration being exceptionally rich and subtle.

_Joshua_ (July 30 to August 18, 1747)[259] is a somewhat pale _replica_ of _Judas Maccabaeus_. A gentle love idyll blossoms amidst the pompous choruses. _Solomon_ (June, 1748)[260] is a musical festival, radiating poetry and gladness. _Susanna_ (July 11, 1724, to August, 1748), grave and gay by turns, realistic yet lyric, is a hybrid kind of work, but very original.

Finally, in the spring of 1749, which marks, so it seems, the end of Handel's good fortune, he wrote his brilliant Firework Music--a model for popular open-air _fetes_--produced on April 27, 1749, by a monster orchestra of trumpets, horns, oboes, and ba.s.soons, without stringed instruments, on the occasion of the Firework display given in Green Park to celebrate the Peace of Aix la Chapelle.[261]

More solemn works followed these gay pieces. At this moment of his life the spirit of melancholy raised its grey head before the robust old man, who seemed to be obsessed by the presentiment of some coming ill fortune.

On May 27, 1749, he conducted at the Foundling Hospital[262] for the benefit of waifs and strays, his beautiful _Anthem for the Foundling Hospital_,[263] which was inspired by his great pity for these little unfortunates. From June 28 to July 31 he wrote a pure masterpiece, _Theodora_, his most intimate musical tragedy, his only Christian tragedy besides _The Messiah_[264]. From the end of that same year dates also his music for a scene from Tobias Smollett's Alceste, which was never played, and from which Handel took the essential parts for his _Choice of Hercules_.[265] A little time after he made his last voyage to Halle. He arrived on German soil at the moment when Bach died, July 28, 1750. Indeed he nearly ended his life there himself in the same week by a carriage accident.[266]

He recovered quickly, and on January 21, 1751, when he commenced the score of _Jephtha_, he appeared to be in robust health, despite his sixty-six years. He wrote the first act at a stretch in thirteen days.

In eleven days more he had arrived at the last scene but one of Act II.

Here he had to break off. Already in the preceding pages he only progressed with difficulty; his writing, so clear and firm at the commencement, became sticky, confused, and trembling.[267] He had started on the final chorus of Act II: "How dark, O Lord, are Thy Ways."

Hardly had he written the opening _Largo_ than he had to stop working.

He wrote:

"_I reached here on Wednesday, February 13, had to discontinue on account of the sight of my left eye._"[268]

The work was broken off for ten days. On February 23 (which was his birthday) he wrote in:

"_Feel a little better. Resumed work_";

and he wrote the music to those foreboding words:

"_Grief follows joy as night the day._"

He took hardly five days to finish this chorus, which is really sublime.

He stopped then for four months.[269] On June 18 he resumed the third act. He was again interrupted in the middle.[270] The last four airs and the final chorus took more time than a whole oratorio usually occupied.

He did not finish it until August 30, 1751. His sight was then gone.

After that, all was ended. Handel's eyes were closed for ever.[271] The sun was blotted out, "_Total eclipse_...." The world was effaced.