Handel Part 5

One sees what a variety of forms and styles he used. Handel was too universal and too objective to believe that one kind of art only was the true one. He believed in two kinds of music only, the good and the bad.

Apart from that he appreciated all styles. Thus he has left masterpieces in every style, but he did not open any new way in opera for the simple reason that he went a long way in nearly all paths already opened up.

Constantly he experimented, invented, and always with his singularly sure touch. He seemed to have an extraordinary penetrating knowledge in invention, and consequently few artistic regions remained for him to conquer. He made as masterly a use of the recitative as Gluck, or of the _arioso_ as Mozart, writing the acts of _Tamerlano_, which are the closest and most heartrending dramas, in the manner of _Iphigenie en Tauride_, the most moving and pa.s.sionate scenes in music such as certain pages of _Admeto_ and _Orlando_, where the humorous and tragic are intermingled in the manner of _Don Giovanni_. He has experimented very happily here in new rhythms.[326] There were new forms, the dramatic duet or quartet, the descriptive symphony opening the opera,[327]

refined orchestration,[328] choruses and dances.[329] Nothing seems to have obsessed him. In the following opera we find him returning to the ordinary forms of the Italian or German opera of his time.

Still less can we say that he held to a rigid form with his operas, which were continually adapted to the changing tastes of the theatre public of his age, and of the singers which he had at his disposal, but when he left the opera for the oratorio he varied no less. It was a perpetual experiment of new forms in the vast framework of the free theatre (_theatre en liberte_) of the concert drama; and the sort of instinctive ebb and flow in creation seems to have caused his works to succeed one another in groups of a.n.a.logous or related compositions, each work in a nearly opposite style of feeling and form. In each one Handel indulged momentarily in a certain side of his feelings, and when that was finished he found himself in the possession of other feelings which had been acc.u.mulating whilst he was drawing on his first. He thus kept up a perpetual balance, which is like the pulsation of life itself.

After the realistic _Saul_ comes the impersonal epic of _Israel in Egypt_. After this colossal monument appear the two little _genre_ pictures, _The Ode to Cecilia_ and _L'Allegro ed Penseroso_. After the Herculean _Samson_, an heroic and popular tragic comedy sprang forth, the charming flower of _Semele_, an opera of romanticism and gallantry.

But if the oratorios are so wonderfully varied they have one characteristic in common even more than the operas, they are musical dramas. It was not that religious thought turned Handel to this choice of Biblical subjects, but as Kretzschmar has well shown, it was on account of the stories of the Bible heroes being a part of the very life-blood of the people whom he addressed. They were known to all, whilst the ancient romantic stories could only interest a society of refined and spoilt _dilettanti_. Without doubt, these oratorios were not made for representation, did not seek scenic effects, with rare exceptions, as for instance the scene of the orgy of _Belshazzar_, where one feels that Handel had drawn on the direct vision of theatrical representation, but pa.s.sions, spirits, and personalities were represented always in a dramatic fas.h.i.+on. Handel is a great painter of characters, and the Delilah in _Samson_, the Nitocris in _Belshazzar_, the Cleopatra in _Alexander Balus_, the mother in _Solomon_, the Dejanira in _Hercules_, the beautiful Theodora, all bear witness to the suppleness and the profundity of his psychological genius. If in the course of the action, and the depicting of the ordinary sentiments, he abandoned himself freely to the flow of pure music, in the moments of pa.s.sionate crises he is the equal of the greatest masters in musical drama. Is it necessary to mention the terrible scenes in the third act of _Hercules_, the beautiful scenes of _Alexander Balus_, the Dream of _Belshazzar_, the scenes of _Juno_ and the death of _Semele_, the recognition of Joseph and his brothers, the destruction of the temple in Samson, the second act of _Jephtha_, the prison scenes in _Theodora_, or in the first act of _Saul_, and dominating all, like great pictures, certain of the choruses in _Israel in Egypt_, in _Esther_, and in _Joshua_, and in the _Chandos Anthems_, which seem veritable tempests of pa.s.sion, great upheavals of overpowering effect? It is by these choruses that the oratorio is essentially distinguished from the opera. It is in the first place a choral tragedy. These choruses, which are nearly eliminated in Italian Opera during the time of the Barberini, held a very important place in French Opera, but their _role_ was limited to that of commentator or else merely decorative. In the oratorio of Handel they became the very life and soul of the work. Sometimes they took the part of the ancient cla.s.sical chorus, which exposed the thought of the drama when the hidden fates led on the heroes to their destinies--as in _Saul_, _Hercules_, _Alexander Balus_, _Susanna_. Sometimes they added to the shock of human pa.s.sions the powerful appeal of religion, and crowned the human drama with a supernatural aureole, as in _Theodora_ and _Jephtha_. Or finally they became the actual actors themselves, or the enemy-people and the G.o.d who guided them. It is remarkable that in his very first oratorio _Esther_, Handel had this stroke of genius. In the choruses there we see the drama of an oppressed people and their G.o.d who led them by his voice superbly depicted. In _Deborah_ and _Athaliah_ also, two nations are in evidence. In _Belshazzar_ there are three, but in his chief work of this kind, _Israel in Egypt_, the greatest choral epic which exists, is entirely occupied by Jehovah and His people.

The choruses are in the most diverse styles. Some are in the church style, and a little antiquated;[330] others tend towards the opera--even the _opera bouffe_;[331] some exhale the perfume of the madrigals at the end of the sixteenth century,[332] and the Academy of Ancient Music in London sought to sustain this art in honour. On the other hand, Handel has frequently used them in the form of a chorale, simple or varied,[333] above all, he employs the choral double fugue in a most astounding manner,[334] and he carries everything on with that impetuosity of genius which drew to him the admiration of the sternest critics of his time, such as Mattheson. His instinct as a great constructor loved to alternate h.o.m.ophonic music with fugal choruses,[335] the ma.s.sive columns of musical harmony with the moving contrapuntal in superimposed strata, very cleverly framing his dramatic choruses in a most imposing architecture of decorative and impersonal character. His choruses are sometimes tragic scenes,[336] or comedy (see the _Vaudeville_),[337] sometimes _genre_ pictures.[338] Handel knew most admirably how to weave in popular motives,[339] or to mingle the dance with the song.[340]

But what belongs chiefly to him--not that he invented it, but made the happiest use of it--is the musical architecture of solo and chorus alternating and intermingled. Purcell and the French composers had given him this idea. He attempted it in his earliest religious works, especially in his _Birthday Ode for Queen Anne_, 1713, where nearly every solo air is taken up again by the following chorus.[341] He had a great feeling for light and pleased himself by introducing in the middle of his choral ma.s.ses, solo songs which soared up into the air like birds.[342] His dramatic genius knew, when required, how to draw from this combination the most astounding effects. Thus in the _Pa.s.sion after Brockes_, 1716, where the dialogue of the Daughter of Sion and the chorus _Eilt ihr angefochten Seelen_, with its questions, its responses, its aeschylian interjections, served as Bach's model for his St. Matthew Pa.s.sion. At the end of _Israel in Egypt_, after those great choral mountains of sounds, by an ingenious contrast a female voice is heard alone without accompaniment, and then a hymn alternating with the chorus which repeats it. It is the same again at the end of the little short _Ode to St. Cecilia_.

In the _Occasional Oratorio_ a duet for Soprano and Alto alternates with the choruses, but it is in _Judas Maccabaeus_ where he best achieves this combination of solos and the chorus. In this victorious epic of an invaded people, who rose up and overcame their oppressors, the individualities are scarcely distinguished from the heroic soul of the nation, and the chiefs of the people are only the choralists, whose songs set dancing the enormous ensembles which unfold themselves in powerful and irresistible progressions, like a giant's procession up a triumphal staircase.

It follows then that when the orchestra is added to the dialogue of solos and of choruses, the third element enters into the psychological drama, sometimes in apparent opposition to the two others. Thus in the second act of _Judas Maccabaeus_ the orchestra which sounds the battle calls makes a vivid contrast to the somewhat funereal choruses on which they are interposed: _We hear the pleasing dreadful call_, or to put it better, they complete them, and fill in the picture. After Death--Glory.

The oratorio being a "free theatre," it becomes necessary for the music to supply the place of the scenery. Thus its picturesque and descriptive _role_ is strongly developed and it is by this above all that Handel's genius so struck the English public. Camille Saint-Saens wrote in an interesting letter to C. Bellaigue,[343] "I have come to the conclusion that it is the picturesque and descriptive side, until then novel and unreached, whereby Handel achieved the astonis.h.i.+ng favour which he enjoyed. This masterly way of writing choruses, of treating the fugue, had been done by others. What really counts with him is the colour--that modern element which we no longer hear in him.... He knew nothing of exotism. But look at _Alexander's Feast_, _Israel in Egypt_, and especially _L'Allegro ed Penseroso_, and try to forget all that has been done since. You find at every turn a striving for the picturesque, for an effect of imitation. It is real and very intense for the medium in which it is produced, and it seems to have been unknown hitherto."

Perhaps Saint-Saens lays too much weight on the "masterly way of writing his choruses," which was not so common in England, even with Purcell.

Perhaps he accentuates too much also the real influence of the French in matters of picturesque and descriptive music and the influence which it exerted on Handel.[344] Finally, it is not necessary to represent these descriptive tendencies of Handel as exceptional in his time. A great breath of nature pa.s.sed over German music, and pushed it towards tone-painting. Telemann was, even more than Handel, a painter in music, and was more celebrated than Handel for his realistic effects. But the England of the eighteenth century had remained very conservative in music, and had devoted itself to cultivating the masters of the past.

Handel's art was then more striking to them on account of "its colour"

and "its imitative effects." I will not say with Saint-Saens that "there was no question of exotism with him," for Handel seems to have sought this very thing more than once; notably in the orchestration of certain scenes for the two Cleopatras, of _Giulio Cesare_, and of _Alexander Balus_. But that which was constantly with him was tone-painting, the reproduction through pa.s.sages of music of natural impressions, a painting very characterised, and, as Beethoven put it, "more an expression of feelings than of painting," a poetic evocation of the raging tempests, of the tranquillity of the sea, of the dark shades of night, of the twilight which envelops the English country, of the parks by moonlight, of the sunrise in springtime, and of the awakening of birds. _Acis and Galatea_, _Israel in Egypt_, _Allegro_, _The Messiah_, _Semele_, _Joseph_, _Solomon_, _Susanna_, all offer a wondrous picture gallery of nature, carefully noted by Handel with the sure stroke of a Flemish painter, and of a romantic poet at the same time. This romanticism struck powerfully on his time with a strength which would not be denied. It drew upon him both admiration and violent criticism. A letter of 1751 depicts him as a Berlioz or Wagner, raising storms by his orchestra and chorus.

"He cannot give people pleasure after the proper fas.h.i.+on," writes this anonymous author in his letter, "and his evil genius will not allow him to do this. He imagines a new _grandioso_ kind of music, and in order to make more noise he has it executed by the greatest number of voices and instruments which one has ever heard before in a theatre. He thinks thus to rival not only the G.o.d of musicians, but even all the other G.o.ds, like Iole, Neptune, and Jupiter: for either I expected that the house would be brought down by his tempest, or that the sea would engulf the whole. But more unbearable still was his thunder. Never have such terrible rumblings fallen on my head."[345]

Similarly Goethe, irritated and upset, said, after having heard the first movement of the Beethoven C Minor symphony, "It is meaningless.

One expected the house to fall about one's ears."

It is not by chance that I couple the names of Handel and Beethoven.

Handel is a kind of Beethoven in chains. He had the unapproachable manner like the great Italian artists who surrounded him: the Porporas, the Ha.s.ses, and between him and them there was a whole world.[346]

Under the cla.s.sic ideal with which he covered himself burned a romantic genius, precursor of the _Sturm und Drang_ period; and sometimes this hidden demon broke out in brusque fits of pa.s.sion--perhaps despite himself.

Handel's instrumental music deserves very close notice: for it is nearly always wrongly a.s.sessed by historians, and badly understood by artists, who treat it for the most part as a merely formal art.

Its chief characteristic is that of a perpetual improvisation. If it was published, it was more in spite of Handel than at his instigation.[347]

It was not made to be played and judged coldly, but to be produced at white heat to the public. They were free sketches, in which the form was never completely tightened up, but remained always moving and living, modifying itself at the concert, as the two sensibilities--the artist and the public--came into touch with one another.[348] It is necessary then to preserve in this music a certain measure of the character of living improvisation. What we too often do, on the contrary, is to petrify them. One cannot say that they are a caricature of the work of Handel. They are rather a negation of it. When one studies with a minute care every detail of the work, when one has attained from the orchestra a precision of attack, an ensemble, a justness, an irreproachable finish, we have yet done nothing more than raise up the mere figure of this genial improvisator.

Further, there is with his instrumental music, as with his vocal music, nearly always an intimate and picturesque expression. For Handel, as with his friend Geminiani, "the aim of instrumental music is not only to please the ear, but to express the sentiments, the emotions, to paint the feelings."[349] It reflects not only the interior world, but it also turns to the actual spectacle of things.[350] It is a precise poetry, and if one cannot define the sources of his inspiration, one can often find in certain of his instrumental works the souvenir of days and journeys, and of scenes visited and experienced by Handel. It was here that he was visibly inspired by Nature.[351]

Others have a relations.h.i.+p with vocal and dramatic works. Certain of the heroic fugues in the fourth book of the Clavier pieces published in 1735 were taken up again by Handel in his _Israel in Egypt_ and clothed with words which agreed precisely with their hidden feeling. The first _Allegro_ from the Fourth Organ Concerto (the first book appeared in 1738) soon became shortly afterwards one of the prettiest of the choruses in _Alcina_. The second and monumental concerto for two horns in F Major[352] is a reincarnation of some of the finest pages from _Esther_. It was quite evident to the public of his time that the instrumental works had an expressive meaning, or that as Geminiani wrote, "all good music ought to be an imitation of a fine discourse."

Thus the publisher Walsh was justified in issuing his six volumes of Favourite Airs from Handel's operas and oratorios, arranged as _Sonatas for the flute, violin, and harpsichord_, and Handel himself, or his pupil, W. Babell, arranged excellently for the clavier, some suites of airs from the operas, binding them together with preludes, interludes, and variations.--It is necessary always to keep in view this intimate relation of the instrumental works of Handel with the rest of his music.

It ought to draw our attention more and more to the expressive contents of these works.

The instrumental music of Handel divides itself into three cla.s.ses: firstly--music for the clavier (the clavecin and organ); secondly--chamber music (sonatas and trios); thirdly--orchestral music.

The compositions for clavier are the most popular works of any that Handel wrote, and these have achieved the greatest number of European editions. Although they comprise three volumes, yet there is only one, the first, which represents him properly, for it is the only one which he prepared himself, and supervised. The others, more or less fraudulently published, misrepresent him.

This First Volume, published in November, 1720, under the French t.i.tle _Suites_, etc., affords us the means of appreciating the two most striking of Handel's traits: his precocious maturity, which hardly developed at all in the course of time; and the European universality of character which distinguished his art even at an epoch when the great artists were less national than they are to-day. For the first trait one would remark in fine that these Clavier Pieces published in 1720 had already been written some time, certainly before 1700. One discovers a part of them in the _Jugendbuch_ of the Lennard Collection.[353] Others come from _Almira_, 1705. Naturally Handel enlarged and revised, and carefully grouped all these pieces in his edition of 1720. The interest of the _Jugendbuch_ is chiefly that it shows us the first sketches of the pieces, and how Handel perfected them. Side by side with the oldest pieces there are others more recent, composed, it may be, in Italy or in England.[354] One can trace in these pages the course of the different influences. Seiffert and Fleischer have noted some of them,[355] German influences, French, and Italian.[356] In England even, sometimes Italian elements, sometimes German, predominated with him.[357] The order of the dances varies in each Suite, and also the central point, the kernel of the work. The introductory pieces are sometimes preludes, sometimes fugues, overtures, etc. The dances and the airs are sometimes related to one another, and sometimes independent, and nevertheless the prevailing impression of the work, so varied in its texture, is its complete unity. The personality of Handel holds it all together and welds the most diverse elements--polyphony and richness of German harmony, Italian h.o.m.ophony, and Scarlattian technique, the French rhythm and ornamentation[358] with English directness and practicability. Thus the work made its impression on the times. Before this time, there had perhaps been more original volumes of pieces for the clavier, but their inspiration was nearly always very much circ.u.mscribed by the limits of their national art. Handel was the first of the great German cla.s.sics of the eighteenth century. He did for music what the French writers and philosophers of the eighteenth century did for literature. He wrote for all and sundry, and his volume took the place on the day of its publication which it has held since, that of a European cla.s.sic.

The following volumes are less interesting for the reasons I have given.

The Second Volume published in 1733 by Walsh, _unknown_ to Handel, and in a very faulty manner, gives us little pieces which we find in the _Jugendbuch_, and which date from the time of Hamburg and Halle.[359]

They lack the setting which Handel had certainly planned for them: preludes and fugues.

This arrangement was ready; and Handel, frustrated by this publisher, resigned himself to publis.h.i.+ng them later on, as an Appendix to the preceding work: _Six Fugues or Voluntaries for the Organ or Harpsichord, 1735, Opus 3._ These fugues date from the time when Handel was at Canons before 1720, the second in G Major was from the period of his first sojourn in England. They became celebrated at once, and were much circulated in ma.n.u.script even in Germany.[360] Handel had trained himself in fugue in the school of Kuhnau, and specially with Johann Krieger.[361] Like them he gave his Fugues an essentially melodic character. They are so suited for singing that two of them, as we have said, afterwards served for two choruses in the first part of _Israel_,[362] but Handel's compositions possess a far different vitality from that of his German forerunners. They have a charming intrepidity, a fury, a pa.s.sion, a fire which belongs only to him. In other words they live. "All the notes talk," says Mattheson. These fugues have the character of happy improvisations, and in truth they were improvised. Handel calls them Voluntaries, that is fanciful and learned caprices. He made frequent use of double fugues with a masterly development. "Such an art rejoices the hearer and warms the heart towards the composer and towards the executant," says Mattheson again, who, after having heard J. S. Bach, found Handel the greater in the composition of the double fugue and in improvisation. This habit of Handel--one might say almost a craving--for improvising, was the origin of the grand Organ Concertos. After the fas.h.i.+on of his time, Handel conducted his operas and oratorios from the clavier. He accompanied the singers with a marvellous art, blending himself to their fancy, and when the singer had done, he delivered his version.[363] From the interludes on the clavier in his operas, he pa.s.sed to the fantasies or caprices on the organ in the _entr'actes_ of his oratorios, and his success was so great that he never again abandoned this custom. One might say that the public were drawn to his oratorios more by his improvisations on the organ than by the oratorios themselves. Two volumes of the Organ Concertos were published during the lifetime of Handel, in 1738 and in 1740; the third a little after his death, in 1760.[364] To judge them properly it is necessary to bear in mind that they were destined for the theatre. It would be absurd to expect works in the strict, vigorous, and involved style of J. S. Bach. They were brilliant _divertiss.e.m.e.nts_, of which the style, somewhat commonplace yet luminous and pompous, preserves the character of oratorio improvisations, finding their immediate effect on the great audience. "_When he gave a concerto_,"

says Hawkins, "_his method in general was to introduce it with a voluntary movement on the diapasons, which stole on the ear in a slow and solemn progression; the harmony close wrought, and as full as could possibly be expressed; the pa.s.sages concatenated with stupendous art, the whole at the same time being perfectly intelligible, and carrying the appearance of great simplicity. This kind of prelude was succeeded by the concerto itself, which he executed with a degree of spirit and firmness that no one can ever pretend to equal_." Even at the height of the cabal which was organised against Handel, the Grub Street Journal published an enthusiastic poem on Handel's Organ Concertos.[365]

"_Oh winds, softly, softly raise your golden wings among the branches!_ _That all may be silent, make even the whisperings of Zephyrs to cease._ _Sources of life, suspend your course...._ _Listen, listen, Handel the incomparable plays!..._ _Oh look, when he, the powerful man, makes the forces of the organ resound,_ _Joy a.s.sembles its cohorts, malice is appeased, ..._ _His hand, like that of the Creator, conducts his n.o.ble work with order, with grandeur and reason...._ _Silence, bunglers in art! It is nothing here to have the favour of great lords. Here, Handel is king._"

It is necessary then to view these Organ Concertos in the proper sense of magnificent concerts for a huge public.[366] Great shadows, great lights, strong and joyous contrasts, all are conceived in view of a colossal effect. The orchestra usually consists of two oboes, two violins, viola, and ba.s.ses (violoncellos, ba.s.soons, and cembalo), occasionally two flutes, some contraba.s.sos and a harp.[367] The concertos are in three or four movements, which are generally connected in pairs. Usually they open with a _pomposo_, or a _staccato_, in the style of the French overture,[368] often an _allegro_ in the same style follows. For the conclusion, an _allegro moderato_, or an _andante_, somewhat animated, sometimes some dances. The _adagio_ in the middle is often missing, and is left to be improvised on the organ. The form has a certain relation with that of the sonata in three movements, _allegro-adagio-allegro_, preceded by an introduction. The first pieces of these two first concertos published in Volume XLVIII of the Complete Edition (second volume) are in a picturesque and descriptive style. The long Concerto in F Major in the same volume has the swing of festival music, very closely allied to the open-air style. Finally, one must notice the beautiful experiment, unfortunately not continued, of the Concerto for two organs,[369] and that, more astonis.h.i.+ng still, of a Concerto for Organ terminated by a Chorus,[370] thus opening the way for Beethoven's fine Symphony, and to his successors, Berlioz, Liszt, and Mahler.[371]

The chamber music of Handel proves to be of the same precocious maturity as his clavier music.

Six Sonatas in Trio for two oboes and harpsichord[372] appear to date from about 1696, when he was eleven years old, and while he was still at Halle, where he wrote as he said, "like the devil," above all for the oboe, his favourite instrument. They are in four movements: _adagio_, _allegro_, _adagio_, _allegro_. The slow movements are often very short, and the second between them is sometimes a mere transition. The Sonata for _Viola da Gamba_, and _Cembalo Concertato_ in C Major[373] probably belongs to 1705, when Handel was at Hamburg. It is the only one of its kind in the works of Handel, which shows him as a forerunner of Bach.

The sonata is in trio form. The clavier plays a second _obbligato_ besides the ba.s.s part, as Seiffert notes: "Ten years before Bach worked at his Sonatas with accompaniment for _cembalo obbligato_, Handel had already a clear perception of their value."

Three Sonatas for Flute and Ba.s.s,[374] of an elegiac grace, also perhaps date from the Halle period, and according to Chrysander seem to have been continued up to 1710 at Hanover.

But the chief instrumental chamber works written by Handel were published in London between 1732 and 1740, and they comprise three volumes:[375]

(1) Fifteen sonatas or solos for a German flute, oboe or violin, with a thorough ba.s.s for the harpsichord, or ba.s.s violin, Op. 1.

(2) Nine sonatas or trios for two violins, flutes, or oboes, with a thorough ba.s.s for the harpsichord, or violoncello, Op. 2.

(3) Seven sonatas or trios for two violins, or German flutes, with a thorough ba.s.s for the harpsichord, or violoncello, Op. 5.

The first volume contains very old pieces, of which some date from the time when Handel was at Burlington and Chandos. Others might have been intended for the Prince of Wales, whose violin teacher, John Dubourg, was a friend of Handel, as they date from about 1730. The second volume appeared at first in Amsterdam, afterwards in London with Walsh, under a French t.i.tle[376] in 1733.

The third volume was composed in 1738, and published about the beginning of 1739.[377]

The first feature to notice in general is the want of definition in the choice of instruments for which this music was written. Following the same abstract aesthetic of his time, the composer left it to the players to choose the instruments. However, there was no doubt that in the first conception of Handel certain of these pieces were made for the flute, others for the violin, and others for the oboe.

In the volume Op. 1 of the solo sonatas (for the flute or oboe, or violin) with ba.s.s (harpsichord or violoncello), the usual form is generally in four movements:[378] _adagio_, _allegro_, _adagio_, _allegro_. The slow pieces are very short. Several are inspired by the airs of Italian cantatas and operas. Some of the pieces are joined together.[379] The harmony is often thin, and requires to be filled in.

The second and third volumes have a much greater value, containing trios or sonatas in two parts (for two violins, or two oboes, or two _flauti-traversi_) with Ba.s.s (harpsichord or violoncello). All the sonatas in the second volume, with only one exception,[380] have four movements, two slow and two fast alternatively, as in the Opus 1.

Sometimes they are inspired by the airs of the operas, or of the oratorios; at other times they have furnished a brief sketch for them.

The elegiac _Largo_ which opens the First Sonata is found again in _Alessandro_, the _allegro_ which finishes the Third Sonata forms one of the movements in the overture of _Athaliah_, the larghetto of the Fourth serves for the second movement of the _Esther_ overture. Other pieces have been transferred to the clavier or other instrumental works, where they are joined to other movements. The finest of these Trios are the First and the Ninth, both of enchanting poetry. In the second movement of the Ninth Trio, Handel has utilised very happily a popular English theme.

The Seven Trios from the third volume afford a much greater variety in the style and in the number[381] of the pieces. Dances occupy a great part.[382] They are indeed veritable Suites. They were composed in the years when Handel was attracted by the form of ballet-opera. The Musette and the _Allegro_ of the Second Sonata come from _Ariodante_.

Some of the other slow and pompous movements are borrowed from his oratorios. The two _Allegri_ which open the Fourth Sonata are taken from the Overture of _Athaliah_. On the other hand, Handel inserts in the final movement of _Belshazzar_ the beautiful _Andante_ which opens his First Sonata.

Whoever wishes to judge these works historically or from the intellectual point of view, will find, like Chrysander, that Handel has not invented here any new forms, and, as he advanced, he returned to the form of the Suite, which already belonged to the past, instead of continuing on his way towards the future Sonata. But those who will judge them artistically, for their own personal charm, will find in them some of the purest creations of Handel, and those which best retain their freshness. Their beautiful Italian lines, their delicate expression, their aristocratic simplicity, are refres.h.i.+ng alike to the mind and to the heart. Our own epoch, tired of the post-Beethoven and post-Wagnerian art, can find here, as in the chamber music of Mozart, a safe haven, where it can escape the sterile agitation of the present and find again quiet peace and sanity.