Among other important local musicians mention should be made of Gaetano Veneziano (d. 1716), a Provenzale disciple, who succeeded Scarlatti in the post of royal conductor in 1704, holding the position until 1707. He was particularly known for his oratorios, of which Il Sacrifizio di Elia, composed in 1704, was still a favorite when Handel was in Naples. Another notable figure was Domenico Sarri (1679-1744), whose many operas, oratorios, and Masses were all produced for Naples.
Since the Oratorians had a branch in Naples that was at least as active as the original Philippine group in Rome, the oratorio flourished in the viceregal city. Unfortunately, very little is known about it before Mancini’s time. In particular, it is difficult to differentiate between the very popular dramma sacro, a “sacred opera” fully staged, and the ordinary opera seria and oratorio, especially since Oratorians, conservatories, and other groups and institutions cultivated the various genres. These sacred operas abound in buffo scenes that show a kinship with the older Roman opera and with their pronounced naturalism laid the foundation for the Neapolitan opera buffa, which was shortly to conquer the world. Sumptuous choral music was heard in the churches, and Handel, always eager to try out church organs—there were dozens of them to be tried in Naples—must have heard much sacred music by contemporary composers.
Then we come to Handel’s own generation of Neapolitans, just beginning to make themselves felt on the contemporary scene. Among these early ripening southerners special attention is due to Nicola Porpora (1686-1768), who entered the conservatory at the age of ten to study with Greco. His Agrippina, produced in 1708, was lost neither on Cardinal Grimani nor on Handel. We shall meet Porpora again in London, where, next to Bononcini, he was Handel’s most troublesome rival.
Naples had two opera houses, San Bartolomeo and the Teatro dei Fiorentini, but operas were also produced in the great hall of the royal palace, in the conservatories, the convents, and the monasteries. This brisk operatic life was enhanced by a merry rivalry caused by Scarlatti’s rather capricious coming and going. Whenever he was away, legally or illegally, the capable—and impatient—resident musicians jockeyed for a favorable position to capture the coveted post of royal conductor, but so great was Scarlatti’s prestige that whenever he was willing to return, even after years of unauthorized absence, the position was immediately restored to him; and this in spite of some very questionable intrigues by his family, in particular by one of his sisters of somewhat liberal moral views and easy virtue. When Cardinal Grimani became viceroy, the merry-go-round was once more arrested by Scarlatti’s reinstatement.
The opera houses, the churches, and the great private residences loom large in the historian’s view; their accomplishments are recorded in word and picture. But the Neapolitan countryside too was full of music, not the 19th-century commercial Neapolitan “folksong” the modern tourist hears but age-old genuine folk music. Handel’s fondness for southern Italian dance patterns and tunes, for the “pastoral symphony” and the siciliana, is well known. Though he must have heard most of these in Rome—Corelli, Scarlatti, Pasquini, and all the others frequently used them —once more the spirit of the place had attractions that could not be apprehended from a distance.
Having composed the cantata Partenza as a farewell to Rome in May 1708, Handel must have left immediately for Naples, because on June 16 he records the completion of the serenata Aci, Galatea, e Polifemo, written for a princely wedding in Naples on the nineteenth of July. July also yielded the fine vocal trio, Se tu non lasci amore. From this point onward we have no accurate information about Handel’s activity until he reappears at the Ottoboni palace in the spring of 1709, but various facts can be established from circumstantial evidence.
Cardinal Grimani, an able diplomat who had to step gingerly between Spain, Austria, and the Papal States, was a passionate lover and patron of music, as well as a good judge of talent. He recognized not only the genius of the mature and celebrated elder Scarlatti but also that of young Domenico and Handel. (Handel’s friend from Rome, Alessandro Scarlatti, had also returned to Naples soon after Handel’s arrival, and he undoubtedly stood by his young colleague.) The Cardinal presented to his German protégé the libretto of Agrippina, which Handel set to music in Naples, and the churchman-diplomat was obviously paving the way for the production of their joint work in Venice, in the family-owned theatre of San Grisostomo. Why the work had not been produced in Naples, where there were ample facilities for even the most lavish production and where Cardinal Grimani had even more power than in Venice, is not clear. However, Naples was still far behind Venice in prestige and the shrewd and experienced Cardinal must have justly concluded that even a modest success in Venice was to be preferred to a triumph in “provincial” Naples.
An unexplained and curious interlude of the Neapolitan days is represented by a set of French chansons Handel composed for a solo voice with accompaniment. It is rather puzzling that he suddenly took to the writing of chansons. While his ability to express himself in a strange idiom is once more astounding, it is difficult to account for the occasion that prompted the young man, avidly assimilating Italian music, to set to music French texts, and of all places in Naples. Rolland suggests the presence of a French singer, which is not implausible. Another oddity is the only cantata Handel wrote on a Spanish text, with guitar accompaniment.
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THE VENETIAN CHAPTER IN Handel’s Italian journey is, if anything, even more barren of documents than the Neapolitan. He arrived in the fall of 1709 and left in the spring of 1710. We do not even know what he composed there, for Agrippina originated in Naples and was ready for performance when Handel arrived in the Adriatic metropolis of opera. We are therefore reduced to the one known fact of the period, the production and tremendous success of Agrippina, and to a few conjectures on such matters as the whereabouts of the Scarlattis, the presence or absence of Agostino Steffani, and the reasons for Handel’s leaving Italy for Hanover.
With Agrippina Cardinal Grimani gave Handel a typically Venetian plot of intrigue: three pairs of lovers furnished opportunity for dozens of arias and permutations of love interest that were particularly appreciated by the public, who also liked the deft satire on lust for political power. Considering Handel’s subsequent career as an opera composer, it is perhaps surprising that this firstling was not a heroic opera seria; it has buffo scenes, even buffo ensembles, among them a fine trio. Though Agrippina still has a large number of basso continuo arias, it also contains several great concerted arias and in general shows a very good knowledge of Venetian opera, especially the works of Pollarolo and Legrenzi, some of which of course he heard in Naples. The opera also shows acquaintance with the advanced Venetian orchestral accompaniment. This is a remarkable and prophetic score despite certain shortcomings. It stayed with Handel all his life, and some of its engaging melodies reappear even in his last work, The Triumph of Time and Truth.
Agrippina was first presented in San Giovanni Grisostomo December 26, 1709, and ran for twenty-seven nights—an unparalleled success not only in Venice but anywhere in the 18th century for an initial run. The Venetians were bowled over and Handel became their darling. Such a triumph, of course, brought world fame, because any successful Venetian production immediately made the rounds of the Italian operatic dependencies abroad. Cardinal Grimani’s calculations had proved to be correct. Between Rodrigo and Agrippina there had been less than two years and no other opera, yet during those months Handel rose from apprentice to master of opera.
With this memorable premiere Handel’s Venetian sojourn, indeed the Italian journey, ends, and biographers immediately turn their attention to Hanover and London. But surely several months’ residence in what was then the hub of both operatic and instrumental music of the most progressive kind should not be ignored in the life of a composer who shows the Venetian influence from Rinaldo (1711) to Serse (1738). However, before taking a look at the Venetian scene there are a few loose ends that must be tied.
Mainwaring insist
s that La Bombace was in Venice during Handel’s visit, singing in one of the other opera houses, and if so Handel had a tried companion to seek solace with. A somewhat younger friend was Domenico Scarlatti. There is a story, hotly disputed, that Handel travelled to Venice in the company of one or both of the Scarlattis or of Steffani—or all three. It really does not matter; he knew all three of them well and since the elder Scarlatti and the distinguished Titular Bishop Steffani were great travellers—and opera composers—they must have been in and out of Venice, while Domenico had been domiciled there for some time. The younger Scarlatti, who was of his own age, became Handel’s boon companion. An experienced musician, he had already held several positions of responsibility and was a successful composer of not particularly accomplished operas. This very attractive young man blossomed into a great master much later than Handel, and when he did, he forsook opera for the keyboard; therefore as a composer his influence on Handel was nil. It has been suggested that Handel profited from Scarlatti’s keyboard music, but Scarlatti’s magnificent “sonatas” or “exercises” are from a much later period. Nor is there any Handelian influence to be found in Scarlatti. Both young men were experimenting and taking in the scene. Different as they were, they found each other’s company very congenial. Domenico was the exact opposite of Handel: an introvert who shunned publicity, and though a fabulous virtuoso (which undoubtedly was the quality in him that fascinated Handel), he never played in public. But two things they had in common: Domenico was just as uncommunicative about himself as Handel, and his travels are as difficult to follow as Handel’s.
We know that during Lent, 1709, Domenico was in Rome, but there can be no question that a good deal of 1709 was spent in Venice, where his knowledge of the place and the people must have been a great help to Handel. After Handel left Italy the two friends never met again, for the story of Domenico’s London journey is pure fabrication. It is very difficult to ascertain when they were together in Venice. The fleeting visit Handel was supposed to have made to Venice in 1708 is improbable though not to be ruled out. Domenico Scarlatti was then definitely in Venice studying with Gasparini. Every biographer delights in telling an anecdote supposed to have taken place on the occasion of the “first” Venetian visit. Handel, though disguised at a masked ball, was recognized when he sat down at the harpsichord: “If this is not the Saxon,” exclaimed Domenico, “it can only be the devil”—or something like that. Unfortunately, variants of the engaging story are so many, and applied to so many musicians, that the anecdote must be considered a biographical ostinato. Though Scarlatti was in Rome during Lent of 1708 too, that is, during the “season,” when the great residences had their private performances (he was then music master to Maria Casimira), the whole year is by no means accounted for; given the Scarlattis’ very mobile inclinations and the great attraction of Venice for all opera composers, we should think that several months of 1709-10 were spent there, and that it was on Handel’s “second” journey that the two young men roamed the town together.
In connection with Domenico we must mention the two Marcello brothers, Alessandro (1684-1750) and Benedetto (1686-1739), Venetian patricians and amateurs of Handel’s age. Though they called themselves amateurs (Nobile Veneto dilettante di contrappunto was Benedetto’s phrase), the sole reason for this modesty was the fact that, being wealthy, they did not have to make a living from music. As composers and men of letters they were both first-class professionals. One of Alessandro’s oboe concertos was long held to be by Sebastian Bach, who transcribed it for harpsichord (it has also been assigned to Vivaldi and to Benedetto). Although Benedetto’s Psalm settings, which were still admired by Verdi, and other excellent compositions date from later years, performances of his works in Venice began in 1707. Alessandro’s cantatas appeared in print in 1708. Both of these cultivated humanists were to make their impress on music history, but what interests us here is their “salon,” the meeting place of Venice’s artistic and literary elite, where concerts were frequently given. Although nothing is known about Handel’s relationship to them, Domenico was a frequent visitor and must have taken along his bosom friend.
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HANDEL FOUND A musical life in Venice that for splendor, intensity, and variety far surpassed anything he had so far seen, and of course here he finally found the mainstream of opera, his chief reason for leaving Hamburg. Always a progressive center of music, Venice had been in the forefront since the early 16th century. It was the home of the inception of the music-printing industry, of the madrigal, of the brilliant instrumental music that arose at the end of the Renaissance, and of the colorful polychoral art. By 1637 Venice became indisputable leader in the new art of opera, harboring among its local composers none other than Monteverdi. While Venice later lost this position to Naples, it was still held by her when Handel arrived. Even in that incredibly rich musical life of Italy, with great regional centers such as Rome, Bologna, Brescia, Ferrara, and Naples, Venice occupied a special place of honor. The Venetians, clear-sighted, adaptable, and artistic, learned from all and were blind followers of none. Musicians from everywhere came to the city and settled down, the second generation becoming native in more than one sense. From there they colonized the European operatic world: Vienna, Dresden, Munich, Berlin, and even London. Many of the qualities and techniques ascribed to Neapolitan opera were really developed in Venice, and we should beware of using the term “Neapolitan opera” without qualification.
Venice had as many opera houses as it had parishes, and several of them were active at the same time. Almost all of the theatres, though open to the public and operated for profit, belonged to Venetian patricians who, like the Grimanis, liked to run them personally, though they also rented them to entrepreneurs. The Grimanis actually owned two other theatres besides San Grisostomo. The production of operas proceeded at a fantastic rate—at least a hundred new operas during the first decades of the 18th century—and this in spite of the fluctuation of fad and fashion. Important changes had taken place in the development of Venetian opera since the days of Cavalli and Cesti, changes due partly to economic, partly to literary and artistic causes. The public opera house was a commercial undertaking, and managers began to cut corners to make the enterprise profitable, eliminating such expensive factors as the professional chorus and reducing the large cast to a handful of principals. Cavalli’s magnificent choral scenes disappeared. Then the mythical-pastoral world of the Renaissance from which the librettos were derived gradually changed into the historical-political.16
Handel of course heard the operas of the contemporary masters, but many of the previous generation’s works were still being sung. That he studied Venetian opera from the ground up is shown by his borrowing from the opening “sonata” of Cesti’s Il Pomo d’oro. Legrenzi’s memory was still very much alive and his music performed when Handel surveyed the Venetian scene. Handel was acquainted with and already used the da capo aria in Hamburg, but Legrenzi’s arias must have surprised him. Here Handel could study at first hand the reconciliation of musical with dramatic logic, for while Legrenzi was the first champion of the da capo aria as the main lyric frame in opera, he did not adhere to a pattern; many of his arias are through-composed, and he set the text with great fidelity while retaining a remarkable flexibility. Legrenzi’s operas are of heroic Baroque proportions, and like his contemporaries he indulged in comic scenes within the opera seria. His fine church and instrumental music was also heard everywhere. Handel copied one of his six-part motets and later used it in Samson. This great Venetian was among the first masters of the trio sonata, which prepared for the classic synthesis of Corelli, and his motets and Psalm settings testify to a mastery of the Palestrina style. Handel was not the only one to be fascinated by this music; next to Vivaldi, Legrenzi was Bach’s favorite Italian.
Within a year or two before Handel’s arrival, several highly successful operas were produced, such as Ziani’s Meleagro and Alessandro Scarlatti’s Mitridate Eupatore; Ariosti and Caldara too
were in and out of Venice with several works, and all these operas were still in the repertory. Ziani’s bold and virtuoso use of winds and strings opened new horizons; its lessons were later brilliantly utilized in the Water Music.
Antonio Caldara (c. 1670-1736), who later became an ornament of the Viennese court as co-regent with Fux of the capital’s musical life, was a Venetian, a disciple of Legrenzi. He was a restless traveller before settling in Vienna in 1716, and his path presumably crossed Handel’s repeatedly. This prolific composer of operas, oratorios, and a great deal of excellent church and instrumental music had a particularly felicitous sense for spacious, euphonious sound—again the Palestrinian legacy—which made him famous all over Italy.17 Handel met him in Rome, where Caldara was one of Cardinal Ottoboni’s favorites, or in Venice, probably in both places.
Another celebrity was Carlo Francesco Pollarolo (1653-1722), a pupil and colleague of Legrenzi, who was attached to St. Mark’s Cathedral from 1692 until his death. Some of his many operas (we know seventy-three titles) were always in the repertory and enjoyed great popularity. Tomaso Albinoni (1671-1750), another native Venetian who is slowly beginning to reach modern audiences, was a highly regarded opera and instrumental composer from whom Bach borrowed fugue themes. Handel could not have overlooked this inventive and progressive composer. There were many others, but the commanding personality of Venetian music was Antonio Lotti (1667-1740), a Venetian by birth and the incarnation of Venetian High Baroque by accomplishment.
George Frideric Handel_Dover Books on Music Page 13
