Now Handel reaches into his own choral reservoir: his Dixit Dominus of the Roman days furnished the material for “He rebuked the Red Sea.” Dixit Dominus was the masterpiece of his youth; now the mature and experienced musician recasts it, and the Italian piece sounds altogether English. The Chandos Anthem, The Lord is my light, is converted into “But the waters overwhelmed their enemies,” again perfectly at home in its new habitat. The first part (the second of the work as originally planned) ends with another loan from Stradella, assuming the shape of “And believed the Lord.”
The second part rises to new heights of splendor. Now Handel does his own work and does it in the grandest of the grand manner; everything is on a large scale, neither composer nor listener has time for meditation. Indeed, he seldom wrote a more dazzling choral piece than “I will sing unto the Lord,” a great anthem for double chorus. Another original piece is “And I will exalt him,” a fine double fugue. Erba’s Magnificat and Urio’s Te Deum furnished the material for several of the following numbers, but always with original touches added by Handel. We should really be thankful that these two minor composers existed for assuredly their music became ennobled and immortalized. “The people shall hear” is once more Handel at his most exultant and triumphant, a tremendous double chorus full of strokes of genius in the interpretation of the words. This piece is more dramatic than epic, with telling pauses, exclamations, sudden turns, and complicated polyphony alternating with block chords. Nor does the music sag after this heaven-storming, as Handel, his dramatic sense alert, follows the paean with a gentle piece, “Thou shalt bring them in,” only to explode anew with “The Lord shall reign,” an anthem for double chorus, and still another one, “Sing ye the Lord.”
The solo pieces are pale compared to this splendor, although the alto aria, “Thou didst blow with the wind,” is engaging, with its undulating accompaniment depicting wind and water. Since they are impersonal, Handel fell back on his vast experience and bedecked them with coloraturas. The same might be said about the duets, though they are well worked out, if somewhat archaic in Steffani’s style. “The Lord is my strength,” a canonic duet, hails from Erba’s Magnificat (though he would scarcely recognize it), while “Thou in thy mercy” switches to Urio, this time verbatim, but the orchestral accompaniment is new. The third duet, “The Lord is a man of war,” is interesting because this time Handel leans on both of these mysterious Italians, the patchwork recalling the old chanson fricassée of the 16th century.
Israel in Egypt remains unique among Handel’s oratorios as, in its way, Messiah is unique. It has no dramatic plot, no individual characters, and since Handel freighted himself with borrowings from the past century, a certain archaic touch repeatedly makes itself felt. Julian Herbage calls this curious work “Handel’s most superbly magnificent failure,” a judgment that comes closest to the truth. For, whatever the objections, the choruses are great music, and they offer a wide variety of mood and technique, ranging from grim intensity to tender humility, from simple narrative to grandiose jubilation. Every device in the choral arsenal is used, choral recitative and arioso, fugue and double fugue, through-composed dramatic setting, and so on. And we should bear in mind that some of these choral pieces are exceptional not only in Handel’s copious output, but in the entire choral literature. Another noteworthy feature of Israel in Egypt is the role assigned to the orchestra, which remains independent and colorful even in the polyphonic choral numbers. As to the “embarrassing” borrowings, a course in composition could be based on the study of Handel’s reworking of the loot.
All of this goes to show that something must be done in the way of proper presentation of Israel in Egypt to salvage its greatness and diminish its flaws. By eliminating most of the solos, recitatives, and duets, as well as the archaic pieces such as the Kerll canzona, we would gain a sequence of exceptionally fine choral pieces. This would amount to a concert, but then Israel in Egypt is in fact a choral concert; we can turn it into a “benefit”—for our enrichment. Though the choruses are disconnected, at times they do form certain groups, unified by repetition or even a suite-like pattern. These groups should be retained intact whenever possible but separated from one another by concertos as Handel separated the acts by playing such pieces. An avalanche of great choral music can easily cause fatigue, and this may well have been the chief reason for the original failure of Israel in Egypt. Instrumental interludes would ease this congestion very effectively. And of course a proper beginning must be provided for in the form of an overture, of which there are many fine ones buried with unknown operas.
Israel in Egypt was a failure, and it is sad to watch Handel tampering with the score within a week. Since the public’s reserve was presumably due to the preponderance of choruses, the remedy was obviously dictated : the second of the total of three performances was “shorten’d and intermix’d with Songs,” and Italian songs at that!
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WHEREVER WE LOOK we see only failures and near failures, but if the experience brought Handel disillusionment, it certainly did not give him pause. In September and October he composed the Ode for St. Cecilia’s Day and his chief orchestral works, the Concerti Grossi, Opus 6. These, as well as sundry new organ concertos, were to be played between the acts of the English works. The 1739 season at the Haymarket Theatre, though precarious, was peaceful. Handel had learned to live and let live (or was he soothed by the character of the competition?), since a modus vivendi had evidently been arrived at with Covent Garden, where an opera company under Pescetti was functioning. Giovanni Battista Pescetti (c. 1704-1766), a pupil of Lotti, was originally appointed to replace Porpora. With the demise of the Opera of the Nobility he was left on his own, staying for a few years in London before returning to his native Venice, where his presence is attested in 1747. A composer of modest talent, he presented no threat to Handel. That some sort of amicable arrangement was made between the two establishments is clear from their respective calendars, and even more from the fact that they shared several of the singers.
During October or early November Handel decided to return to his own management, leasing the Theatre Royal in Lincoln’s Inn Fields from Rich. He gathered an English company, and the season opened on November 22 with Alexander’s Feast and the Ode for St. Cecilia’s Day. The advertisements refer to Mr. Dryden’s “New Ode,” or even to “Mr. Dryden’s Last New Ode,” but actually this was the earlier, and lesser, of Dryden’s two Cecilian odes. Unlike Alexander’s Feast, this is the traditional Cecilian ode in which there is no plot, no epic story-telling, but a simple eulogy of the saint and of music, expressed through the praise of the individual musical instruments. While it is undeniable that there is some conventional music in Handel’s Ode and that the composer depends rather heavily on Gottlieb Muffat’s Componimenti Musicali per il Cembalo, this short and relatively minor work is an attractive piece, very Purcellian, and beautifully worked.79 The manner in which the borrowings from Muffat were absorbed and developed affords a liberal education in the art of imaginative craftsmanship.
The arias are beguiling. The one for soprano with solo cello, “What passion cannot Music raise and quell?,” is a ravishing saraband; the tenor aria, “The trumpet’s loud clangour,” is proud, with a graceful nod to Purcell. Surely no one should call it a “Kampfszene,” nor is the unassuming march a “Siegesmarsch”; what we witness is a delightful game to bring into relief “The soft complaining flute” for soprano, with its delectable accompaniment of flute and lute. The aria is a delicate piece, even if a little conventional. The tenor aria, “Sharp violins proclaim their jealous pangs,” is not so sharp as it is coquettish, rather belying “fury and frantic indignation,” but the tune is a spanking good one and wittily developed. As usual, at the mention of the organ Handel is emotionally involved; the soprano sings “The sacred organ’s praise” in a most engagingly tender air. When Handel accompanied this aria on the organ, the public was treated to some extraordinary improvisations; we, unfortunately, must be sat
isfied with what is printed in the score. The soprano continues with “Orpheus could lead the savage race,” an aria with the inscription Alla Hornpipe. This old English dance, which Handel knew from Purcell’s theatre music and from the various country-dance anthologies published in the early 18th century, gave him an opportunity to deploy a sharply accented and syncopated orchestral accompaniment. This almost symphonic development of a motif in the orchestra is quite characteristic of the Ode, reflecting the proximity of the Concerti Grossi, Opus 6.
The choral numbers are all of the finest. Especially attractive is the interplay of chorus and orchestra in the opening choral number, “From Harmony, from heavenly Harmony.” When the chorus declaims, the orchestra, elaborating a prickly motif, scurries around the voices; then, when the choral texture becomes more linear, the two groups engage in animated play, running up and down “through all the compass of the notes.” There follows a section, “The diapason closing full in Man,” where over long pedals the original motif in the orchestra, now chastened, becomes elegiac—a truly poetic musical realization of the imagery of the words, light, fragrant, and as English in feeling as Purcell, who himself would have smiled at it with pleasure (as did Chopin, who worshipped the piece).80
The final chorus, alternating with the unaccompanied soprano, is stunning, as is the sudden entrance of the trumpet at the words “The trumpet shall be heard on high.” Now, in the final fugue, “The dead shall live,” Handel rises to grandeur. This is a rich, expansive, and festive piece, yet it is amiable rather than Olympian, as befits Dryden’s poem and the happy occasion. When performed as a componimento da camera, by a modest-sized ensemble and with singers who prefer poetic expression to bawling, the Ode for St. Cecilia’s Day is a most charming piece, easy on the ear.
The year 1739 closed with a revival of Acis and Galatea, and with new concertos, probably from Opus 6. Handel had some time on his hands: London experienced the worst cold in its known history, and the theatres were practically closed for two months. He used part of this unexpected leisure for the composition of L‘Allegro, il Penseroso, ed il Moderato .81 This fine holiday piece is not the work of a troubled or tired man; it is perhaps Handel’s most accomplished pastoral composition, for which Milton supplied the incentive with his wondrous poetic imagery. L’Allegro certainly contradicts the popular image of the Puritan. This is the work of a pure poet, full of sensitivity, sympathy, admiration for the exuberance of nature, and tender feelings. It is not yet the work of the Titan whose awesome creative force will break through the reserve of the crippled, lonely prisoner of darkness. In L‘Allegro Milton is a young poet with a radiant view of life and as yet without the heavy ballast of political-moral philosophy. Nor is L’Allegro affected by the formal, didactic, satirical, and philosophical poetry of the Augustan Age; there is no sign of the spirit of Locke, which banished imagination and the marvelous, nor does it reflect the elegant classical art of the English Rococo of Pope. L’Allegro was the work of a Spenserian poet of exquisite perfection of verbal finish and musical lilt. And this poet, who came from a musical family, knew and understood music, his companion—as was the Bible—from infancy.82
Milton was a friend and collaborator of Henry Lawes, the best- known result of this collaboration being the musical setting of Comus in 1634. The original Comus intrigued many composers and librettists, several of whom made attempts at refurbishing it. Paolo Rolli, who, though house librettist to the various Haymarket Theatre companies, saw the essential exoticism of Italian opera in England, watched the English theatre for usable materials. In 1737 he reworked Milton’s Comus for an opera, Sabrina, but it was a failure. Arne’s Comus (1738) relied on still another version concocted by John Dalton, who “dramatized” Milton’s original book with the aid of additional characters. It has been suggested that Handel was drawn to Milton because of Arne’s new setting of the masque, which is quite possible. There are unmistakable signs that he studied Arne’s music, and perhaps he asked Jennens for a Miltonian libretto; but it is more likely that both the idea and the selection of a poem originated with Jennens.
Jennens’s arrangement of the libretto is altogether praiseworthy; he showed not only skill but very good understanding of the requirements of music. In the original poem (of which about one-third was used) L‘Allegro is a self-contained entity constituting Part One, while Il Penseroso similarly forms its own section as Part Two. Jennens extracted the lines most suitable for musical setting and intermixed them. From the musical point of view this was a remarkably shrewd idea, preventing monotony by encouraging a variety of moods. The construction is also able. First there is a brief exchange in two recitatives and two arias between the Cheerful Man and the Pensive Man, which is in the nature of an introduction, announcing the forthcoming contest. Thereafter the two moods alternate, each having two or more numbers before yielding to the other. While Jennens very commendably sought contrast in the libretto, his attempt to resolve the Miltonian dichotomy by a sort of reconciliation in the third part, of his own devising and called Il Moderato, was unfortunate. Aside from the impossibility of matching Milton’s poetry, the removal of the bucolic quality negated the raison d’être of the poem and inhibited Handel’s imagination. Il Moderato also abandoned Jennens’s excellent device whereby contrasting moods prevented sameness: all of the third part is given over to the Moderate Man.
Milton’s exuberant heaping of image upon image, the lightning swiftness of apprehension that snatches a dozen meanings and compacts them into one, were qualities that found a foil in Handel. In Handel’s rendering of the words there is a depth beneath the surface, a meaning not so much grasped as felt. The description of nature that abounds in L’Allegro is not an end in itself; both Milton and Handel bring nature into harmony with man’s moods. They show him in his sunny moments, as he enjoys life in the countryside or in the teeming city. Opposed is the other mood, the contemplative, ruled by the goddess Melancholy, conjuring up the power of the past, the rewards and pleasures of the theatre, poetry, and music. The work has the ripeness and passion, the truth and experience, and the transfiguring imagination that together make what is lasting in art.
A delightful aspect of L’Allegro is that the arias extend to the chorus invitations that are taken up gracefully and most naturally, the chorus often sharing thematic material with the preceding solo. “Come and trip it as you go” sings the tenor, and the chorus responds with a gentle dance song, but “Laughter, holding both his sides” evokes a polyphonic merriment that makes the listener indeed hold his sides, for nothing like this “laughing chorus” has ever been set to music. “Come, but keep thy wonted state,” with its ground bass and stately air, is entirely Purcellian. “Far from all resort of mirth” has most attractive slow coloraturas, but in the “bird songs” an extraordinary voice and skill is needed to cope with them. Singing skill of the highest order is indeed required everywhere: the ineffable song “Hide me from Day’s garish eye” is consistently in the highest range of the soprano, and elsewhere the singers must vie with the lark and the nightingale.
The bucolic pieces, usually with obbligato instruments, are delightful. Whenever Milton speaks of “sweet birds,” of “hounds and horns,” of the “hedgerow elms or hillocks green,” he evokes from the composer charming musical accents, lovely rhythms, and delectable sounds. (Incidentally, Urio’s Te Deum is still remembered by the flute in “Sweet bird.”) In “Or let the merry bells ring round” Handel uses the carillon he had had constructed for Saul; the descending scales, typical of English church-bell ringing, he knew from Purcell’s “Bell Anthem,” Rejoice in the Lord Alway. In the fine air “Oft on a plat of rising ground,” the deep piz-zicatos in the basses also echo distant church bells. Only once does the Cheerful Man lapse into a pensive mood, in “And ever against eating cares.” Here we see how purely poetic is Handel’s imagination and how he avoids any literal symbolism. The words “in notes with many a winding bout” are set to a melody that does wind gracefully, but so convincingly mu
sical is this pictorialism, and so unobtrusive, that its naturalness is nowhere threatened. Almost any other Baroque composer would have seized the opportunity to set “soft Lydian airs” in the Lydian mode, but while Handel’s music is “soft,” he avoids the obvious symbolism, thereby depriving the exegetes of a splendid document. Such “documents” can be found, though, with a little diligence. It is rather amusing that Handel’s only known Shakespearean “commentary,” “sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy’s child,” is a march bearing the instruction Pomposo: it almost seems that Handel is being a little sarcastic. Later the aria, not a particularly outstanding one, turns into routine virtuoso coloraturas. Here was a chance not to be missed by later commentators, for the coloraturas were immediately declared deeply symbolic and named—the good Lord forgive the namer—“Shakespeare—Koloraturen.”
The choral numbers are mostly intimate and beautifully coordinated with the arias, at times serving as the middle part for da capo combinations. At the end of the first part of L‘Allegro, “Thus past the day, to bed they creep” is admirably expressive—and suggestive—of the mood of being “lull’d asleep.” The chorus hums and buzzes in “The busy hum of men,” and the trumpets and drums fall in with bright fanfares to illustrate “knights and barons.” The ineffable calm and peace of “May at last my hoary age,” with its gentle organ accompaniment, prepare the way for the final choruses, the first of which, a fine fugue, “These pleasures, Melancholy, give,” resurrects a portion of the early Italian trio, Quel fior che all’alba ride (1708).
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