A particular form of “influence,” always looked for, and as we have said, with great suspicion, is the borrowing of musical material from another composer. Some of Handel’s works would shrink appreciably if the above-mentioned subtracting operation were carried out on them. In fact, this has been done and—with the exception of Messiah—he was found sadly wanting. Needless to say, things are not that simple, for obviously the mathematical is not the best approach to art.
What, then, is this “influence” or “dependence” of one artist upon another? It can manifest itself in the acceptance of an artistic view or philosophy that stands in some relation to a concept of life, or it can consist of a leaning to, a preference for, forms and idioms practiced by another composer, or in the taking over of a type, or in the borrowing of materials, even of substantial parts of compositions. The post-Renaissance composers, the practici of the north and west of Europe, still kept a good deal of the respect accorded in the past to the command of the métier, but the new emphasis on melody was seeking a compromise with the tremendous prestige of counterpoint. The new manner of hearing music was a middle road between spontaneous “sentiment” and the construction-conscious objective professional manner of the old masters. But while the increased pace of the dissemination of compositions created an entirely new type of artistic life, the conviction that an artist’s distinction depends more on his productivity and professional skill than on the originality of his material was retained and was strongly shared by Handel. It was an artistic philosophy also evidenced in his steady adherence to such traditional forms as the da capo aria or the concerto grosso. But literal borrowing must be dealt with separately because it was made into a moral issue and confused with “invention” and “originality.”
It is death to his genius, argues Ernest Hemingway, for a writer to write when there is “no water in the well,” to write except when he feels he must. But surely this was not so before the Romantic age. Invention was well regulated in the Age of Reason, and to wait for divine inspiration as in the Romantic era was entirely contrary to the concept of musical composition. The musicians wanted to have as much power over their imagination as they believed the literary men had over theirs. They did recognize a particular form of invention called ex abrupto, inopinato, quasi ex entusiasmo musico (Mattheson), yet “originality” was still not a criterion; the individual masters were only characteristic representatives of the diverse schools and tendencies—that is, of individual artistic castes. The latter developed, within the national trends and schools, the more narrow artistic types, such as the opera maestro, the violin maestro, the cantor. A certain formalism was retained from the older traditions far into the 18th century, notably in the universal validity of certain genres. Thus the international lyric stage, the Neapolitan opera style, produced excellent masters, but they differ from one another only in the degree of their talent; in everything else they represent a type. As late as 1750 a Hasse cannot be distinguished from his Italian colleagues.
A corollary to this absence of originality was the widespread custom of borrowing. Mattheson, in his Der Vollkommene Capellmeister, states that “borrowing is a permissible thing; but one must return the borrowed with interest, that is, one must arrange the borrowed material in such a fashion that it acquires a better esteem [Ansehen] than the setting from which it has been lifted.” Composers borrowed motifs, melodies, and entire movements without ever raising the spectre of plagiarism. It was considered possible and quite proper for one master to take over subjects or entire mood sketches together with all their thematic material, because what mattered was not the originality of the invention but the appropriate affect in the proper place. Handel did not necessarily borrow Urio’s or Carissimi’s music because of the originality of their thematic invention; he incorporated their work into his own because it was appropriate for the representation of a certain type of music. It was ready, in existence; why invent anything new? This was understood by every musician of the age, and no distinction was made between an “original” and a borrowed or converted piece. The musicians used each other’s pens because they knew that there is no such thing as absolute originality in music, and they realized that a new work is the agglomeration of many inspirations, shreds of melodies that come from without, from all manner of sources. A borrowed piece when elaborated or worked in a new context is as much the borrower’s original as it was when first composed. Though it may have been but little changed, it sounds different in its new environment.
Just as the literature of the period did not consider the borrowing of forms and subjects plagiarism, or even remotely connected with moral ideas and values, the musician was free to use accepted and known materials for his own expressive means without being accused of theft, imitation, or weakness. Harold Ogden White 132 showed that except for one or two minor authors, no Elizabethan can be found saying a word against borrowing as such. It was borrowing without proper digesting or reworking that roused their wrath. Pope still shared their views: “It seems not so much the perfection of sense to say things that have never been said before, as to express those best that have been said oftenest.” The task of the artist was to give to a timely and well-known type of mood a new and pleasing shape and to contribute to its inner enrichment. Authors’ rights were practically unenforceable; a composition once printed or acquired in copy was to all intents and purposes in the public domain. At that, it is remarkable that Handel, who knew far more music than most of his colleagues, used so few foreign goods in the shape he found them. He was content to quarry, on occasion, from various sources the materials for his more concentrated art. In most cases he stayed within the limits allowed by convention and was guided simply by his instinctive perception of the potentialities of a particular piece of music.
The layman is convinced that the creative soul is a sort of storage battery which when touched by life will instantly react by discharging electricity in the form of an inspired work of art. Well, the artist may re-semble a battery, but it is one that is constantly being charged, storing up impressions to be used when suitable for certain purposes. Beethoven’s sketchbooks show this abundantly, and so do Handel’s in the Fitzwilliam Museum. The very minute when the borrower looks at the material he is about to use, a process is begun. No matter how much it resembles the original, in the hands of a real artist it becomes a different plant, different sap will flow in its veins, it will acquire a different coloring and will occupy an entirely different spot in the garden into which it was transplanted. Even Handel’s numerous borrowings from his own works sound in their new context quite different, for a different mood and different experiences are attached to them. The literal borrowings in particular need close examination. At times a superficial reading will yield the impression that Handel simply copied, but upon closer inspection all sorts of changes are discovered which, though each may be small, in the aggregate result in a new composition. Also, the original is often greatly enlarged in size and volume, not infrequently to three times its original proportions. It must also be understood that a melody is not at all bound to its erstwhile environment and mood unless it is universally known for that reason, like The Star-Spangled Banner. Even so, well-known hymn tunes, such as A mighty fortress is our God or Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser, can be and have been used in a number of works as a purely constructive element without eliciting any extramusical associations.
To Handel, borrowing was not a diverting game during a pause in his creative activity, but the expression in his own terms of kindred experiences. Often the boundary line between the borrowed and the original is hardly visible, for he was a composer who not only learned the old tricks and formulas from the great store of Western music but who felt and knew the much more mysterious inner forms, the secrets of musical shaping. Among the great of music he is one of the greatest pupils. The masters of the past wanted no more than to be such good pupils, yet many of them became far more original than the phoenixlike Romantics who were convinced that they were
reborn in every new work.
Perhaps the most enlightening and revealing glimpse we get into the mysterious ways of musical genius is offered by Handel’s adaptation of duets. One of his favorite sources for useful reminiscences was his own vocal duets, delightfully sensuous love music whose beautiful undulating melodies radiate Mediterranean charm. He used them in a number of works—not least, horribile dictu, in Messiah. In Theodora, however, Handel did not fall back upon his own duets but borrowed some from Giovanni Maria Clari (1667-1754), a Pisan composer. They are available for comparison, since Chrysander printed them in the supplement to his edition of Handel’s collected works. Handel would take a small segment, often no more than an incipit that none of us would dignify with a second look, and make it the germinal element of a tremendous musical edifice of his own. One marvels at the small alterations that would make a borrowed element coming from a totally different environment exactly right for the occasion. On the other hand, there are many instances when the new text to which a hasty borrowing was adapted failed to raise a spark, and all we see is an incongruous transposition, though such instances occur mostly when he whipped together a pasticcio for a revival of an older work. But if a new text has meaning for him, the transplanted piece may acquire a glow it did not possess heretofore. When borrowing entire movements he leaned to homophonic pieces—his idea of counterpoint was a very individual one. The manner in which he employed his keyboard fugues, by changing a single note, shifting one beat, or dotting one note to make them into models of choral material fills one with never-ending admiration. There is indeed something miraculous about the palingenesis of these “transpositions.” Take a little keyboard fugue that became, in Israel in Egypt, a towering choral monument. Handel did not change much; he skipped some measures and made some adjustments in the part-writing, yet one would swear that the fugue was originally composed for chorus—more, for this particular chorus.
In his old age Handel was more inclined to seek borrowed material. This has been considered a sign of failing inspiration and invention, an interpretation that does not fully explain the situation. In his last original work, Jephtha, which shows him at the height of his creative powers, serene, profoundly engaged, and in unfailing command of the most refined technical mastery, he borrowed more than in any other dramatic oratorio. As we have seen, this time he used a volume of Masses by Habermann. A glance at the Habermann Masses will disclose well-worked compositions from the Czernohorsky-Zelenka wing of Austro-Bohemian music. These are decent, traditional works in the international and altogether impersonal style and idiom of instrumentally accompanied late Baroque church music. What Handel saw in them is impossible to understand, what he did with them defies the imagination; the innocent contrapuntal formulas blossomed into magnificent personal expression. No, neither laziness nor opportunism nor lack of imagination, and least of all moral deficiency, was the cause for this spate of borrowing in his old age. A peculiar inertia had to be overcome, the lassitude of the old and ailing man; and since his fierce creative energy and eagerness were unimpaired, all he needed was a push, a heave to clear the shore and hoist his sails. Almost anything would have served this purpose, for the minute he saw an idea, the fantastic ars combinatoria of old stirred in him, suggesting ways and means to shape the commonplace formula into warm living music. In this he followed the greatest composers from Perotinus to Bach.
Here I should like to quote Hermann Kretzschmar’s fine eulogy of well over half a century ago, when no one else paid much attention to the recastings. Speaking of Laudate pueri he says:
In these reworkings of the same basic ideas one gets a deep insight into Handel’s development and the altogether marvelous gifts of this blessed artist. So rich a measure of creative capacity, healthy feeling, and taste as we encounter when comparing these versions is unsurpassed in the entire history of art.
Only insufficient knowledge of music and its history could have brought critics to their absurd conclusions regarding the nature of Handel’s borrowings. It appears that they have never heard of cantus firmus, soggetto cavato, and parody Mass. Many of the magnificent works of Palestrina and Lasso and hosts of others are built on the principle of borrowing, often a whole motet or chanson. Forty-nine out of Lasso’s fifty-three Masses are “parodies.” Nor have they examined such works as, for instance, Bach’s adaptations of sonatas from Reinken’s Hortus Musicus and his many borrowings from Legrenzi, Albinoni, Corelli, Vivaldi, and others. Bach reworked, shifted, and borrowed as much as Handel; in fact, to such an extent that “the chronology of his works is beclouded, compelling us to exercise the greatest care in judging every work whose time of creation and origin is not accurately known.” 133 He reworked instrumental numbers into vocal ones and vice versa, converted secular into sacred cantatas, and so on. There are cantatas in three known versions, but individual numbers may have more than that. Blume also raises the question that is in our mind: “It is difficult to understand the sense and purpose of these reworkings; in many instances it would have been much simpler to compose a new piece than completely to refurbish an old one.”
The reasons that induced Bach to work over an old composition are, we think, the same that actuated Handel. Something in the composer’s subconscious flashes a memory that suits the mood, the affective requirements of the moment; it generates a creative spark, and since the age placed little value on absolute newness, the composer reworked a good and usable idea. Gluck, as he advanced in years, borrowed material largely from himself, regarding his earlier works as sketches from which he might take whatever he fancied suitable for incorporation into his later scores. In Iphigénie en Tauride (1779) Gluck drew complete numbers from six earlier operas: La Clemenza di Tito (1752), Antigone (1756), L‘lle de Merlin (1758), Telemacco (1765), Le Feste D’Apollo (1769), and Paride ed Elena (1770). He returned to even earlier operas for orchestral accompaniment material: Demofoonte (1742) and Semiramide (1748). But Gluck also helped himself wholesale from the works of Sam-martini, his teacher, long after he ceased to be a disciple. Vivaldi, too, borrowed from Corelli and Albinoni—even from Handel—but particularly from himself. Raguenet, in his celebrated Parallèle, accuses the French of pilfering from one another or themselves to such an extent that all their works are similar. All this was in the same spirit in which the Elizabethan poets rifled ancient literature and contemporary Italian books, as Shakespeare made use of Plutarch or Holinshed, or Tennyson of Sir Thomas Malory, as Dryden borrowed from Mile. de Scudéry, or Washington Irving from a German tale for his Rip Van Winkle. Handel simply followed an old, tried, and in his day still perfectly natural practice: why should posterity have left only him so naked a prey to the cold winds of contempt?
The embarrassed critics and detractors still cannot divest themselves of the moral issue; they cannot see the particular principle that encouraged the speculative intellect to work from the primary experience of another. They are no more convincing than was Lady Mary Wortley Montagu who admired the dazzling virtuosity of Pope’s Essay on Criticism only to reject it later “because I had not then read any of the ancient critics and did not know that it was all stolen.” The romantic critics always think of Keats:
A theme! a theme! great nature give me a theme; Let me begin my dream.
But the 18th-century composer believed in Racine: “All invention consists of making something out of nothing.”
XXIII
Handel’s style—The operas—Problem of opera in England—Handel and the Italian tradition—Changed style in last operas—Ensemble and chorus —Recitative, aria, arioso, scena—His opera librettists—Absence of buffa vein—English oratorio a personal creation—The oratorio librettists—Survival of operatic elements in oratorio—Handel’s difficulties with post-dénouement matters—The happy ending—Handel’s role in the operatic reform ascribed to Gluck—Inhibitions faced by modern musicians approaching Handelian style
HISTORY, WHICH IN SOME RESPECTS WAS SO HARSH TO Handel, obligingly eases the biographer’s t
ask, for Handel’s work is neatly divided into chronological events: Germany, Italy, England. Even the almost half-century spent in England is divided into two areas which, though they overlap at certain points, are nevertheless easily distinguishable: the period of the operas and the period of the oratorios. In this long creative life, seemingly diffuse and full of the most heterogeneous things, there stands nevertheless Handel’s oeuvre as a great organic whole. His artistic development was tremendous, yet some of the essence of his last works is present in the first ones. The young Handel was a hedonist, the old and ill composer of the last oratorios rose above all reality. The early composer was an Italian operista, the mature master was an English dramatist. The caro Sassone used the technique of the Italians, their language, their librettos, with scarcely an indication of his German origins. Yet among the works composed at this early stage in his career there are some that were to be imbedded in the works of his maturity without a jarring note. Every element of his greatness is present in some of these early works, like the rich petals of a flower in the bud. The more the hundred volumes of the old Händelgesellschaft edition are studied, the more one experiences a feeling of awe at the scope of this universal musician whose place among the great has not been generously enough recognized. As we look at his life work from the perspective of the sum total of all genres, we discover that he was at ease in every style and every type, vocal or instrumental, capable of meeting Italians, Frenchmen, and Englishmen on their own grounds—and rising above them. Only the German style, the cantor’s art, remained uncultivated.
George Frideric Handel_Dover Books on Music Page 77
