138 Handel’s “irregular” fugal entrances were the despair of pedantic counterpoint teachers then as now. But when such a spot was pointed out disapprovingly to Geminiani, his remark concerning the change of a semitone was: Questo semitono vale un mondo. We also learn from Mattheson that Handel’s fugues “delighted the listener and kept both composer and player warm.”
139 Addison’s remarks were known and appreciated by most Continental authors to the end of the century. Marpurg quotes him often, as does Rousseau, but even the Italians learned something from him.
140 A Dissertation on the Rise, Union and Power, the Progressions, Separations, and Corruptions of Poetry and Music (1763).
141 The German cantata reformers, who introduced the theatrical element into the cantata (see above, p. 137 f.), did speak of a Kirchen-Rezitativ, which they recommended be more solemn and cantabile than the opera recitative. But they were dealing with a species of music new to Germans, and its operatic origin was under attack from religious quarters.
142 We know, of course, of his fine non-dramatic chamber duets. See above, p. 123 ff.
143 The influential Engel was tutor of the Humboldt brothers, and it was from his book that Beethoven derived the motto placed at the head of the score of his Pastoral Symphony.
144 Those who look upon this system with a smile should not forget that their favorite 19th-century idols, led by Wagner and his leitmotifs, also used symbolism and text interpretation, and they too operated well within a recognizable system of clichés and conventions. Music always had them and, unless the machine takes over, will always have them. As to the serialists, their clichés and conventions dwarf anything seen before.
145 The only Italian overture Handel composed is the one prefacing Athalia. But there is a good reason for that: the overture was a reworking of an earlier sonata.
146 Farinelli must have picked up a pointer or two from Steffani, because he ended his career as King-Elector George’s ambassador to Venice.
147 A good example is afforded by Muffat’s Componimenti and Telemann’s Musique de table. Both offer thoroughly Gallicized music, and both were copiously drawn upon by Handel beginning about 1741.
148 This final concerto borrows material from Habermann, Handel obviously quoting from memory. But the blind composer’s reworking is as masterful as ever.
149 As recently as 1925 the role of these instruments was completely misunderstood. Adam Carse, in his The History of Orchestration, recommends that these “obsolete instruments ... need not be taken into account except as curiosities.”
150 Eighteenth-century violas were larger than ours and had an ampler tone.
151 The unfortunate notion that the presence of the organ is an essential requirement of “sacred” music is not limited to our conception of Baroque music. Masses and oratorios of the Classic era, though composed for a symphonic ensemble that makes the continuo altogether superfluous, are still played with the organ prominently lording it over all. To cite an example, in Mozart’s Requiem, which does not call for the organ at all, the choral sound is almost always ruined by the unwanted intruder.
152 Some of the instruments had adjustable slides, interchangeable joints of different sizes, and screw plugs by which pitch could be regulated.
153 The Beechams and Stokowskis were not the originators of this quaint idea, even though it is unlikely that they had knowledge of their predecessor. Hiller, speaking of his refurbishing of Handel in 1784, proudly stated that he wrote “an entirely new score, approximating what Handel himself would have written had he lived in our day.”
154 It goes without saying that these difficulties apply to almost all translations of musical texts, whatever the language.
155 A similar and particularly glaring case is afforded by Alfred Heuss’s study, Das Textproblem von Handels “Judas Maccabaeus” (Händel Jahrbuch, I). It is quite obvious that Heuss never read the original text, basing his entire criticism on Chrysander’s German translation, which differs from the original in many important details.
156 American music librarians join the battle on the Germans’ side, for to them too a birth certificate is the only and final criterion, which neither naturalization nor Handel’s own spelling can alter.
157 These curious aberrations received new political impetus in the 1940s when Judas Maccabaeus was converted into Wilhelm von Nassau and Israel in Egypt into Mongolensturm. After the war the pendulum swung in the other direction: the East Germans gave these oratorios a socialist cant which, by the way, had also been done much earlier in England, by the Workers’ Music Association. It may have been the English example that gave the idea to the “Democratic” Germans in the East, though not much prompting was needed.
158 Recent research indicates that the traditional portrait of Bach is also in need of retouching. It is indisputable that he lived within the old Lutheran middle-class ideal of “service” centered around church and school, but he chafed under it more than once. Still accepting the maxim that the aim of music is laudatio Dei, he was nevertheless aware of the inroads made by the Enlightenment on this theocratic German world. Circumstances bound him to the cantorate, however, and after a while he gave up the struggle with his official superiors, gradually withdrawing into his study, giving his job dutiful attention but no longer bringing to it the creative enthusiasm of the earlier years. The dates of the Leipzig cantatas are now being revised and it is gradually becoming clear that many of them are earlier works while others are parodies.
159 Even as recently as a generation ago an attempt was made to make Sibelius into an honorary British musical saint, but by that time such sponsors as Cecil Gray were up against a far better informed and articulate musical public, and the grand old Finnish composer remained an ordinary mortal.
160 While one may gloss over Walker’s naive aberrations, it is not easy to account for Dent’s eccentricities, for we are dealing with a distinguished scholar of conspicuous achievements. Yet this author of admirable studies could on occasion unburden himself of statements ill becoming a man of his standing. Deploring the dearth of good English librettos, Dent regrets that Gay, who wrote (really edited) the fine book for Acis and Galatea, did not live long enough to write a libretto “on that character of all characters, Falstaff,” for which he would have “gladly sacrificed all the oratorios.” We must add, though, that one can never tell whether Dent, a whimsical man who liked to play the devil’s advocate, is facetious or in earnest.
161 A typical example of these doctoral exercises, an eight-part choral composition, can be found in the original edition of Burney’s History of Music. In the modern reprint of 1935 this piece was omitted as being “very dull,” which it assuredly is. But since it earned the doctorate for Burney himself it should have been preserved as an interesting document.
George Frideric Handel_Dover Books on Music Page 103
