III. HANDEL'S "HARMONIOUS BLACKSMITH."
Our chapter on the suite has given the order in which the various dances usually appeared, and mention was there made of the exceptions occasionally to be found among the works of adventurous composers.
George Frederic Handel (1685-1759) composed a set of "Suites de Pi?es pour le Clavecin" containing several movements not usually found in the suite form. Among these are "Allegros," "Prestos," and "Arias con Variazioni," while in Handel's "Sonatas" are to be found sarabandes, gavottes, and bourre?. In other words, the suite and the sonata, as conceived by Handel, are more or less convertible forms; it is not until the next generation that the modern sonata begins to emerge in the pianoforte works of Philip Emanuel Bach. (See Chapter VIII.) These distinctive pieces represent the groping of composers after some new and more flexible medium of expression than that provided by stiff dance forms. And this same fundamental principle of growth is what, many years later, led Beethoven to enlarge the scope of the sonata, and still later produced the symphonic poem of Liszt and other modern composers.
Each phase of an art has its culmination where a medium becomes perfected—and therefore exhausted; where the flower blooms and dies. This point is reached when some great master unites in his works two essential qualities complementary to each other, namely, the idea and its formal investiture. Such a point was reached in Bach's Fugues, in Mozart's Symphonies, and in Beethoven's String Quartets; in all these the two great elements of perfection were united. In Mozart's G-minor Symphony, for example, the thing said, and the manner of saying it—the design, the orchestral expression, etc.—are identical, but in the instrumental works of Handel the matter was still in process.
"The Harmonious Blacksmith" is in the fifth of the "Suites de Pi?es pour le Clavecin," commonly known as "Lessons," and composed for Princess Anne, Handel's royal pupil, daughter of the Prince of Wales. This suite consisted of the following pieces:—I. Prelude, II. Allemande, III. Courante, IV. Air.