I

Who shall say which of the two men had the greater talent? Their difference is one of character, not of degree. Bach, exploring quietly the resources of his own soul, hardly stirred from his narrow surroundings; Handel, of infinite flexibility and adaptability, appropriated every style, every trick, every brilliant effect he heard, imbuing it with new power. Restlessly he roamed to Berlin and Hamburg, to Italy, and finally to England, everywhere sweeping up in his mighty grasp the achievements of men gone before him, indefatigably composing and rousing a wondering world to new enthusiasms. Bach, unmindful of the public taste, retiring, profound, inexorable; Handel constantly trimming his sails to the wind of public favor, achieving success after success, not by new means, but by using those at his command with the full power of genius. From early youth he felt the stirrings of that genius; before he was seven, indeed, he had taught himself to play upon the harpsichord,—surreptitiously, we are told, for his father, village surgeon at Giebichenstein, near Halle, intent upon the social advancement of his son, was so fearful of his son’s developing a ‘non-productive’ talent that he even refused to send him to school, lest he should learn his notes. Well known is the story of how admiring friends smuggled the harpsichord into the garret, where young Georg would delight his heart in the still hours of the night. No less known, also, are the circumstances of his father’s journey to the court of Saxe-Weissenfels, where a son by a former marriage was valet-de-chambre to the duke. Young Handel insisted on following the carriage on foot until his father relented and took him to the court, where he came in contact with the duke’s musicians and was permitted to play upon the organ. It was at the duke’s peremptory advice that the father finally consented to give his boy a musical training. F. W. Zachau, the organist of the Liebfrauenkirche, which raises its tall spires in the market-place of Halle, where opposite it we now behold Handel’s monument, became his master. For three years he was made to compose a sacred motet every week, by way of exercise. When, in 1696, Handel was sent on a visit to Berlin, he already astounded musicians like Attilio Ariosti by his powers of improvisation, though the famous Bononcini, who was later to become his bitter rival, seems already to have looked upon the boy with suspicion, for he gave him the difficult test of playing a newly composed fugue at sight, which Handel promptly fulfilled. The elector of Brandenburg desired to attach him to his court and send him to Italy for further study, but to forestall this he was summoned to return home, and again placed in charge of the competent Zachau. In the next year his father died, and, obliged to support himself and his mother, he secured, on probation, the post of organist at the Dom- und Schlosskirche, at the same time entering the university—that university so closely identified with Protestant theology—as a student.

Handel’s nature was not one to tolerate the comparative seclusion and retirement of Halle for long. Moreover, it inclined to a style of music less austere than that of the Lutheran church—so that when echoes of quite a different school, joined to reports of brilliant successes, reached his ears, he gave them ready heed. Such reports came from Hamburg, now the chief stronghold of Italian opera in Germany. In order to explain its existence we must for a moment turn the reader’s mind back to the already related importation of opera into Germany in 1627 and its first exponent there—Heinrich Schütz. This event had been followed by operatic performances—in Italian—at Regensburg (L’inganno d’amore, by Ferrari, 1653); Vienna (Antonio Draghi’s Alcindo and Cloridia, 1655); and Munich (Giulio Riva’s Adelaida Regia Principiosa di Susa). But no further attempt at opera in German was made till the appearance at Hamburg of Johann Teile’s singspiel, Adam und Eva, in 1678. By virtue of this composer’s efforts Hamburg attained the operatic supremacy of Germany. Names now all but forgotten, Johann Förtsch, Johann Franck, Johann Cousser, were staunch pioneers in the cause of German art at this northern output, though their Germanism no doubt suffered a generous admixture of Italian influence. The same is true of the work of the triumvirate of the Hamburg opera—Keiser, Mattheson, and Telemann—which held sway there from the early sixties on. The first of these produced no less than 116, and probably more, operas for Hamburg during 1694-1734. To him especially the opera house owed its word-wide fame—to his work as impresario perhaps more than as composer, for, from Basilius (first performed at Wolfenbüttel in 1693 and the next year in Hamburg) to Circe, his swan song of forty years after, all the works that were able to arouse enthusiasm in his time are but names to us. Nevertheless Keiser may well count as having placed German opera upon a firm foundation. The style of his works, rediscovered in 1810, is more German than that of his colleagues and, though less remarkable for rhetorical perfection, compares favorably with Lully’s in the matter of variety of expression and dramatic truth.

Handel had already met Telemann, Keiser’s colleague, who passed through Halle in 1701, and it was not unlikely that he received from that exponent of the operatic style an impulse toward greater melodiousness than he was likely to receive from Zachau. Agostino Steffani, another melodist, also visited Halle in 1703. In the same year we see Handel set out for Hamburg, in order to have himself thoroughly ‘made over’ under the influence of its famous operatic school. He joined the orchestra of Keiser’s Opera House as violino ripieno, passing himself off as a novice, but, when Keiser went into hiding from his creditors, Handel promptly took his place at the harpsichord and shone forth as conductor so brilliantly that he was retained upon Keiser’s return. Here he also met Mattheson, the brilliant composer and theorist, then slightly older than himself. An anecdote of their early friendship recounts how the two went to Lübeck to apply for an organist’s position, but speedily returned when they learned that the new incumbent was obliged to marry his predecessor’s daughter. This friendship came to a sudden end when, during a performance of Mattheson’s ‘Cleopatra,’ in which the composer was wont to conduct and also to sing the rôle of Antonio while Handel substituted at the harpsichord. Upon one occasion the latter stubbornly refused to yield his place, after the supposed death of Antonio, to the resuscitated hero, and a quarrel ensued, resulting in a duel in which it is said Handel’s life was barely saved by the protection afforded by a brass button.

It was not long before Handel made his own début in opera: both ‘Almira’ and ‘Nero’ were produced in 1705. Keiser’s influence is felt in these works. They are distinguished by much of the melodious charm which has saved the favorite Lascia ch’io pianga from oblivion. This rare gem was originally composed as a sarabande in one of Handel’s early chamber works; its use in the opera preludes what was to become a common practice with Handel in musical economy. That Keiser was already jealous of his young rival is evidenced by the fact that he himself reset the libretto of ‘Nero’ and performed it at the Hamburg opera in place of Handel’s.

We may remind the reader at this point that the German opera in Hamburg, despite its many incongruities, was the only opera at that time aiming at dramatic fidelity. Public taste had run to vocalization pure and simple, and singers were the sole arbiters of operatic style. In the Hamburg opera the recitatives, which fully explained the story, were sung in German, while the arias, in the prevailing florid Italian style, were sung in Italian, as the vernacular was not considered a suitable medium for vocal display. The orchestra was a combination of instruments aiming at quantitative rather than qualitative sonority, the string body consisting of two violin parts, and ‘cellos and basses playing in unison, while the wood wind—chiefly oboes and bassoons—usually doubled the string parts. What the effect must have been can be imagined when we consider that in one of Handel’s operas he used twenty-six oboes, while there were but six flutes, generally used only as an obbligato instrument. The harmonic basis was furnished, as in the oldest Italian operas, by the Figured Bass played upon the harpsichord, which formed the centre of the orchestra. Two other Handel operas were performed at Hamburg during 1705-1706, namely, ‘Daphne’ and ‘Florinda.’ In the latter year we already see him on his way to Italy.

In the meantime, however, Handel had essayed another form of composition then popular in Germany—the passion oratorio. The Lutheran church had adopted from the Catholic the practice of reciting the history of the passion at vespers during holy week. This had given an opportunity to composers for a peculiarly profound religious expression in music. Heinrich Schütz must be named as the chief representative of passion music before Bach, though nearly sixty works of similar character have been preserved to us from before his time. The narrative was divided into three parts representing Christ, the Evangelist, and the people, which originally had been sung in chorus, but, with the rise of monody, the first two were chanted by single voices. Except a few introductory words, the entire text was made up of scriptural narrative, but later the beautiful chorale tunes sung by the Lutheran congregation were interspersed by way of reflective comment. This all became so fast-bound a convention that when Keiser produced his passion set to the words of Menantes at Hamburg in 1704 the church censured him severely for omitting the chorale element. Entirely original music had been used for the passion service, however, as early as 1672 by Sebastiani.

Handel’s Ein kleines Passions-Oratorium, composed in 1704, was arranged from the Gospel of St. John, into which he introduced contemplative airs, instead of chorales. The chorus is mostly in five parts; the part of Pilate is taken by an alto, Christ by a tenor, and the Evangelist by a bass. He introduces a more elaborate accompaniment for the dramatically heightened ecce homo passage, while the biblical speeches are set in aria form. There are also duets, and a fugato chorus is sung by the soldiers casting lots for the vestment. The passion poems written by Brockes about this time were set to music no less than thirty times between 1712 and 1727 and among the most important of these is one by Handel written in 1716 while in attendance upon the elector at Hanover, to which we shall recur later. Suffice it to say that with every new work, such as Keiser’s, the dramatic element becomes more prominent. The meditative portions are now allotted to a definite character, such as ‘Daughter of Zion,’ or a ‘Faithful Soul,’ to be superseded still later by Mary Magdalen, the Disciple, the Virgin, etc. It may be said, then, to approach more nearly to the form of the oratorio, which, as we have seen in a previous chapter, had been cultivated in Italy by Carissimi and his followers. There, however, it had so nearly developed into the prevailing operatic form that it was distinguished from it only by the lack of scenery. The chorus, after being reduced to mere fragments, finally disappeared as it had done in the opera. These were the materials from which Handel’s genius was later to evolve virtually a new form of art.