II
It is to Italy that Handel now turns his steps. That country had flooded Europe with singers that won the public’s heart wherever they appeared and even the musicians of Germany could not assail their stronghold, reinforced by popular approval. An offer by Prince Gaston de Medici in 1705 had been proudly refused by Handel, unwilling to assume the position of a servant. He now undertook the journey at his own expense, and, visiting not only Florence, but Rome, Venice, and Naples in turn, composed constantly both secular and sacred music. No less than a dozen solo cantatas—those charming little melodic sketches, miniature operas, in a sense, consisting of simple recitative and arioso over a figured bass—were produced at Florence, and upon his return after a short stay in Rome he produced ‘Rodrigo,’ his first Italian opera. Its overture shows the influence of Lully, being in the form established by that composer (see Chap. XIII, p. 409) and forthwith adopted by Handel for all his operas and oratorios. In this case it closed with a suite of dances, including a gigue, a sarabande, a sailor’s dance, a minuet, two bourrées and a passecaille. The elaborateness of the accompaniments to many of the arias gave evidence of Handel’s increased appreciation of brilliant orchestral effects. ‘Rodrigo’ was an unqualified success, which was as real as it may have been surprising to Handel. ‘Agrippina,’ produced in Venice, whither he went in 1708, appealed so strongly to the audience that at every cessation of the music there were loud cries of ‘viva il caro Sassone!’ (long live the dear Saxon). This enthusiastic reception of a German composer argues well for the broad judgment of the Italians, whose domination of the European musical world at that time was bitterly resented. But it was not an isolated instance, for twenty years later another German, Johann Adolph Hasse, was similarly honored, and subsequent instances are frequent down to our present day, when the Italian enthusiasm for Wagner is hardly surpassed in Germany itself.
On the other hand, there could have been but little that was strange to the Italian public in Handel’s work. All through his Hamburg career he had been influenced by the Italian school. That school had long departed from the ideals of melodic expressiveness and dramatic verisimilitude and was now given over to prescribed conventions made for the benefit of the performer. It had become simply a string of set arias and recitatives alternated in such a way as to provide the desired variety of the vocal exhibition. These rules as summarized by Rockstro,[142] exacted that there must always be six principal characters—three of each sex. The first woman must be a high soprano, the first man an artificial soprano, though he is the hero of the piece. The second man and the second woman might be either sopranos or contraltos; the third man sometimes was a tenor, and a bass would be included only when four men were in the cast. In each act all the principal singers had to sing at least one of the arias, all of which were in the conventional da capo forms. These were the aria cantabile, aria di portmento, aria di mezzo, carattere, aria parlante, and aria di bravura. There had to be always a duet for the leading man and woman and an ensemble (coro) of all the leading singers at the end.
These limitations are sufficient explanation for the hopeless oblivion into which the operas of this period, including Handel’s, have descended. Even of the individual arias only a few are such as to interest or charm the modern listener. A few melodic gems like Lascia ch’io pianga, Mio cara bene and two or three more are the sum total that is of value in all this tremendous bulk of operatic works which occupied the greater part of Handel’s life. Posterity’s verdict is just in these matters, nor need we feel any sense of regret at the loss, when we consider the astounding rapidity with which these compositions were ground out—‘Agrippina’ had been completed within three weeks—and that the technique acquired in their writing must have yielded richer fruit in those works which remain as the master’s monument. Hence we need pass but rapidly over the list of operas, serenate and oratorios composed by Handel during this period. All of them lie within the domain of Italian influence. He never attempted to develop the form further or reform it in any way. But, as we shall see later, he used it as the starting point for the new Handelian oratorio, which was the outstanding creation of his genius.
The one important fact of Handel’s Italian period is the influence he received from the composers of that country. While there he met Alessandro and Domenico Scarlatti, Lutti, Marcello, Pasquini, Corelli, and Steffani, whom he already knew and who befriended him. In the genial circle of the ‘Arcadian’ academy, in the homes of the music-loving Marquis Ruspoli and the talented Cardinal Ottoboni in Rome, he absorbed Italian ideals and acquired Italian technique. In Rome, where the performance of opera was forbidden by ecclesiastical authority, he composed Il Trionfo del tempo e del disinganno, which he afterward made over into an English oratorio entitled ‘The Triumph of Time and Truth’ and another serenata Aci, Galatea, e Polifemo, really a cantata for three voices with orchestra, was written in Naples. This work, however, has no connection with the work of a similar name which belongs to a later period.
‘Agrippina,’ the opera mentioned above, did service in furnishing melodies for an oratorio, La Resurrezione, at once an outstanding instance of Handel’s transition from opera to oratorio and of his somewhat ruthless practice of using musical material for widely varying purposes. The use of Agrippina’s air, both words and music, for the character of Mary Magdalen is little calculated to recommend Handel’s early works for devotional expression. But it surpassed in dramatic intensity anything in that form produced so far, for with the Italian melodic suavity Handel combined from the first the rich harmonic sonority peculiar to the Germans, so happily fusing the old polyphonic and new monodic ideals that many of his early works already ‘bear,’ as Riemann says, ‘the stamp of classicism.’ It is interesting to note, however, that in Resurrezione Handel makes such scant use of his contrapuntal powers that we find but two brief choruses in the entire work. It is an open question whether this oratorio was originally intended for presentation in a theatre, or, minus all action, in a church; nor is it known whether or not it was ever publicly performed.
After a stay of almost five years Handel prepared to return to Germany, for, through the good offices of Steffani, who held the post of kapellmeister to the Duke of Hanover, Handel secured that position as Steffani’s successor in 1710. As he had, however, already had several invitations to go to London, then the great stronghold of Italian opera, he accepted his new post only on condition that he might visit that metropolis. He did so in the same year and was so occupied and so carried away with success that he remained six months. As this is practically the beginning of Handel’s English period, we may preface it by a few remarks upon the state of music in England at that time.