After some years of success, during which Handel amassed a fortune, the tide of affairs turned against him, and in broken health and with impoverished means he retired to a Continental health resort. This, however, was but the prelude to events not only of vital consequence to him, but of momentous significance to the art of music.
On returning to England with restored vigour, he cast about him to find the means of regaining his former ascendency, and, happily for the world at large, he decided to devote his energies to the writing of sacred music.
With the production of the oratorio "Saul" in 1739, Handel initiated that series of works which not only had an untold influence on the musical instinct of the English people, but was destined to write his name in the book of the Immortals. Everything tended to his success.
His genius, colossal as it was, might have proved in vain, but for an unseen element that was to come to his aid and enable him to crown his career in a blaze of glory. This proved to be a resurgence of the old-time love of music amongst the masses, that their Puritan upbringing had long tended to suppress, but which, under a religious guise, was ready to spring to life again.
Thus, crowds of people who would not go to hear music under ordinary conditions, would eagerly seize an opportunity to do so when presented to them under the aegis of Religion.
The spirit of the "Messiah" penetrated their hearts, and helped to exorcise the sullen dis
position towards anything approaching art that had become so characteristic of them.
Splendid as was the result of Handel's work not only in England but the world over, it must be admitted that the immediate effect on the English musician was disastrous.
He had long found it difficult to hold his own against foreign competition, with the influence of the Court continuously exercised in its favour, but this overwhelming display of genius in a field in which he had hitherto regarded himself as unassailable in his own country, seemed to be the one thing wanting to complete his discomforture and bring about his abdication.
This accomplished, it is unnecessary to insist upon the humiliations that were in store for him during, the next hundred years. Suffice it to say that the ascendency of the foreigner was complete, and was exercised with an intolerance of native effort that seems inconceivable to us to-day. Not only did he occupy the principal official posts, but nearly every other of importance outside the Church, and even the festivals, which were, in most cases, originally organised in connection with one or other of the cathedrals, before long came under his sway.