The picture facing this page, taken from an old print in the British Museum, represents Handel seated at the clavecin (a cembalo with two keyboards), of which the lid is raised. On his right hand is the violoncellist. Before his eye are two violins and two flutes. The solo singers are near him, on his left, close to the clavecin. The rest of the instrumentalists are behind him, out of sight. “Thus his directions and his glances would control the Concertino who would transmit, in their turn the chief conductor’s wishes to the Concerto Grossi and they, in their turn, to the Ripienists. In place of the quasi-military discipline of the modern Orchestra, controlled under the bâton of a chief conductor the different bodies of the Handelian Orchestra governed one another with elasticity; and it was the incisive rhythm of the cembalo that put the whole mass into motion.”[54]
We rarely hear any of Handel’s music with exactly the Orchestra for which he wrote. All conductors realize the difficulty of having anyone improvise on the organ, or piano, to fill in the bald and empty spaces. Moreover, it would confuse the singers and terrify the audience. Improvising at concerts has gone out of fashion.
HANDEL CONDUCTING THE ORCHESTRA
Handel at the Cembalo
This was even realized in Mozart’s day; and so Mozart wrote those beautiful “additional accompaniments” to The Messiah, which give to that oratorio no little of its grace and nobility. Mozart, as we know, was a genius in instrumentation and even in his day people demanded something different from the Handelian concert.
Handel, however, was always seeking for novel effects. He was one of the first to introduce the horn into the Orchestra and he was “the first to assert the expressive personality of the violoncello.”[55] He also appreciated the fantastic and lugubrious quality of the bassoons; experimented with all kinds of instruments; and used the kettledrums as a solo for Jupiter’s oath in Semele. This was so unusual and so startling that Sheridan in his burletta on Jupiter had a pistol fired suddenly, upon which one of the characters exclaims: “This hint I took from Handel!”
Handel was considered horribly noisy in his day. His friend, Goupy, the artist, made a caricature that doubtless amused Handel, who saw himself represented at the organ as a huge, unwieldy figure with a boar’s head and enormous tusks (referring to his violent temper) and the room full of horns, trumpets and kettledrums, while a donkey is also present braying loudly and in the distance a battery of artillery is ready for action.
It is noticeable, too, in Handel’s Orchestra, as in Bach’s, that we get no (or very little) tone-color. Handel’s Orchestra is neutral in tint. The organ and the keyboard idea is still prevailing—all the instruments combine, as it were, to produce the one hue.