“But great painter as Handel was, he did not work so much through the brilliancy, variety and novelty of his tone-colors as by the beauty of his designs and his effects of light and shade. With a voluntarily restrained palette and by satisfying himself with the sober colors of the strings, he yet was able to produce surprising and thrilling effects. Volbach has shown that he did not contrast and mix his strings but divided the same family of instruments into different groups. In the introduction to Esther (1732), the violins are divided into five groups, in the Resurrection (1708) into four groups. The violas are sometimes divided into two, the second group being reinforced by the third violin, or the violoncellos. On the other hand, when Handel wanted to do so, he reduced his instrumental forces by suppressing the viola and the second violin, whose places were taken by the clavecin. All his orchestral art is the true instinct of balance and economy, which, with the most restricted means in managing a few colors yet knows how to obtain as powerful impressions as our musicians to-day with their crowded palettes.
“One is prone to accept too readily the idea that expressive nuance is the privilege of modern musical art and that Handel’s Orchestra knew only the great theatrical contrasts between force and sweetness, or loudness and softness. It is nothing of the kind. The range of Handel’s nuances is extremely varied. We find with him pianissimo, piano, mezzo piano, mezzo forte, un poco più F., un poco F., forte, fortissimo. We never find the orchestral crescendo and decrescendo, which hardly appears marked until the time of Jomelli and the school of Mannheim; there is no doubt, however, but that it was practised long before it was marked in the music. The President of Brosses wrote in 1739 from Rome: ‘The voices like the violins used with light and shade with unconscious swelling of sound, which augments the force from note to note, even to a very high degree since its use as a nuance is extremely sweet and touching.’ And endless examples occur in Handel of long crescendi and diminuendi without their expression being marked in the scores. Another kind of crescendo and diminuendo—made on the same note—was very common in the time of Handel. His friend, Geminiani, helped to set the fashion.
“As Geminiani explains it: ‘The sound ought to commence softly and should swell out in a gradual fashion to about half its value. Then, it should diminish to the end. The movement of the bow should continue without interruption.’”[56]
Padre Martini said that Gluck combined in the music-drama “all the finest qualities of Italian and many of those of French music with the great beauties of the German orchestra.”
Gluck began where Handel left off. Handel had already treated mythological subjects. He had also written an Alceste and an Armida before Gluck appeared on the scene. Handel (who is said not to have liked Gluck at all) was Gluck’s chosen master on account of “the wonderful beauties of his melodies, the grandeur of his style and his rhythms like armies on the march.”
Gluck not only followed Handel, but he adored him. He kept Handel’s portrait over his bed!
“Gluck gave the Orchestra a new life, assigning the first place to it in some cases, letting it express the feeling that captivates the listener. With him violins, oboes and trombones are not merely sonorous agents; they are living entities, personages of action. Through the Orchestra he adds dazzling beauty to a temple scene, or a scene in the Elysian Field; and by little touches on certain instruments here and there he can make us feel the mystery of the infernal regions. Gluck’s great gift to the Orchestra was to make it speak.”[57]
Christoph Willibad Gluck was born near Neumarkt in the Upper Palatinate (Austria) in 1714. He was educated in music in Prague and in Vienna; and fortunately attracted the attention of Prince Melzi, who took him to Milan to direct his private Orchestra. We all know how his successful operas in Vienna prepared the way for still greater triumphs in Paris, where Gluck enjoyed the patronage of the Queen Marie Antoinette, who, being an Austrian, had known and loved Gluck’s works in Vienna.
GLUCK