Queen Anne died on August 1, 1714, and for a time the skies over Handel threatened to cloud; for on the very day of her passing the Elector of Hanover was proclaimed by the Secret Council King of England. He arrived in London on September 20 and was crowned George I at Westminster a month later. Here was a pretty kettle of fish! His former master to whose service he had most certainly not returned “in a reasonable time” suddenly seated on the English throne—and not even a new “Te Deum” prepared against his coming to the land which Handel now regarded as home!

Handelian luck got him out of what might have been a serious predicament. He must have trusted to his destiny in the first place to help him out of an obviously awkward situation and, being tactful, he made no open move to aggravate it. George I was and remained intensely German, brought to England with him “a compact body of Germans”—chamberlains, secretaries, even his pair of elderly mistresses, the Baroness Kielmansegge and Madame Schulenburg; and all manner of comforts and consolations he could not find in his new island kingdom. He made no effort to shed his German love of music, wherefore as Rolland points out, “he could not punish Handel without punishing himself.” And after he heard Handel’s fascinating new opera, “Amadigi”, in May, 1715, he lost all idea (if, indeed, he ever harbored any) of disciplining his former servant. He appointed Handel music master to the little princesses and when, in 1716, the monarch had to go to Hanover the composer accompanied him on the trip, took occasion to study musical developments in Germany and even wrote a Passion on a text by Heinrich Brockes.

Here is the point to consider for a moment the tale of the “Water Music”, one of the most venerable Handelian anecdotes. The story runs somewhat as follows: Lord Burlington and Baron Kielmansegge, the Master of the King’s Horse, in order to reconcile sovereign and musician, in 1715 persuaded the latter to write a set of light pieces to be played on a boat close to the royal barge at a water party on the Thames. The King liked the music sufficiently to inquire who composed it and, being told, summoned Handel, promised to let bygones be bygones and received him back into favor. Unfortunately for romance, later documents have shown that the “Water Music” was not played till 1717 and then under wholly different conditions. But the legend has become so ingrained in British musical tradition that, as Newman Flower wrote, “it is precisely what ought to have happened.” At all events, the “Water Music” is an adorable suite, definitely English in character—like much else in Handel’s music—and to this day an ornament of concert programs in one or another arrangement.

King George, far from remembering past annoyances, saw to it that Handel’s yearly pension from Queen Anne should be increased to 600 Pounds, so that even without further earnings his financial state was tolerably secure. His good fortunes were enhanced by the musical enthusiasms of the King, who could not hear enough of “Rinaldo” and “Amadigi” (to the spectacular features of which live birds, which sometimes misbehaved, and a fountain of real water, heightened the attractions of sumptuous settings). He went to them, often incognito, several times a week sharing his private box with his bevy of lady friends, new and old; or he would vary his visits to the opera with attendance at plays or concerts, so that his chances to admire the works of Handel, in one form or another, were rarely lacking. Many found that the monarch’s habit of parading his amours before London audiences added to the piquancy of a Handelian score!

By the side of the famed artificial soprano, Nicolini, sang the brilliant Anastasia Robinson, who had been a soprano but whose voice, after a siege of illness, suddenly dropped to contralto. Mrs. Robinson was particularly noted for the fact that her morals were at all times spotless. Mrs. Delany was to describe her as “of middling stature, not handsome but of a pleasing modest countenance, with large blue eyes.... Her manner and address were very engaging, and her behavior on all occasions that of a gentlewoman.” When her husband, Lord Peterborough, died she burned the diaries he had kept, wherein he had noted his various infidelities and other secrets not meant for the scrutiny of his wife.

Handel’s star was steadily rising and his fame was not to be transcended till a number of years later and then only by virtue of his own genius and after many fluctuations of fortune. But when the King returned to London from his trip to Germany opera fell upon bad days. Musical and theatrical life flourished, indeed, yet suddenly farces and other diversions, imported from France, captured the mood of the town and delighted the monarch and his ladies. Now nobody felt like putting up money on opera, since inexpensive vulgarity was a safer bet. At just about this period Handel and James Brydges, Duke of Chandos, former Paymaster-General of the Army during the Marlborough wars, were brought into contact. The erstwhile Earl of Carnarvon had accumulated his wealth by heaven knows what sharp practices, and inherited an estate at Cannons, near Edgware, where he had erected a luxurious palace, including a chapel, a theatre, and other musical appurtenances inseparable from such an establishment. The Prince of Wales was a frequent visitor at Cannons, braving even the swarming footpads of Edgware Road. The Duke of Chandos seems to have been in a position to buy anything which struck his fancy and there is a story that on one occasion, he or his son (the accounts differ) coming across a man unmercifully thrashing his well-favored wife, rescued the lady by buying her on the spot. He, therefore, had no particular trouble securing Handel as master of his music in place of his former employee, the German Dr. Pepusch. Some ten years later Dr. Pepusch had his revenge by compiling the score of the “Beggar’s Opera” which was to become such a grievous obstacle in Handel’s path.

But until 1720 Handel was in the service of the Duke of Chandos, even if he spent much of his time in London, busily attending to the musical instruction of the daughters of Caroline, Princess of Wales, and writing numerous “Lessons” and clavier suites for his royal pupils. Which brings us to another celebrated Handelian fiction, “The Harmonious Blacksmith.” The legend is quite as diversified and even more far-fetched than the one about the “Water Music.” For well over a century the world has been fed the story of the blacksmith and his forge near Whitchurch, close to Edgware. In the house of this blacksmith Handel is supposed to have taken refuge from a thunderstorm, the blacksmith meantime continuing his hammering. When the storm was over the composer went forth and, still haunted by the rhythm of the pounding, set down the melody and then proceeded to write variations on it. This “Air and Variations” form part of Handel’s Fifth Suite of clavecin pieces, but it was not till 1820 that some imaginative publisher, taking his cue from an apprentice who continually whistled Handel’s tune, invented the fanciful title; and not till 1835 that the London Times published an anonymous letter retailing the legend of the blacksmith and his forge. We have no place here to recount the complex ramifications of the amiable myth which culminated in the auctioning off of an old anvil—supposedly the very one which the composer heard struck! But the publisher had the last word and to the end of time the Fifth Suite will assuredly remain “The Harmonious Blacksmith.”

Far more important in the development of Handel’s style are the “Chandos Anthems” (or Psalms), composed during the years from 1717 to 1720 while the master, at Cannons, was steadily evolving. They fill three volumes of the Complete Handel edition and “stand in relationship to Handel’s oratorios in the same position as his Italian cantatas stand to his operas. In these religious cantatas, written for the Duke’s chapel, Handel gives the first place to the chorus.... There is already in them the spirit and the style of ‘Israel in Egypt’, the great monumental lines, the popular feeling. It was only a step from this to the colossal Biblical dramas.” (Rolland) And Handel took this first step with “Esther”, called in its first form “Haman and Mordecai, a masque.” It was staged on August 29, 1720. Almost simultaneously he wrote the exquisite pastoral tragedy, “Acis and Galatea”, a Sicilian legend he had already treated during his Neapolitan days but which, in its later shape took on an unsurpassable element of classical finish.

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Yet there were breakers ahead! Whether or not he could discern them from afar it is probably unlikely that the prospect of conflict would have troubled over much a nature as powerful and combative as Handel’s. Indeed, difficulties were what this prodigious vitality and ever renewing creative inspiration best throve upon. As so often happens in lands where opera is fundamentally an exotic people again wanted opera. It was a logical time to end the Cannons interlude. The psychology of the moment, to which Handel was sensitive, came just when company-promoting took on almost the aspect of a hobby. There was money aplenty and the South Sea Bubble, which was indeed swelling, had not yet burst. So Lord Burlington and other peers raised capital for a new season of Italian opera, appointed Handel director-in-chief, made the ugly but efficient Heidegger stage manager, rounded up librettists and sent Handel to the Continent to engage singers for what was to be known as “The Royal Academy of Music”—an English duplication of the official name of the Paris Opéra. And the Weekly Journal soon announced that “Mr. Handel, a famous Master of Musick, is gone beyond the sea, by order of His Majesty, to collect a company of the choicest singers for the Opera in the Haymarket.”