GEORG FRIDERIC
HANDEL
(Born at Halle, February 23, 1685; died at London, April 14, 1759)
“Mr. Georg Frideric Handel,” Mr. Runciman once wrote, “is by far the most superb personage one meets, in the history of music. He alone, of all the musicians, lived his life straight through in the grand manner.”[29] When Handel wrote “pomposo” on a page, he wrote not idly. What magnificent simplicity in outlines!... For melodic lines of such chaste and noble beauty, such Olympian authority, no one has approached Handel. “Within that circle none durst walk but he.” His nearest rival is the Chevalier Gluck.
And this giant of a man could express a tenderness known only to him and Mozart, for Schubert, with all his melodic wealth and sensitiveness, could fall at times into sentimentalism, and Schumann’s intimate confessions were sometimes whispered. Handel in his tenderness was always manly. No one has approached him in his sublimely solemn moments! Few composers, if there is anyone, have been able to produce such pathetic or sublime effects by simple means, by a few chords even. He was one of the greatest melodists. His fugal pages seldom seem labored; they are distinguished by amazing vitality and spontaneity. In his slow movements, his instrumental airs, there is a peculiar dignity, a peculiar serenity, and a direct appeal that we find in no other composer.
Would that we could hear more of Handel’s music! At present he is known in this country as the composer of The Messiah, the variations entitled The Harmonious Blacksmith, and the monstrous perversion of a simple operatic air dignified, forsooth, by the title “Handel’s Largo.”
TWELVE CONCERTI GROSSI, FOR STRING ORCHESTRA
No. 1, in G major No. 2, in F major No. 3, in E minor No. 4, in A minor No. 5, in D major No. 6, in G minor No. 7, in B flat major No. 8, in C minor No. 9, in F major No. 10, in D minor No. 11, in A major No. 12, in B minor
Handel apparently took a peculiar pride in his Concerti Grossi. He published them himself, and by subscription. They would probably be more popular today if all conductors realized the fact that music in Handel’s time was performed with varied and free inflections; that his players undoubtedly employed many means of expression. As German organists of forty years ago insisted that Bach’s preludes, fugues, toccatas, should be played with full organ and rigidity of tempo, although those who heard Bach play admired his skill in registration, many conductors find in all of the allegros of Handel’s concertos only a thunderous speech and allow little change in tempo. In the performance of this old music, old but fresh, the two essential qualities demanded by Handel’s music, suppleness of pace and fluidity of expression, named by Volbach, are usually disregarded. Unless there be elasticity in performance, hearers are not to be blamed if they find the music formal, monotonous, dull.
The twelve concertos were composed within three weeks. Kretzschmar has described them as impressionistic pictures, probably without strict reference to the modern use of the word “impressionistic.” They are not of equal worth. Romain Rolland[30] finds the seventh and three last mediocre. In the tenth he discovers French influences and declares that the last allegro might be an air for a music box. Yet the music at its best is aristocratic and noble.
