[251] Handel wrote it during the forced pauses in the composition of Belshazzar, and produced it at the commencement of 1745.
[252] The letters quite recently published throw much light on this troublous period in Handel’s life (William Barclay-Squire: Handel in 1745, in the H. Riemann Festschrift, 1909, Leipzig).
[253] Two examples of the song appear in the Schoelcher Collection at the Paris Conservatoire.
Handel also wrote in July, 1746, for the return of the Duke of Cumberland, a song on the victory over the rebels by His Royal Highness the Duke of Cumberland, which was given at Vauxhall (a copy of this song also appears in the Schoelcher Collection).
[254] Finished in the early days of December, 1745, and given in February, 1746. The text was founded partly on the Psalms of Milton and partly on the Bible. Handel inserted in the third part several of the finest pages from Israel in Egypt. In one of the solos the principal theme of Rule Britannia which was later to be composed by Arne appears.
[255] The poem, very mediocre, was by the Rev. Dr. Thomas Morell, who was the librettist for the last oratorios of Handel.
[256] It was not one of Handel’s oratorios, of which the style was in the popular vein, and where one finds further grand ensembles and solos closely connected with the Chorus.
Gluck journeyed to London at the end of 1745. He was then thirty-one years old. He gave two operas in London, La Caduta de’Giganti and Artamene. (Certain solos from them are to be found in the very rare collection of Delizie dell’opere, Vol. II, London, Walsh, possessed by the library of the Paris Conservatoire.) This journey of Gluck in England has no importance in the story of Handel, who showed himself somewhat scornful in his regard for Gluck’s music. But it was not so for Gluck, who all his life professed the most profound respect for Handel. He regarded him as his master; he even imagined that he imitated him (see Michael Kelly: Reminiscences, I, 255), and certainly one is struck by the analogies between certain pages in Handel’s oratorios written from 1744 to 1746 (notably Hercules and Judas Maccabæus) and the grand operas of Gluck. We find in the two funeral scenes from the first and second acts of Judas Maccabæus the pathetic accents and harmonies of Gluck’s Orpheus.
[257] After 1747 Handel, abandoning his system of subscriptions, turned his back on his aristocratic clientèle, which had treated him so shamefully, and opened his theatre to all. It paid him. The middle classes of London responded to his appeal. After 1748 Handel had full houses at nearly all his concerts.
[258] Poem founded on the book of Maccabees by Thomas Morell. The first performance March 23, 1748.