At the time of Rinaldo (1711) Addison accused Handel of delighting in noise.
[346] “.... You refuse to submit to rules; you refuse to let your genius be hampered by them.... O thou Goth and Vandal!... You also allow nightingales and canaries on the stage and let them execute their untrained natural operas, in order that you may be considered a composer. A carpenter with his rule and square can go as far in composition as you, O perfect irregularity!” (Harmony in Revolt: a letter to Frederic Handel esquire, ... by Hurlothrumbo-Johnson, February, 1734).
[347] Soon Handel was obliged to publish these works, because fraudulent and faulty copies were being sold. It was so with the first volume of Suites de pièces pour le clavecin, published in 1720, and the first volume of Organ Concertos published in 1738. Some of these publications had been made in a bare-faced manner without Handel’s permission by publishers who had pilfered them. So it was with the second volume of Suites de pièces pour le clavecin, which Walsh had appropriated and published in 1733 without giving Handel an opportunity of correcting the proofs. It is very remarkable that, notwithstanding the great European success achieved by the first volume for the Clavecin, Handel did not trouble to publish the others.
[348] All his contemporaries agree in praising the wonderful genius with which Handel adapted himself instinctively in his improvisations to the spirit of his audience. Like all the greatest Virtuosos he soon placed himself in the closest spiritual communion with his public; and, so to speak, they collaborated together.
[349] Geminiani’s Preface to his Ecole de violon, or The Art of Playing on the Violin, Containing all the Rules necessary to attain to Perfection on that Instrument, with great variety of Compositions, which will also be very useful to those who study the violoncello, harpsichord, etc. Composed by F. Geminiani, Opera IX, London, MDCCLI.
[350] Geminiani himself had attempted to represent in music the pictures of Raphael and the poems of Tasso.
[351] For example, the Allegro of the First Organ Concerto (second volume published in 1740), with its charming dialogue between the cuckoo and the nightingale, or the first of the Second Organ Concerto (in the same volume), or several of the Concerti Grossi (referred to later).
[352] Vol. XLVII of the Complete Handel Edition.
[353] It is a manuscript of 21 pages, the writing appearing to date from about 1710. It is certainly a copy from some older works. Chrysander published it in Volume XLVIII of the Complete Edition. It is probable that Handel had given to an English friend a selection from the compositions of his early youth. They were passed from hand to hand, and were even fraudulently published, as Handel tells us himself in the Edition of 1720: “I have been led to publish some of the following pieces, because some faulty copies of them have been surreptitiously circulated abroad.” In this number appear, for example, the Third Suite, the Sarabande of the Seventh Suite, etc.
[354] It is said that Handel wrote these for the Princess Anne, whom he taught the clavecin; but Chrysander had observed that the princess was only eleven years old at the time. It is more probable that these pieces were written for the Duke of Chandos or for the Duke of Burlington.—It is in the second book of Clavier Pieces that we find the much easier pieces written for the princesses.