From this moment the friendship between Handel and Mattheson was finished. Handel became conscious of his own genius, and could no longer stand the protectorship of Mattheson. Other occurrences aggravated the misunderstanding, which ended in a quarrel, which narrowly escaped a fatal issue.[81] Following the altercation at the Opera on December 5, 1704, they fought a duel in the market-place at Hamburg, and Handel only escaped being killed by a stroke of luck: for Mattheson’s sword snapped on a large metal button on Handel’s coat, after which they embraced, and the two companions, reconciled by Keiser, took part together in the rehearsals of Almira, the first opera of Handel.[82] The first representation took place on January 8, 1705, and the work was a brilliant success. A second opera of Handel, Nero[83] was played on February 25 following, but it had not quite the success of Almira. Handel himself occupied the placards of the opera during the whole of the winter season. It was a fine début. Too fine indeed, and Keiser became jealous of him. The Hamburg Opera, however, was gradually waning. Keiser gaily led it to its ruin. He led the life of a gay libertine, and all the artists around him rivalled him in his follies. Alone Handel held aloof from the follies, working hard, and spending only what was barely necessary.[84] After the success of these two operas he resigned his post as second violin and clavecinist to the orchestra, but continued to give lessons, and his reputation as a composer kept pace with that of his teaching. Keiser was uneasy. Handel’s increasing reputation aroused his amour-propre. Nothing was more stupid, however, than his jealousy. He was Director of the Opera, and it was in his interest to give those pieces which were written by popular composers, and to maintain relationships with successful composers, but jealousy knows no reason. He reset Almira and Nero to music in order to put Handel out of joint,[85] and as he had not the opportunity of publishing his opera in toto he hastily printed the most taking solos from each.[86] But, however quickly he went, his downfall followed faster. Before the volume of his opera airs appeared he had to fly. This was in the end of 1706.[87] Handel and he were destined never to meet again.
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Keiser having brought disaster to the Hamburg Opera, there was nothing left to keep Handel in that city. The direction of the theatre had fallen into the hands of a Philistine, who, to make money, played musical farces. He certainly commissioned Handel for the opera Florindo und Daphne, but he mutilated the work on its presentation “for fear,” so he said in the Preface of the libretto, “that the music might tire the hearers”; and lest the public should find the work too serious, he intersected it with a farce in low German, Die lustige Hochzeit (The Joyous Wedding). One can well understand that Handel was little interested in his piece so disfigured, and that he did not himself attend the production, but quitted Hamburg. It was about the autumn of 1706 that he made the journey to Italy.[88] It was not, however, that Italy particularly attracted him. Strange to say—it is not unique in the history of art—this man, who was later on to be caught by the fascination of Italy, and secure an European musical triumph in the beautiful Italian style, had then a very strong repugnance for the foreign art. When Almira was being given, he made the acquaintance of the Italian prince, Giovanni Gastone dei Medici, brother of the Grand Duke of Tuscany.[89] He was astonished that Handel interested himself so little in the Italian musicians, and bought him a collection of their best works, offering to take him to Florence to hear them performed. But Handel refused, saying that he could find nothing in these works which deserved the Prince’s eulogies, and that angels would be necessary to sing them in order to make such mediocre things sound even agreeable.[90] This disdain of Italy was not peculiar to Handel. It characterised his generation, and above all, the cult of German musicians who lived at Hamburg. Before then, and later on, the fascination of Italy took hold of Germany. Even Hasler, Schütz, Hasse, Gluck, and Mozart made long and earnest pilgrimages to that country, but on the other hand J. S. Bach, Keiser, Mattheson, and Telemann never went there. The Hamburg musicians truly wished to assimilate the Italian art, but they never wished to place themselves under the thraldom of the Italian school. They had the laudable ambition of creating a German style independent of foreign influences. Handel shared these great hopes, sustained for a time by the theatre at Hamburg, but the sudden collapse of this theatre made him see little ground on which to build up the taste of the musical public in Germany, and against his own inclinations, he turned his eyes towards that habitual refuge of German artists: Italy, which the older ones so affected to disdain, that country where music expanded itself in the sun, where it was not cheated out of its right of existence as with the Hamburg Pietists. It flourished in all the Italian cities, and in all classes of Italian society with the transports of love. And all around it was an efflorescence of the other arts, a superior civilization, a life smiling and radiant, of which Handel had some foretaste in his dealings with the Italian nobles who passed through Hamburg.
He departed. His leaving was so brusque that his friends knew nothing of it. He did not even say good-bye to Mattheson.
The period at which he arrived in Italy was not the most fortunate. The war for the Spanish Succession was in full swing, and Handel met at Venice, in the winter of 1706, Prince Eugène and his staff-major, who were resting after their victorious campaign in Lombardy. He did not stay there, but went right on to Florence, where he remained till the end of the year.[91]
Doubtless he bore these offers of protection in mind which the Prince Gastone dei Medici had made him. Was such protection as useful to Handel as he had hoped? One may be allowed to doubt it. In truth the son of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Ferdinand, was a musician. He played the clavier well;[92] he had caused an opera house to be built in his villa at Pratolino; he chose the libretti, advised the composers, corresponded with Alessandro Scarlatti, but he had never a very reliable taste. He found Scarlatti’s style too learned. He begged him to write some easier music, and, as far as possible, lighter.[93] He himself did not continue the fastidiousness of the Medici, his ancestors. He somewhat stinted his outlay on music. He decided not to appoint Scarlatti his chapel-master, and when this great artist asked for money at a period of embarrassment he responded “that he would pray for him.”[94] One can scarcely believe that he was less economical in his dealings with Handel, who had less reputation than Scarlatti. He seems to have paid little attention to him during his first visit. The Prince himself seemed out of his element in this new world. It was necessary for him to catch up with his times. Handel certainly wrote some cantatas, only one of which, Lucretia, with a dramatic character, was very popular in Italy and in Germany later on.[95] Its style was nearly completely German.
From Florence he went to Rome for the Easter festivals in April, 1707. Even there the moment was not very favourable for him. The Grand Opera House, the Tor di Nona, had been destroyed as immoral by an edict of Pope Innocent XII ten years before. Since 1700, things had been a little easier for the musicians, but in 1703 a terrible earthquake had desolated the country, and reawakened religious qualms.[96] Even in 1709, during the whole of Handel’s sojourn in Italy, there was not a single representation of Opera at Rome. On the other hand, religious music and chamber music were enjoying a great vogue. Handel, during the first months, listened and studied the religious music at Rome, and tried his hand on similar works. From this period dated his Latin Psalms.[97] Thanks to the letters of recommendation he had from the Medici, he had also been introduced into the Roman salons. He became famous there, more on account of his virtuoso powers on the keyboard than of those of composer. He remained at Rome until the autumn of 1707.[98] Doubtless, he returned to Florence in the month of October, and it appears that he then produced Roderigo for the first time. Handel had then been nearly a year in Italy. He set about writing an opera in Italian. His boldness was justified. Roderigo was successful. Handel gained through it the favour of the Grand Duke, and the love of the Prima Donna, Vittoria Tarquini.[99] Fortified by his first victory he went on to try his luck at Venice.
Venice was then the musical metropolis of Italy. It was in a way the real kingdom of Opera. The first public opera house had been already open there for half a century, and after it, fifteen other opera houses had sprung into being. During the Carnival no less than seven opera houses were open each evening there. Every night also a musical union was held at the Academy of Music, and occasionally twice or even three times in one evening. Every day in the churches, musical solemnities and concerts, which lasted for many hours, with several orchestras, many organs, and numerous full and echo choirs,[100] and on Saturday and Sunday the famous Vespers of the Hospitals, those conservatoires for women where they taught music to orphans and foundlings, or, more frequently, to the girls who had fine voices. They gave orchestral and vocal concerts, over which all Venice raved. Venice, indeed, was bathed in music, the entire life was threaded with it. Life was a perpetual round of pleasure.
When Handel arrived, the greatest of the Italian musicians, Alessandro Scarlatti, was about to produce at St. John Chrysostom’s Theatre his chief work, Mitridate Eupatore, one of the rare Italian operas of which the dramatic beauty is on a par with the musical value. Was Alessandro Scarlatti still in Venice when Handel met him? We do not know, but in any case he encountered him at Rome some months later, and it appears that at that time Handel was tied by bonds of friendship to the son of Alessandro,—Domenico.[101] He also made many other encounters in Venice, which were destined to change his life. The Prince of Hanover, Ernest Augustus, and the Duke of Manchester, the English Ambassador Extraordinary at Venice, were both passionate music-lovers, and interested themselves in Handel. The first invitations which Handel received to go to Hanover, and to London, dated doubtless from that time.
But if the visit to Venice was not fruitless to the future of Handel, it brought him very little at the time. Handel could produce nothing at any of the seven opera houses.[102] He was much happier at Rome, where he returned at the beginning of March, 1708.[103] The renown of his Roderigo had preceded him. All the Italian merchants strove to receive him with honour. He was the guest of the Marquis Ruspoli, whose gardens on the Esquilino formed the bond of reunion for the Academy of the Arcadians.[104] Handel found himself agreeably placed amongst the most illustrious men which Italy boasted in literature, the arts, and in the aristocracy. Arcadia, which united the nobility and the artists,[105] in a spiritual brotherhood, counted amongst its members, Alessandro Scarlatti, Archangelo Corelli, Bernardo Pasquini, and Benedetto Marcello.[106] A similar élite society was found at the soirées of the Cardinal Ottoboni.[107] Every Monday, in the palace of Ottoboni, as at the meetings of the Arcadia, concerts and poetical recitations were given. The Cardinal Prince, Superintendent of the Pontifical chapel, had in his service the finest orchestra in Italy,[108] and the singers of the Sistine Chapel. At the Arcadia there was also to be heard a numerous orchestra, under the direction of Corelli, of Pasquini, or of Scarlatti. Musical and poetical improvisation was also given there. It was that which provoked the artistic jousts between poets and musicians.[109] It was for the concerts at the palace of Ottoboni that Handel wrote his two Roman oratorios, The Resurrection and The Triumph of Time and Truth,[110] which were really but disguised operas. One finds traces of the Arcadia coterie in the compositions which are perhaps the most characteristic of this period in the life of Handel: the Italian cantatas,[111] of which the reputation spread itself very wide, for J. S. Bach made a copy of one of them before 1715.[112] Handel passed three or four months at Rome. He was friendly with Corelli, and with the two Scarlattis, especially with the son, Domenico, who made many trials of virtuosity with him.[113] Perhaps he also played with Bernardo Pasquini, whom he doubtless heard more than once on his organ at Great St. Mary’s. He was interested in the life of the Vatican, and they tried to convert him to Catholicism, but he refused. Such was the friendly tolerance which prevailed then at the Court of Rome that, notwithstanding the war between the Pope and Emperor, this refusal did not alter the friendly relationships between the young German Lutheran and the Cardinals, his patrons. He became so attached to Rome, that it was difficult for him to leave it until the war which approached the city obliged him to take his way in the month of May or June, 1708, to Naples. One of the Italian cantatas entitled Partenza shows his grief at leaving the lovely banks, the dear walls, and the beautiful waters of the Tiber.