And I have been as far as Hull to see
What clothes he left or other property.
I am told that these lines occur in a poem by Wordsworth. (Think of the expense!) How thankful we ought to be that Wordsworth was only a poet and not a musician. Fancy a symphony by Wordsworth! Fancy having to sit it out! And fancy what it would have been if he had written fugues!
Sleeping Beauties
There are plenty of them. Take Handel; look at such an air as “Loathsome urns, disclose your treasure” or “Come, O Time, and thy broad wings displaying,” both in The Triumph of Time and Truth, or at “Convey me to some peaceful shore,” in Alexander Balus, especially when he comes to “Forgetting and forgot the will of fate.” Who know these? And yet, can human genius do more?
“And the Glory of the Lord”
It would be hard to find a more satisfactory chorus even in the Messiah, but I do not think the music was originally intended for these words:
If Handel had approached these words without having in his head a subject the spirit of which would do, and which he thought the words with a little management might be made to fit, he would not, I think, have repeated “the glory” at all, or at any rate not here. If these words had been measured, as it were, for a new suit instead of being, as I suppose, furnished with a good second-hand one, the word “the” would not have been tacked on to the “glory” which precedes it and made to belong to it rather than to the “glory” which follows. It does not matter one straw, and if Handel had asked me whether I minded his forcing the words a little, I should have said, “Certainly not, nor more than a little, if you like.” Nevertheless I think as a matter of fact that there is a little forcing. I remember that as a boy this always struck me as a strange arrangement of the words, but it was not until I came to write a chorus myself that I saw how it came about. I do not suspect any forcing when it comes to “And all flesh shall see it together.”
Handel and the Speaking Voice
