Theodora and Susanna
In my preface to Evolution Old and New I imply a certain dissatisfaction with Theodora and Susanna, and imply also that Handel himself was so far dissatisfied that in his next work, Jephtha (which I see I inadvertently called his last), he returned to his earlier manner. It is true that these works are not in Handel’s usual manner; they are more difficult and more in the style of Bach. I am glad that Handel gave us these two examples of a slightly (for it is not much) varied manner and I am interested to observe that he did not adhere to that manner in Jephtha, but I should be sorry to convey an impression that I think Theodora and Susanna are in any way unworthy of Handel. I prefer both to Judas Maccabæus which, in spite of the many fine things it contains, I like perhaps the least of all his oratorios. I have played Theodora and Susanna all through, and most parts (except the recitatives) many times over, Jones and I have gone through them again and again; I have heard Susanna performed once, and Theodora twice, and I find no single piece in either work which I do not admire, while many are as good as anything which it is in my power to conceive. I like the chorus “He saw the lovely youth” the least of anything in Theodora so far as I remember at this moment, but knowing it to have been a favourite with Handel himself I am sure that I must have missed understanding it.
How comes it, I wonder, that the chorale-like air “Blessing, Honour, Adoration” is omitted in Novello’s edition? It is given in Clarke’s edition and is very beautiful.
Jones says of “With darkness deep”, that in the accompaniment to this air the monotony of dazed grief is just varied now and again with a little writhing passage. Whether Handel meant this or no, the interpretation put upon the passage fits the feeling of the air.
John Sebastian Bach
It is imputed to him for righteousness that he goes over the heads of the general public and appeals mainly to musicians. But the greatest men do not go over the heads of the masses, they take them rather by the hand. The true musician would not snub so much as a musical critic. His instinct is towards the man in the street rather than the Academy. Perhaps I say this as being myself a man in the street musically. I do not know, but I know that Bach does not appeal to me and that I do appeal from Bach to the man in the street and not to the Academy, because I believe the first of these to be the sounder.
Still, I own Bach does appeal to me sometimes. In my own poor music I have taken passages from him before now, and have my eye on others which I have no doubt will suit me somewhere. Whether Bach would know them again when I have worked my will on them, and much more whether he would own them, I neither know nor care. I take or leave as I choose, and alter or leave untouched as I choose. I prefer my music to be an outgrowth from a germ whose source I know, rather than a waif and stray which I fancy to be my own child when it was all the time begotten of a barrel organ. It is a wise tune that knows its own father and I like my music to be the legitimate offspring of respectable parents. Roughly, however, as I have said over and over again, if I think something that I know and greatly like in music, no matter whose, is appropriate, I appropriate it. I should say I was under most obligations to Handel, Purcell and Beethoven.
For example, any one who looked at my song “Man in Vain” in Ulysses might think it was taken from “Batti, batti.” I should like to say it was taken from, or suggested by, a few bars in the opening of Beethoven’s pianoforte sonata op. 78, and a few bars in the accompaniment to the duet “Hark how the Songsters” in Purcell’s Timon of Athens. I am not aware of having borrowed more in the song than what follows as natural development of these two passages which run thus:
From the pianoforte arrangement in The Beauties of Purcell by John Clarke, Mus. Doc.