George Frederic Handel (1685-1759) composed a set of "Suites de Pi?es pour le Clavecin" containing several movements not usually found in the suite form. Among these are "Allegros," "Prestos," and "Arias con Variazioni," while in Handel's "Sonatas" are to be found sarabandes, gavottes, and bourre?. In other words, the suite and the sonata, as conceived by Handel, are more or less convertible forms; it is not until the next generation that the modern sonata begins to emerge in the pianoforte works of Philip Emanuel Bach. (See Chapter VIII.) These distinctive pieces represent the groping of composers after some new and more flexible medium of expression than that provided by stiff dance forms. And this same fundamental principle of growth is what, many years later, led Beethoven to enlarge the scope of the sonata, and still later produced the symphonic poem of Liszt and other modern composers.
Each phase of an art has its culmination where a medium becomes perfected—and therefore exhausted; where the flower blooms and dies. This point is reached when some great master unites in his works two essential qualities complementary to each other, namely, the idea and its formal investiture. Such a point was reached in Bach's Fugues, in Mozart's Symphonies, and in Beethoven's String Quartets; in all these the two great elements of perfection were united. In Mozart's G-minor Symphony, for example, the thing said, and the manner of saying it—the design, the orchestral expression, etc.—are identical, but in the instrumental works of Handel the matter was still in process.
"The Harmonious Blacksmith" is in the fifth of the "Suites de Pi?es pour le Clavecin," commonly known as "Lessons," and composed for Princess Anne, Handel's royal pupil, daughter of the Prince of Wales. This suite consisted of the following pieces:—I. Prelude, II. Allemande, III. Courante, IV. Air.
EXAMPLE FOR ANALYSIS, No. 10.
Handel: "The Harmonious Blacksmith," from the Fifth Suite for Clavichord.
The biographies of Handel give several versions of the story supposed to be connected with this little piece. It seems to be quite certain that the composer never used the title, and that it has one at all is probably due to the fact that the public seems to like a piece better if it is supposed to be "about" something. Many similar uses of supposititious titles will occur to the reader, as, for example, the "Moonlight" sonata of Beethoven, and the "Rain-drop" prelude of Chopin, neither of which grotesque names was ever sanctioned by the composer. If this tune of Handel's ever was sung by a burly smith at his forge he was indeed an "harmonious" blacksmith. In any case, it is a matter of record that the identical anvil was finally "discovered" by a Mr. Clark and found a resting place as a curio in an "Egyptian Hall" in London.
The tune itself has qualities familiar enough to students of Handel's instrumental music. Its final cadence, in particular, is thoroughly Handelian, and all through it there is that decisive and assertive manner that characterizes the melodies of this great man. There is nothing of the mystic about Handel; his oratorios and nearly all his smaller pieces have a straightforward and uncompromising style. He never gropes; his music speaks of an unfaltering self-confidence, unclouded by doubts.
The methods of treatment in the variations is a simple one. The harmonies remain the same throughout, while the melody is changed in various ways. In variation I, for example, the first two notes of the original melody have been made into an arpeggio, or broken chord, and this treatment persists throughout. In variation II the melody loses something of its physiognomy, and is only suggested by occasional notes in the upper or lower part for the right hand, while the left hand plays a familiar pattern accompaniment. Variation III plays lightly with the original theme, hovering around it with delicate scale passages.
This variation illustrates an important principle of musical appreciation. Played by itself, without reference to what has preceded it, it would be so lacking in definiteness as to be uninteresting; its connection with the original theme, however, lends to it a certain charm and significance. So in the longer instrumental pieces of the great masters who followed Handel, we find whole sections whose meaning depends on their relation to what has preceded them, and our appreciation of the significance of such passages is in exact proportion to our powers of co-ordinating in our own minds these various sections of a work, often separated from each other by a considerable lapse of time.
The fourth variation is like an inversion of the third, the left hand now taking the rapid scale passages. Variation V is the least definite of them all, being made of scales played against chords that dimly outline the original melody.