Famous composers and their works, Vol. 1

by Unknown

Reproduced from a proof before letters of Houbraken's portrait of Handel, engraved on copper.

After Hudson's portrait this may be regarded as most excellent.

That the full greatness of a man is only revealed when misfortune overtakes him was to be demonstrated by Handel at this trying time. His latest operas he wrote for the sake of the money. One of them, "Serse" (Xerxes), which was completed in the year 1738, marks what was very nearly the saddest time in his life. In order to redeem his word of honor and save himself from a debtor's prison, he worked with immoderate energy and yet with meagre material results. When he now found himself in the most pressing need, his friends advised him to give a benefit concert, a thing which Handel had never wished to engage in; on the contrary, he had often expressed himself with harshness against that sort of begging. All the more bitter was it for him that he must after all resort to it at last. On the twenty-eighth of March, 1738, in the week before Easter, the concert took place at the Haymarket Theatre. No oratorio was given by Handel on this occasion, but only a number of Italian and English songs, to which he added an organ concerto of his own composition. The interest excited was far beyond all expectation—the house so crowded that places had to be provided on the stage itself for five hundred illustrious auditors, and the receipts from the concert were estimated at eight hundred pounds. But, while Handel was thus struggling with all his might for his own existence, he had always time and strength to spare for his suffering fellow men. The brilliant successes attained by musicians within the last twenty years had allured many persons into the paths of art, who expected to acquire therein honor and riches, yet were not endowed by nature with the necessary gifts. They had therefore soon suffered shipwreck and fallen into poverty. Two English musicians, Festing and Greene, devised the plan of forming an aid society for indigent musical artists. Handel immediately entered into the project and rendered invaluable assistance to the society by performing for its benefit, on the twentieth of March, 1739, his "Alexander's Feast" and a newly composed organ concerto, on the twenty-eighth of March, 1740, "Acis and Galatea," and on the fourteenth of March, 1741, a series of minor compositions. And here let it be said that the inhabitants of London, even if they had shown themselves for a time somewhat indifferent to his music, still continued faithful in their veneration for the man. In 1738, Tyers, the proprietor of Vauxhall Gardens, determined to erect in them a statue of Handel, and the universal applause which this act excited proved that it was an expression of the sentiment of the people.

The life of Handel may be resolved into three parts. The first extends to the year 1720, and is preparatory in character. The second ends in 1737, and belongs especially to the opera. The third and last is devoted almost exclusively to the oratorio. Since the earliest English oratorios which he wrote at Cannons, Handel had been long inactive in this sphere of music. It may be said of the coronation anthems of the year 1727 that they resemble the oratorio in style, but the first really new oratorios were produced in 1733. This species of musical composition was still almost unknown to the greater part of the London public, for the performances given at Cannons did not reach a wide circle of listeners. Bernard Gates, however, the director of the boy chorus belonging to the royal chapel, had taken part in the first rendering of "Esther," and the recollection of the work had never left him. He brought it out before a company of invited guests and thereby incited Handel to produce it publicly himself in May of the succeeding year. A performance of "Acis and Galatea," under his own leadership, followed a month later. It is worthy of note that the different singing societies which occupied themselves at this time with the two oratorios of Handel, attempted to put them on the stage with costumes and action, after the manner of the opera. People evidently did not yet know how to deal with this new departure in the musical line, and in Italy it was not at all unusual to produce certain oratorios in theatrical fashion, as "agioni sacre." Handel, meantime, disapproved of the custom and only allowed the singers to be placed upon a stage, which was suitably decorated. The two oratorios now composed as a result of the new impulse given to his activity, were "Deborah" and "Athaliah," and the former was first performed at the Haymarket on the seventeenth of March. But the subscription tickets of the opera-goers were not good on this day and, as the price of admission was fixed at one guinea, the house remained empty. At this time, too, Handel's opponents tried to draw him into the field of politics and to bring him into discredit through the accusation that he had allied himself with Minister Walpole for the purpose of draining the resources of the people in every possible way. That such ridiculous assertions could gain credence only for the moment, shows very plainly the high estimation in which Handel was then held by the London public. On the twenty-seventh of March, and on two subsequent occasions, "Deborah" was repeated, and now, for the first time received proper recognition as a work of art. The other oratorio, "Athaliah," had also its vicissitudes. The hostility to the house of Hanover which prevailed in many circles of English society had been shared up to this time by the University of Oxford, and the rector of the same, Dr. Holmes, wishing to promote more friendly relations, took advantage of the annual commencement exercises of the institution for this purpose. Handel, the favorite of the royal court, was invited to add lustre to the celebration through his art; he was also included in the number of eminent men who were to be invested with the title of Doctor at the same time. This honor would have been declined by the musician on his own personal account, but as an artist he accepted, using the title rarely. The "Athaliah," written wholly in the interest of the occasion, was performed in Oxford on the 10th of July. Singers and instrumental performers were brought from London by Handel, and the festival, in the course of which "Esther" and "Acis and Galatea," as well as the "Utrecht Te Deum" and the "Jubilate" were given, was a brilliant success. The next oratorio was "Alexander's Feast," or the "Power of Music." It was finished in January, 1736, and brought out for the first time on the 19th of February. In writing this work, Handel had in mind the popular custom of celebrating the day of St. Cecilia by means of the art of which she was the patron. It was Purcell who inaugurated musical performances of this festive character on St. Cecilia's day, and among the poets who glorified it, Dryden stands pre-eminent with his two Cecilian odes. It was the greater of these which Handel took for the foundation of his work, employing the arrangement of Newburgh Hamilton. The impression produced by the very first performance was extraordinary, and the work was repeated four times in the same season, meeting with the speediest and most widespread success of any of Handel's oratorios, although it falls within the period when his best energies were devoted to operatic works. With the production of "Saul," in 1738, commences the long, uninterrupted series of oratorios in which Handel, who, instead of becoming embittered by the hard experiences of his life, was only roused by them to a more complete expression, poured out the fulness of his genius. Immediately after the "Saul" ensued the creation, in something less than a month, of his gigantic work: "Israel in Egypt." As now known, this consists of only two parts; but as it came from the composer's hands on the first of November, 1738, it was in three divisions. For the lament over the death of Joseph with which it opened, Handel had used the funeral anthem written after the death of the noble Queen Caroline in 1737. He was probably reluctant to allow this beautiful work, which, in its original form, was only available for the occasion which called it forth, to sink into oblivion. At the same time we see that he himself must have considered the style of his anthems as very closely related to that of his oratorios. It was owing to a misunderstanding that, after the death of Handel, the second and third parts of the "Israel" were made to stand for the whole work, while the funeral anthem was printed by itself. But neither on its first performance (April 4, 1739) nor on its repetition in 1756, did "Israel in Egypt" make an impression on the public. The reason for this lies in the fact that the solo portions of the work are entirely subordinate to the chorus, which here maintains its supremacy as in no other of Handel's oratorios and rises to the highest conceivable degree of grandeur.

From the Statue in Vauxhall Gardens.

Engraved by Bartolozzi after a drawing by Rebecca.

The contrast with the composer's operas, which are made up almost entirely of solo numbers was too decided, and moreover there was at this time in London a marked and deplorable falling off of musical interest. After years of immoderate indulgence, there followed a period of weariness and indifference. Handel, indeed, set to music in 1739 Dryden's lesser "Ode to St. Cecilia," and in 1740 Milton's beautiful poem "L'allegro ed il pensieroso,"[3] thus showing how he identified himself with the intellectual life of the English and the creations of their most eminent men. But his efforts seemed no longer to bear fruit, and he was already considering the project of leaving England forever, when offers made to him from Dublin opened favorable prospects in a new quarter. He was requested to give a performance in that city, for the benefit of some of its benevolent institutions, and in return the best vocal and instrumental talent of the place would be at his disposal for such other concerts as he might give. The work composed by Handel for the desired performance was the "Messiah." The text had been drawn from the Bible by Charles Jennings (not by Handel himself, as has been falsely stated), and the music was completed on the 14th of September, 1741. On the 18th of November Handel arrived in Dublin, and on the 13th of April, 1742, was produced for the first time the work in which the lofty aim of the composer became perfectly clear. The new order of art created by him, the oratorio as he conceived it, was now first comprehended by the world, and began at once to enter into the life of the English people as an exponent of the highest ideal good which had been vouchsafed them in their generation. Many of Handel's other works were brought out in Dublin, and he enjoyed there a period of unalloyed happiness, after the trials of the past few years. When he returned to London in 1742, he found that here also the tide had turned in his favor. The seed sown by him through a quarter of a century was finally beginning to germinate. His music had gradually cultivated the taste of the nation and he could henceforth count upon a sure understanding of whatever he might create. From this time Handel's authority in England was uncontested and his popularity boundless. He stood forth before the eyes of the people as the embodied essence of all music. It now became his habit to perform the "Messiah" every year for the benefit of a foundling's home, and he employed the resources of his art most freely and nobly in every direction in aid of all charitable institutions. What he had already once attempted in 1735 in the Lenten season, when no operas could be performed, but had not been able to carry out, became now a regularly organized arrangement. Twelve concerts were given annually, in which he produced his own vocal works and in addition delighted the audiences by his performances upon the organ. In 1743 he began the series of concerts with his "Samson," which was composed immediately after the "Messiah," and won scarcely less favor than the latter. Of his later oratorios, "Judas Maccabæus" alone enjoyed an equally great and lasting success. But the remaining thirteen, which occupied the inexhaustible energies of the man until within two years of his death, were listened to with sympathetic interest. They are: "Semele" (1743), "Joseph" (also 1743), "Belshazzar" (1744), "Heracles" (1744), Occasional Oratorios (1746), "Joshua" (1747), "Alexander Balus" (1747), "Solomon" (1748), "Susannah" (1748), "Theodora" (1749), "The Choice of Hercules" (1750), "Jephthah" (1751), "The Triumph of Time and Truth" (1757). The last-named work is that final arrangement of the Italian oratorio, which has been already mentioned. When Handel brought it out again in 1737, much changed and amplified, he still retained the Italian text, and it was now, for the first time, incorporated with the series of his English oratorios. It is an allegorical drama: Beauty and Pleasure stand upon one side, Time and Counsel on the other. Which of the two pairs shall finally win the day, is to be shown. Deceit places herself near the first, and tries to blind their eyes to the transitoriness of all delights and the earnestness of life. But in the end, following the warnings of Time and Counsel, Beauty and Pleasure turn after all to Truth. The deep significance of Handel's closing his long career with the same work which stands at its entrance, is readily perceived. Well might it seem to him an image of his own life. He too had formed intimate acquaintance with the beauty and pleasure of the world, but he could truly say in the evening of his life that they had not succeeded in averting his gaze from the serious and eternal things which "are not of this world."