We must remember, then, that Handel’s scheme of oratorio is operatic in its origin and has no historic connexion with such principles as might have been generalized from the practice of the German Passion music of the time; and it is sufficiently astonishing that the chorus should have so readily assumed its proper place in a scheme which the public certainly regarded as a sort of Lenten biblical opera. And, although the chorus owes its freedom of development to the disappearance of theatrical necessities, it becomes no less powerful as a means of dramatic expression (as opposed to dramatic action) than as a purely musical resource. Already in Athalia the “Hallelujah” chorus at the end of the first act is a marvel of dramatic truth. It is sung by Israelites almost in despair beneath usurping tyranny; and accordingly it is a severe double fugue in a minor key, expressive of devout courage at a moment of depression. On purely musical grounds it is no less powerful in throwing into the highest possible relief the ecstatic solemnity of the psalm with which the second act opens. Now this sombre “Hallelujah” chorus is a very convenient illustration of Handel’s originality, and the point in which his creative power really lies. It was not originally written for its situation in Athalia, but it was chosen for it. It was originally the last chorus of the second version of the anthem, As pants the Hart, from the autograph of which it is missing because Handel cut out the last pages in order to insert them into the manuscript of Athalia. The inspiration in Athalia thus lies not in the creation of the chorus itself, but in the choice of it.
In choral music Handel made no more innovation than he made in arias. His sense of fitness in expression was of little use to him in opera, because opera could not become dramatic until musical form became capable of developing and blending emotions in all degrees of climax in a way that may be described as pictorial and not merely decorative (see [Music]; [Sonata-Forms]; and [Instrumentation]). But in oratorio there was not the least necessity for reforming any art-forms. The ordinary choral resources of the time had perfect expressive possibilities where there were no actors to keep waiting, and where no dresses and scenery need distract the attention of the listener. When lastly, ordinary decorum dictated an attitude of reverent attention towards the subject of the oratorio, then the man of genius could find such a scope for his real sense of dramatic fitness as would make his work immortal.
In estimating Handel’s greatness we must think away all orthodox musical and progressive prejudices, and learn to apply the lessons critics of architecture and some critics of literature seem to know by nature. Originality, in music as in other arts, lies in the whole, and in a sense of the true meaning of every part. When Handel wrote a normal double fugue in a minor key on the word “Hallelujah” he showed that he at all events knew what a vigorous and dignified thing an 18th-century double fugue could be. In putting it at the end of a melancholy psalm he showed his sense of the value of the minor mode. When he put it in its situation in Athalia he showed as perfect a sense of dramatic and musical fitness as could well be found in art. Now it is obvious that in works like oratorios (which are dramatic schemes vigorously but loosely organized by the putting together of some twenty or thirty complete pieces of music) the proper conception of originality will be very different from that which animates the composer of modern lyric, operatic or symphonic music. When we add to this the characteristics of a method like Handel’s, in which musical technique has become a masterly automatism, it becomes evident that our conception of originality must be at least as broad as that which we would apply in the criticism of architecture. The disadvantages of the want of such a conception have been aggravated by the dearth of general knowledge of the structure of musical art; a knowledge which shows that the parallel we have suggested between music and architecture, as regards the nature of originality, is no mere figure of speech.
In every art there is an antithesis between form and matter, which becomes reconciled only when the work of art is perfect in its execution. And, whatever this perfection, the antithesis must always remain in the mind of the artist and critic to this extent, that some part of the material seems to be the special subject of technical rule rather than another. In the plastic and literary arts one type of this antithesis is more or less permanently maintained in the relation between subject and treatment. The mere fact that these arts express themselves by representing things that have some previous independent existence, helps us to look for originality rather in the things that make for perfection of treatment than in novelty of subject. But in music we have no permanent means of deciding which of many aspects we shall call the subject and which the treatment. In the 16th century the a priori form existed mainly in the practice of basing almost every melodic detail of the work on phrases of Gregorian chant or popular song, treated for the most part in terms of very definitely regulated polyphonic design, and on harmonic principles regulated in almost every detail by the relation between the melodic aspects of the church modes and the necessity for occasional alterations of the strict mode to secure finality at the close. In modern music such a relation between form and matter, prescribing as it does for every aspect at every moment both of the shape and the texture of the music, would exclude the element of invention altogether. In 16th-century music it by no means had that effect. An inventive 16th-century composer is as clearly distinguishable from a dull one as a good architect from a bad. The originality of the composer resides, in 16th-century music as in all art, in his whole work; but naturally his conception of property and ideas will not extend to themes or isolated passages. That man is entitled to an idea who can show what it means, or who can make it mean what he likes. Let him wear the giant’s robe if it fits him. And it is merely a local difference in point of view which makes us think that there is property in themes and no property in forms. Nowadays we happen to regard the shape of a whole composition as its form, and its theme as its matter. And, as artistic organization becomes more complex and heterogeneous, the need of the broadest and most forcible possible outline of design is more pressingly felt; so that in what we choose to call form we are willing to sacrifice all conception of originality for the sake of general intelligibility, while we insist upon complete originality in those thematic details which we are pleased to call matter. But, if this explains, it does not excuse our setting up a criterion for musical originality which can be accepted by no intelligent critics of other arts, and which is completely upset by the study of any music earlier than the beginning of the 19th century.
The difficulty many writers have found in explaining the subject of Handel’s “plagiarisms” is not entirely accounted for by mere lack of these considerations; but the grossest confusion of ideas as to the difference between cases in point prevails to this day, and many discussions which have been raised in regard to the ethical aspect of the question are frankly absurd.[3] It has been argued, for instance, that great injustice was done to Buononcini over his unfortunate affair with the prize madrigal, while his great rival was allowed the credit of Israel in Egypt, which contains a considerable number of entire choruses (besides hosts of themes) by earlier Italian and German writers. But the very idea of Handelian oratorio is that of some three hours of music, religious or secular, arranged, like opera, in the form of a colossal entertainment, and with high dramatic and emotional interest imparted to it, if not by the telling of a story, at all events by the nature and development of the subject. It seems, moreover, to be entirely overlooked that the age was an age of pasticcios. Nothing was more common than the organization of some such solemn entertainment by the skilful grouping of favourite pieces. Handel himself never revived one of his oratorios without inserting in it favourite pieces from his other works as well as several new numbers; and the story is well known that the turning point in Gluck’s career was his perception of the true possibilities of dramatic music from the failure of a pasticcio in which he had reset some rather definitely expressive music to situations for which it was not originally designed. The success of an oratorio was due to the appropriateness of its contrasts, together of course with the mastery of its detail, whether that detail were new or old; and there are many gradations between a réchauffé of an early work like The Triumph of Time and Truth, or a pasticcio with a few original numbers like the Occasional Oratorio, and such works as Samson, which was entirely new except that the “Dead March” first written for it was immediately replaced by the more famous one imported from Saul. That the idea of the pasticcio was extremely familiar to the age is shown by the practice of announcing an oratorio as “new and original,” a term which would obviously be meaningless if it were as much a matter of course as it is at the present day, and which, if used at all, must obviously so apply to the whole work without forbidding the composer from gratifying the public with the reproduction of one or two favourite arias. But of course the question of originality becomes more serious when the imported numbers are not the composer’s own. And here it is very noticeable that Handel derived no credit, either with his own public or with us, from whole movements that are not of his own designing. In Israel in Egypt, the choruses “Egypt was glad when they departed,” “And I will exalt Him,” “Thou sentest forth Thy Wrath” and “The Earth swallowed them,” are without exception the most colourless and unattractive pieces of severe counterpoint to be found among Handel’s works; and it is very difficult to fathom his motive in copying them from obscure pieces by Erba and Kaspar Kerl, unless it be that he wished to train his audiences to a better understanding of a polyphonic style. He certainly felt that the greatest possibilities of music lay in the higher choral polyphony, and so in Israel in Egypt he designed a work consisting almost entirely of choruses, and may have wished in these instances for severe contrapuntal movements which he had not time to write, though he could have done them far better himself. Be this as it may, these choruses have certainly added nothing to the popularity of a work of which the public from the outset complained that there was not enough solo music; and what effect they have is merely to throw Handel’s own style into relief. To draw any parallel between the theft of such unattractive details in the grand and intensely Handelian scheme of Israel in Egypt and Buononcini’s alleged theft of a prize madrigal is merely ridiculous. Handel himself, if he had any suspicion that contemporaries did not take a sane architect’s view of the originality of large musical schemes,[4] probably gave himself no more trouble about their scruples on this matter than about other forms of musical banality.
The History of Music by Burney, the cleverest and most refined musical critic of the age, shows in the very freshness of its musical scholarship how completely unscholarly were the musical ideas of the time. Burney was incapable of regarding choral music as other than a highly improving academic exercise in which he himself was proficient; and for him Handel is the great opera-writer whose choral music will reward the study of the curious. If Handel had attempted to explain his methods to the musicians of his age, he would probably have found himself alone in his opinions as to the property of musical ideas. He did not trouble to explain, but he made no concealment of his sources. He left his whole musical library to his copyist, and it was from this that the sources of his work were discovered. And when the whole series of plagiarisms is studied, the fact forces itself upon us that nothing except themes and forms which are common property in all 18th-century music, has yet been discovered as the source of any work of Handel’s which is not felt as part of a larger design. Operatic arias were never felt as parts of a whole. The opera was a concert on the stage, and it stood or fell, not by a dramatic propriety which it notoriously neglected to consider at all, but by the popularity of its arias. There is no aria in Handel’s operas which is traceable to another composer. Even in the oratorios there is no solo number in which more than the themes are pilfered, for in oratorios the solo work still appealed to the popular criterion of novelty and individual attractiveness. And when we leave the question of copying of whole movements and come to that of the adaptation of passages, and still more of themes, Handel shows himself to be simply on a line with Mozart. Jahn compares the opening of Mozart’s Requiem with that of the first chorus in Handel’s Funeral Anthem. Mozart recreates at least as much from Handel’s already perfect framework as Handel ever idealized from the inorganic fragments of earlier writers. The double counterpoint of the Kyrie in Mozart’s Requiem is still more indisputably identical with that of the last chorus of Handel’s Joseph, and if the themes are common property their combination certainly is not. But the true plagiarist is the man who does not know the meaning of the ideas he copies, and the true creator is he in whose hands they remain or become true ideas. The theme “He led them forth like sheep” in the chorus “But as for his people” is one of the most beautiful in Handel’s works, and the bare statement that it comes from a serenata by Stradella seems at first rather shocking. But, to any one who knew Stradella’s treatment of it first, Handel’s would come as a revelation actually greater than if he had never heard the theme before. Stradella makes nothing more of it, and therefore presumably sees nothing more in it than an agreeable and essentially frivolous little tune which lends itself to comic dramatic purpose by a wearisome repetition throughout eight pages of patchy aria and instrumental ritornello at an ever-increasing pace. What Handel sees in it is what he makes of it, one of the most solemn and poetic things in music. Again, it may be very shocking to discover that the famous opening of the “Hailstone chorus” comes from the patchy and facetious overture to this same serenata, with which it is identical for ten bars all in the tonic chord (representing, according to Stradella, someone knocking at a door). And it is no doubt yet more shocking that the chorus “He spake the word, and there came all manner of flies” contains no idea of Handel’s own except the realistic swarming violin-passages, the general structure, and the vocal colouring; whereas the rhythmic and melodic figures of the voice parts come from an equally patchy sinfonia concertata in Stradella’s work. The real interest of these things ought not to be denied either by the misstatement that the materials adapted are mere common property, nor by the calumny that Handel was uninventive.
The effects of Handel’s original inspiration upon foreign material are really the best indication of the range of his style. The comic meaning of the broken rhythm of Stradella’s overture becomes indeed Handel’s inspiration in the light of the gigantic tone-picture of the “Hailstone chorus.” In the theme of “He led them forth like sheep” we have already cited a particular case where Handel perceived great solemnity in a theme originally intended to be frivolous. The converse process is equally instructive. In the short Carillon choruses in Saul where the Israelitish women welcome David after his victory over Goliath, Handel uses a delightful instrumental tune which stands at the beginning of a Te Deum by Urio, from which he borrowed an enormous amount of material in Saul, L’Allegro, the Dettingen Te Deum and other works. Urio’s idea is first to make a jubilant and melodious noise from the lower register of the strings, and then to bring out a flourish of high trumpets as a contrast. He has no other use for his beautiful tune, which indeed would not bear more elaborate treatment than he gives it. The ritornello falls into statement and counterstatement, and the counterstatement secures one repetition of the tune, after which no more is heard of it. It has none of the solemnity of church music, and its value as a contrast to the flourish of trumpets depends, not upon itself, but upon its position in the orchestra. Handel did not see in it a fine opening for a great ecclesiastical work, but he saw in it an admirable expression of popular jubilation, and he understood how to bring out its character with the liveliest sense of climax and dramatic interest by taking it at its own value as a popular tune. So he uses it as an instrumental interlude accompanied with a jingle of carillons, while the daughters of Israel sing to a square-cut tune those praises of David which aroused the jealousy of Saul. But now turn to the opening of the Dettingen Te Deum and see what splendid use is made of the other side of Urio’s idea, the contrast between a jubilant noise in the lowest part of the scale and the blaze of trumpets at an extreme height. In the fourth bar of the Dettingen Te Deum we find the same florid trumpet figures as we find in the fifth bar of Urio’s, but at the first moment they are on oboes. The first four bars beat a tattoo on the tonic and dominant, with the whole orchestra, including trumpets and drums, in the lowest possible position and in a stirring rhythm with a boldness and simplicity characteristic only of a stroke of genius. Then the oboes appear with Urio’s trumpet flourishes; the momentary contrast is at least as brilliant as Urio’s; and as the oboes are immediately followed by the same figures on the trumpets themselves the contrast gains incalculably in subtlety and climax. Moreover, these flourishes are more melodious than the broad and massive opening, instead of being, as in Urio’s scheme, incomparably less so. Lastly, Handel’s primitive opening rhythmic figures inevitably underlie every subsequent inner part and bass that occurs at every half close and full close throughout the movement, especially where the trumpets are used. And thus every detail of his scheme is rendered alive with a rhythmic significance which the elementary nature of the theme prevents from ever becoming obtrusive.
No other great composer has ever so overcrowded his life with occasional and mechanical work as Handel, and in no other artist are the qualities that make the difference between inspired and uninspired pages more difficult to analyse. The libretti of his oratorios are full of absurdities, except when they are derived in every detail from Scripture, as in the Messiah and Israel in Egypt, or from the classics of English literature, as in Samson and L’Allegro. These absurdities, and the obvious fact that in every oratorio Handel writes many more numbers than are desirable for one performance, and that he was continually in later performances adding, transferring and cutting out solo numbers and often choruses as well—all this may seem at first sight to militate seriously against the view that Handel’s originality and greatness consists in his grasp of the works as wholes, but in reality it strengthens that view. These things militate against the perfection of the whole, but they would have been absolutely fatal to a work of which the whole is not (as in all true art) greater than the sum of its parts. That they are felt as absurdities and defects already shows that Handel created in English oratorio a true art-form on the largest possible scale.
There never has been a time when Handel has been overrated, except in so far as other composers have been neglected. But no composer has suffered so much from pious misinterpretation and the popular admiration of misleading externals. It is not the place here to dilate upon the burial of Handel’s art beneath the “mammoth” performances of the Handel Festivals at the Crystal Palace; nor can we give more than a passing reference to the effects of “additional accompaniments” in the style of an altogether later age, started most unfortunately by Mozart (whose share in the work has been very much misinterpreted and corrupted) and continued in the middle of the 19th century by musicians of every degree of intelligence and refinement, until all sense of unity of style has been lost and does not seem likely to be recovered as a general element in the popular appreciation of Handel for some time to come. But in spite of this, Handel will never cease to be revered and loved as one of the greatest of composers, if we value the criteria of architectonic power, a perfect sense of style, and the power to rise to the most sublime height of musical climax by the simplest means.