Part 5 (2/2)
The instrumental music of Handel divides itself into three cla.s.ses: firstly--music for the clavier (the clavecin and organ); secondly--chamber music (sonatas and trios); thirdly--orchestral music.
The compositions for clavier are the most popular works of any that Handel wrote, and these have achieved the greatest number of European editions. Although they comprise three volumes, yet there is only one, the first, which represents him properly, for it is the only one which he prepared himself, and supervised. The others, more or less fraudulently published, misrepresent him.
This First Volume, published in November, 1720, under the French t.i.tle _Suites_, etc., affords us the means of appreciating the two most striking of Handel's traits: his precocious maturity, which hardly developed at all in the course of time; and the European universality of character which distinguished his art even at an epoch when the great artists were less national than they are to-day. For the first trait one would remark in fine that these Clavier Pieces published in 1720 had already been written some time, certainly before 1700. One discovers a part of them in the _Jugendbuch_ of the Lennard Collection.[353] Others come from _Almira_, 1705. Naturally Handel enlarged and revised, and carefully grouped all these pieces in his edition of 1720. The interest of the _Jugendbuch_ is chiefly that it shows us the first sketches of the pieces, and how Handel perfected them. Side by side with the oldest pieces there are others more recent, composed, it may be, in Italy or in England.[354] One can trace in these pages the course of the different influences. Seiffert and Fleischer have noted some of them,[355] German influences, French, and Italian.[356] In England even, sometimes Italian elements, sometimes German, predominated with him.[357] The order of the dances varies in each Suite, and also the central point, the kernel of the work. The introductory pieces are sometimes preludes, sometimes fugues, overtures, etc. The dances and the airs are sometimes related to one another, and sometimes independent, and nevertheless the prevailing impression of the work, so varied in its texture, is its complete unity. The personality of Handel holds it all together and welds the most diverse elements--polyphony and richness of German harmony, Italian h.o.m.ophony, and Scarlattian technique, the French rhythm and ornamentation[358] with English directness and practicability. Thus the work made its impression on the times. Before this time, there had perhaps been more original volumes of pieces for the clavier, but their inspiration was nearly always very much circ.u.mscribed by the limits of their national art. Handel was the first of the great German cla.s.sics of the eighteenth century. He did for music what the French writers and philosophers of the eighteenth century did for literature. He wrote for all and sundry, and his volume took the place on the day of its publication which it has held since, that of a European cla.s.sic.
The following volumes are less interesting for the reasons I have given.
The Second Volume published in 1733 by Walsh, _unknown_ to Handel, and in a very faulty manner, gives us little pieces which we find in the _Jugendbuch_, and which date from the time of Hamburg and Halle.[359]
They lack the setting which Handel had certainly planned for them: preludes and fugues.
This arrangement was ready; and Handel, frustrated by this publisher, resigned himself to publis.h.i.+ng them later on, as an Appendix to the preceding work: _Six Fugues or Voluntaries for the Organ or Harpsichord, 1735, Opus 3._ These fugues date from the time when Handel was at Canons before 1720, the second in G Major was from the period of his first sojourn in England. They became celebrated at once, and were much circulated in ma.n.u.script even in Germany.[360] Handel had trained himself in fugue in the school of Kuhnau, and specially with Johann Krieger.[361] Like them he gave his Fugues an essentially melodic character. They are so suited for singing that two of them, as we have said, afterwards served for two choruses in the first part of _Israel_,[362] but Handel's compositions possess a far different vitality from that of his German forerunners. They have a charming intrepidity, a fury, a pa.s.sion, a fire which belongs only to him. In other words they live. ”All the notes talk,” says Mattheson. These fugues have the character of happy improvisations, and in truth they were improvised. Handel calls them Voluntaries, that is fanciful and learned caprices. He made frequent use of double fugues with a masterly development. ”Such an art rejoices the hearer and warms the heart towards the composer and towards the executant,” says Mattheson again, who, after having heard J. S. Bach, found Handel the greater in the composition of the double fugue and in improvisation. This habit of Handel--one might say almost a craving--for improvising, was the origin of the grand Organ Concertos. After the fas.h.i.+on of his time, Handel conducted his operas and oratorios from the clavier. He accompanied the singers with a marvellous art, blending himself to their fancy, and when the singer had done, he delivered his version.[363] From the interludes on the clavier in his operas, he pa.s.sed to the fantasies or caprices on the organ in the _entr'actes_ of his oratorios, and his success was so great that he never again abandoned this custom. One might say that the public were drawn to his oratorios more by his improvisations on the organ than by the oratorios themselves. Two volumes of the Organ Concertos were published during the lifetime of Handel, in 1738 and in 1740; the third a little after his death, in 1760.[364] To judge them properly it is necessary to bear in mind that they were destined for the theatre. It would be absurd to expect works in the strict, vigorous, and involved style of J. S. Bach. They were brilliant _divertiss.e.m.e.nts_, of which the style, somewhat commonplace yet luminous and pompous, preserves the character of oratorio improvisations, finding their immediate effect on the great audience. ”_When he gave a concerto_,”
says Hawkins, ”_his method in general was to introduce it with a voluntary movement on the diapasons, which stole on the ear in a slow and solemn progression; the harmony close wrought, and as full as could possibly be expressed; the pa.s.sages concatenated with stupendous art, the whole at the same time being perfectly intelligible, and carrying the appearance of great simplicity. This kind of prelude was succeeded by the concerto itself, which he executed with a degree of spirit and firmness that no one can ever pretend to equal_.” Even at the height of the cabal which was organised against Handel, the Grub Street Journal published an enthusiastic poem on Handel's Organ Concertos.[365]
”_Oh winds, softly, softly raise your golden wings among the branches!_ _That all may be silent, make even the whisperings of Zephyrs to cease._ _Sources of life, suspend your course...._ _Listen, listen, Handel the incomparable plays!..._ _Oh look, when he, the powerful man, makes the forces of the organ resound,_ _Joy a.s.sembles its cohorts, malice is appeased, ..._ _His hand, like that of the Creator, conducts his n.o.ble work with order, with grandeur and reason...._ _Silence, bunglers in art! It is nothing here to have the favour of great lords. Here, Handel is king._”
It is necessary then to view these Organ Concertos in the proper sense of magnificent concerts for a huge public.[366] Great shadows, great lights, strong and joyous contrasts, all are conceived in view of a colossal effect. The orchestra usually consists of two oboes, two violins, viola, and ba.s.ses (violoncellos, ba.s.soons, and cembalo), occasionally two flutes, some contraba.s.sos and a harp.[367] The concertos are in three or four movements, which are generally connected in pairs. Usually they open with a _pomposo_, or a _staccato_, in the style of the French overture,[368] often an _allegro_ in the same style follows. For the conclusion, an _allegro moderato_, or an _andante_, somewhat animated, sometimes some dances. The _adagio_ in the middle is often missing, and is left to be improvised on the organ. The form has a certain relation with that of the sonata in three movements, _allegro-adagio-allegro_, preceded by an introduction. The first pieces of these two first concertos published in Volume XLVIII of the Complete Edition (second volume) are in a picturesque and descriptive style. The long Concerto in F Major in the same volume has the swing of festival music, very closely allied to the open-air style. Finally, one must notice the beautiful experiment, unfortunately not continued, of the Concerto for two organs,[369] and that, more astonis.h.i.+ng still, of a Concerto for Organ terminated by a Chorus,[370] thus opening the way for Beethoven's fine Symphony, and to his successors, Berlioz, Liszt, and Mahler.[371]
The chamber music of Handel proves to be of the same precocious maturity as his clavier music.
Six Sonatas in Trio for two oboes and harpsichord[372] appear to date from about 1696, when he was eleven years old, and while he was still at Halle, where he wrote as he said, ”like the devil,” above all for the oboe, his favourite instrument. They are in four movements: _adagio_, _allegro_, _adagio_, _allegro_. The slow movements are often very short, and the second between them is sometimes a mere transition. The Sonata for _Viola da Gamba_, and _Cembalo Concertato_ in C Major[373] probably belongs to 1705, when Handel was at Hamburg. It is the only one of its kind in the works of Handel, which shows him as a forerunner of Bach.
The sonata is in trio form. The clavier plays a second _obbligato_ besides the ba.s.s part, as Seiffert notes: ”Ten years before Bach worked at his Sonatas with accompaniment for _cembalo obbligato_, Handel had already a clear perception of their value.”
Three Sonatas for Flute and Ba.s.s,[374] of an elegiac grace, also perhaps date from the Halle period, and according to Chrysander seem to have been continued up to 1710 at Hanover.
But the chief instrumental chamber works written by Handel were published in London between 1732 and 1740, and they comprise three volumes:[375]
(1) Fifteen sonatas or solos for a German flute, oboe or violin, with a thorough ba.s.s for the harpsichord, or ba.s.s violin, Op. 1.
(2) Nine sonatas or trios for two violins, flutes, or oboes, with a thorough ba.s.s for the harpsichord, or violoncello, Op. 2.
(3) Seven sonatas or trios for two violins, or German flutes, with a thorough ba.s.s for the harpsichord, or violoncello, Op. 5.
The first volume contains very old pieces, of which some date from the time when Handel was at Burlington and Chandos. Others might have been intended for the Prince of Wales, whose violin teacher, John Dubourg, was a friend of Handel, as they date from about 1730. The second volume appeared at first in Amsterdam, afterwards in London with Walsh, under a French t.i.tle[376] in 1733.
The third volume was composed in 1738, and published about the beginning of 1739.[377]
The first feature to notice in general is the want of definition in the choice of instruments for which this music was written. Following the same abstract aesthetic of his time, the composer left it to the players to choose the instruments. However, there was no doubt that in the first conception of Handel certain of these pieces were made for the flute, others for the violin, and others for the oboe.
In the volume Op. 1 of the solo sonatas (for the flute or oboe, or violin) with ba.s.s (harpsichord or violoncello), the usual form is generally in four movements:[378] _adagio_, _allegro_, _adagio_, _allegro_. The slow pieces are very short. Several are inspired by the airs of Italian cantatas and operas. Some of the pieces are joined together.[379] The harmony is often thin, and requires to be filled in.
The second and third volumes have a much greater value, containing trios or sonatas in two parts (for two violins, or two oboes, or two _flauti-traversi_) with Ba.s.s (harpsichord or violoncello). All the sonatas in the second volume, with only one exception,[380] have four movements, two slow and two fast alternatively, as in the Opus 1.
Sometimes they are inspired by the airs of the operas, or of the oratorios; at other times they have furnished a brief sketch for them.
The elegiac _Largo_ which opens the First Sonata is found again in _Alessandro_, the _allegro_ which finishes the Third Sonata forms one of the movements in the overture of _Athaliah_, the larghetto of the Fourth serves for the second movement of the _Esther_ overture. Other pieces have been transferred to the clavier or other instrumental works, where they are joined to other movements. The finest of these Trios are the First and the Ninth, both of enchanting poetry. In the second movement of the Ninth Trio, Handel has utilised very happily a popular English theme.
The Seven Trios from the third volume afford a much greater variety in the style and in the number[381] of the pieces. Dances occupy a great part.[382] They are indeed veritable Suites. They were composed in the years when Handel was attracted by the form of ballet-opera. The Musette and the _Allegro_ of the Second Sonata come from _Ariodante_.
Some of the other slow and pompous movements are borrowed from his oratorios. The two _Allegri_ which open the Fourth Sonata are taken from the Overture of _Athaliah_. On the other hand, Handel inserts in the final movement of _Belshazzar_ the beautiful _Andante_ which opens his First Sonata.
Whoever wishes to judge these works historically or from the intellectual point of view, will find, like Chrysander, that Handel has not invented here any new forms, and, as he advanced, he returned to the form of the Suite, which already belonged to the past, instead of continuing on his way towards the future Sonata. But those who will judge them artistically, for their own personal charm, will find in them some of the purest creations of Handel, and those which best retain their freshness. Their beautiful Italian lines, their delicate expression, their aristocratic simplicity, are refres.h.i.+ng alike to the mind and to the heart. Our own epoch, tired of the post-Beethoven and post-Wagnerian art, can find here, as in the chamber music of Mozart, a safe haven, where it can escape the sterile agitation of the present and find again quiet peace and sanity.
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