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Page 10
III.
The "Matthew" Passion arouses a very different mood from that aroused
by the "John." One does not remember the turbulent people's choruses,
nor the piercing note of anguish, nor any rapturous song or chorus;
for all else is drowned in the recollection of an overwhelming
utterance of love and human sorrow and infinite tenderness. Much else
there is in the "Matthew" Passion, just as there is love and
tenderness in the "John"; but just as these are subordinated in the
"John" to the more striking features I have mentioned, so in the
"Matthew" the noise of the people and the expression of keen remorse
are subordinated to love and human tenderness and infinite sorrow. The
small number and conciseness of the people's choruses have already
been alluded to, and it may easily be shown that the penitential music
is brief compared with the love music, besides having a great deal of
the love, the yearning love, feeling in it. The list of penitential
pieces is exhausted when I have mentioned "Come, ye daughters," "Guilt
for sin," "Break and die," "O Grief," "Alas! now is my Saviour gone,"
and "Have mercy upon me"; and, on the other hand, we have "Thou
blessed Saviour," the Last Supper music, the succeeding recitative and
song, "O man, thy heavy sin lament," "To us He hath done all things,"
"For love my Saviour suffered," "Come, blessed Cross," and "See the
Saviour's outstretched arm," every one of which, not to speak of some
other songs and most of the chorales, is sheer love music of the
purest sort. This, then, seems to me the difference between the
"Matthew" Passion and its predecessor: in the "John" Bach tried to
purge his audience in the regular evangelical manner by pity and
terror and hope. But during the next six years his spiritual
development was so amazing, that while remaining intellectually
faithful to evangelical dogma and perhaps such bogies as the devil and
hell, he yet saw that the best way of purifying his audience was to
set Jesus of Nazareth before them as the highest type of manhood he
knew, as the man who so loved men that He died for them. There is
therefore in the "Matthew" Passion neither the blank despair nor the
feverish ecstasy of the "John," for they have no part to play there.
Human sorrow and human love are the themes. Whenever I hear a fine
rendering of the "Matthew" Passion, it seems to me that no composer,
not even Mozart, could be more tender than Bach. It is often hard to
get into communication with him, for he often appeals to feelings that
no longer stir humanity--such, for instance, as the obsolete "sense of
sin,"--but once it is done, he works miracles. Take, for example, the
scene in which Jesus tells His disciples that one of them will betray
Him. They ask, in chorus, "Herr, bin ich's?" There is a pause, and
the chorale, "_Ich bin's_, ich sollte b�ssen," is thundered out by
congregation and organ; then the agony passes away at the thought of
the Redeemer, and the last line, "Das hat verdienet meine Seel," is
almost intolerable in its sweetness. The songs, of course, appeal
naturally to-day to all who will listen to them; but it is in such
passages as this that Bach spoke most powerfully to his generation,
and speaks now to those who will learn to understand him. Those who
understand him can easily perceive the "John" Passion to be a powerful
artistic embodiment of an eighteenth century idea; and they may also
perceive that the "Matthew" is greater, because it is, on the whole, a
little more beautiful, and because its main idea--which so far
transcended the eighteenth century understanding that the eighteenth
century preferred the "John"--is one of the loftiest that has yet
visited the human mind.
HANDEL
Mr. George Frideric Handel is by far the most superb personage one
meets in the history of music. He alone of all the musicians lived his
life straight through in the grand manner. Spohr had dignity; Gluck
insisted upon respect being shown a man of his talent; Spontini was
sufficiently self-assertive; Beethoven treated his noble patrons as so
many handfuls of dirt. But it is impossible altogether to lose sight
of the peasant in Beethoven and Gluck; Spohr had more than a trace of
the successful shopkeeper; Spontini's assertion often became mere
insufferable bumptiousness. Besides, they all won their positions
through being the best men in the field, and they held them with a
proud consciousness of being the best men. But in Handel we have a
polished gentleman, a lord amongst lords, almost a king amongst kings;
and had his musical powers been much smaller than they were, he might
quite possibly have gained and held his position just the same. He
slighted the Elector of Hanover; and when that noble creature became
George I. of England, Handel had only to do the handsome thing, as a
handsome gentleman should, to be immediately taken back into favour.
He was educated--was, in fact, a university man of the German sort; he
could write and spell, and add up rows of figures, and had many other
accomplishments which gentlemen of the period affected a little to
despise. He had a pungent and a copious wit. He had quite a
commercial genius; he was an impresario, and had engagements to offer
other people instead of having to beg for engagements for himself; and
he was always treated by the British with all the respect they keep
for the man who has made money, or, having lost it, is fast making it
again. He fought for the lordship of opera against nearly the whole
English nobility, and they paid him the compliment of banding together
with as much ado to ruin him as if their purpose had been to drive his
royal master from the throne. He treated all opposition with a
splendid good-humoured disdain. If his theatre was empty, then the
music sounded the better. If a singer threatened to jump on the
harpsichord because Handel's accompaniments attracted more notice than
the singing, Handel asked for the date of the proposed performance
that it might be advertised, for more people would come to see the
singer jump than hear him sing. He was, in short, a most superb
person, quite the grand seigneur. Think of Bach, the little shabby
unimportant cantor, or of Beethoven, important enough but shabby, and
with a great sorrow in his eyes, and an air of weariness, almost of
defeat. Then look at the magnificent Mr. Handel in Hudson's portrait:
fashionably dressed in a great periwig and gorgeous scarlet coat,
victorious, energetic, self-possessed, self-confident, self-satisfied,
jovial, and proud as Beelzebub (to use his own comparison)--too proud
to ask for recognition were homage refused. This portrait helps us to
understand the ascendency Handel gained over his contemporaries and
over posterity.
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