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Page 12
Rightly to approach the "Messiah" or any of Handel's sacred oratorios,
to approach it in any sure hope of appreciating it, one must remember
that (as I have just said) Handel had nothing of the religious
temperament, that in temperament he was wholly secular, that he was an
eighteenth century pagan. He was perfectly satisfied with the visible
and audible world his energy and imagination created out of things;
about the why and wherefore of things he seems never to have troubled;
his soul asked no questions, and he was never driven to accept a
religious or any other explanation. It is true he went to church with
quite commendable regularity, and wished to die on Good Friday and so
meet Jesus Christ on the anniversary of the resurrection. But he was
nevertheless as completely a pagan as any old Greek; the persons of
the Trinity were to him very solid entities; if he wished to die on
Good Friday, depend upon it, he fully meant to enter heaven in his
finest scarlet coat with ample gold lace and a sword by his side, to
make a stately bow to the assembled company and then offer a few
apposite and doubtless pungent remarks on the proper method of tuning
harps. Of true devotional feeling, of the ecstatic devotional feeling
of Palestrina and of Bach, there is in no recorded saying of his a
trace, and there is not a trace of it in his music. When he was
writing the "Hallelujah Chorus" he imagined he saw God on His throne,
just as in writing "Semele" he probably imagined he saw Jupiter on his
throne; and the fact proves only with what intensity and power his
imagination was working, and how far removed he was from the genuine
devotional frame of mind. There is not the slightest difference in
style between his secular and his sacred music; he treats sacred and
secular subjects precisely alike. In music his intention was never to
reveal his own state of mind, but always to depict some object, some
scene. Now, never did he adhere with apparently greater resolution to
this plan, never therefore did he produce a more essentially secular
work, than in the "Messiah." One need only consider such numbers as
"All they that see Him" and "Behold the Lamb of God" to realise this;
though, indeed, there is not a number in the oratorio that does not
show it with sufficient clearness. But fully to understand Handel and
realise his greatness, it is not enough merely to know the spirit in
which he worked: one must know also his method of depicting things and
scenes. He was wholly an impressionist--in his youth from choice, as
when he wrote the music of "Rinaldo" faster than the librettist could
supply the words; in middle age and afterwards from necessity, as he
never had time to write save when circumstances freed him for a few
days from the active duties of an impresario. He tried to do, and
succeeded in doing, everything with a few powerful strokes, a few
splashes of colour. Of the careful elaboration of Bach, of Beethoven,
even of Mozart, there is nothing: sometimes in his impatience he
seemed to mix his colours in buckets and hurl them with the surest
artistic aim at his gigantic canvases. A comparison of the angels'
chorus "Glory to God in the highest" in Bach's "Christmas Oratorio"
with the same thing as set in the "Messiah" will show not only how
widely different were the aims of the two men, but also throws the
minute cunning of the Leipzig schoolmaster into startling contrast
with the daring recklessness of the tremendous London impresario. Of
course both men possessed wonderful contrapuntal skill; but in Bach's
case there is time and patience as well as skill, and in Handel's only
consummate audacity and intellectual grip. Handel was by far a greater
man than Bach--he appears to me, indeed, the greatest man who has yet
lived; but though he achieves miracles as a musician, his music was to
him only one of many modes of using the irresistible creative instinct
and energy within him. Any one who looks in Handel for the
characteristic complicated music of the typical German masters will be
disappointed even as the Germans are disappointed; but those who are
prepared to let Handel say what he has to say in his own chosen way
will find in his music the most admirable style ever attained to by
any musician, the most perfect fusion of manner and matter. It is a
grand, large, and broad style, because Handel had a large and grand
matter to express; and if it errs at all it errs on the right side--it
has too few rather than too many notes.
On the whole, the "Messiah" is as vigorous, rich, picturesque and
tender as the best of Handel's oratorios--even "Belshazzar" does not
beat it. There is scarcely any padding; there are many of Handel's
most perfect songs and most gorgeous choruses; and the architecture of
the work is planned with a magnificence, and executed with a lucky
completeness, attained only perhaps elsewhere in "Israel in
Egypt"--for which achievement Handel borrowed much of the bricks and
mortar from other edifices. Theological though the subject is, the
oratorio is as much a hymn to joy as the Ninth symphony; and there is
in it far more of genuine joy, of sheer delight in living. Of the
sense of sin--the most cowardly illusion ever invented by a degenerate
people--there is no sign; where Bach would have been abased in the
dust, Handel is bright, shining, confident, cocksure that all is right
with the world. Mingled with the marvellous tenderness of "Comfort ye"
there is an odd air of authority, a conviction that everything is
going well, and that no one need worry; and nothing fresher, fuller of
spring-freshness, almost of rollicking jollity, has ever been written
than "Every valley shall be exalted." "And the glory of the Lord shall
be revealed" is in rather the same vein, though a deeper note of
feeling is struck. The effect of the alto voices leading off, followed
immediately by the rest of the chorus and orchestra, is overwhelming;
and the chant of the basses at "For the mouth of the Lord" is in the
biggest Handel manner. But just as "He was despised" and "I know that
my Redeemer liveth" tower above all the other songs, so three or four
choruses tower above all the other choruses in not only the "Messiah,"
but all Handel's oratorios. "Worthy is the Lamb" stands far above the
rest, and indeed above all choruses in the world save Bach's very
best; then comes "For unto us a Child is born"; and after that "And
He shall purify," "His yoke is easy," and "Surely He hath borne our
griefs"--each distinctive, complete in itself, an absolute piece of
noble invention. "Unto us a Child is born" is written in a form
devised by Handel and used with success by no other composer since,
until in a curiously modified shape Tschaikowsky employed it for the
third movement of his Pathetic symphony. The first theme is very
simply announced, played with awhile, then the second follows--a
tremendous phrase to the words "The government shall be upon His
shoulders"; suddenly the inner parts begin to quicken into life, to
ferment, to throb and to leap, and with startling abruptness great
masses of tone are hurled at the listener to the words "Wonderful,
Counsellor." The process is then repeated in a shortened and
intensified form; then it is repeated again; and finally the principal
theme, delivered so na�vely at first, is delivered with all the pomp
and splendour of full chorus and orchestra, and "Wonderful,
Counsellor" thundered out on a corresponding scale. A scheme at once
so simple, so daring and so tremendous in effect, could have been
invented by no one but Handel with his need for working rapidly; and
it is strange that a composer so different from Handel as Tschaikowsky
should have hit upon a closely analogous form for a symphonic
movement. The forms of the other choruses are dissimilar. In "He
shall purify" there are two big climaxes; in "His yoke is easy" there
is only one, and it comes at the finish, just when one is wondering
how the splendid flow of music can be ended without an effect of
incompleteness or of anti-climax; and "Surely He hath borne our
griefs" depends upon no climactic effects, but upon the sheer
sweetness and pathos of the thing.
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