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Page 14
Nothing is said about the market value of a virtuous husband. Probably
the eighteenth century regarded such a thing as out of the question.
As I have said, I tell this story to show what the British public will
put up with if you mention the word oratorio. Voltaire's dictum needs
revision thus: "Whatever is too improper to be spoken (in England) is
sung, and whatever is too improper to be sung on the stage may be sung
in a church."
Nevertheless, out of this wretched book Handel made a masterpiece. The
tale of Susanna is not one in which a man of his character might be
expected to take a profound interest; though it should always be
remembered that hardly anything is known of his relations with the
other sex save that he took a keen and lifelong interest in the
Foundling Hospital. But so strong had the habit of making masterpieces
become with him that he could not resist the temptation to create just
one more, even when he had nothing better than "Susanna" to base it
on; just as a confirmed drunkard cannot resist the temptation to get
one drink more, even if he be accustomed to the gilded chambers of the
West End, and must go for really the last to-night into the lowest
drinking-saloon of the East. Some of the choruses are of Handel's
best. The first, "How long, O Lord," shows that he could write
expressive chromatic passages as well as Purcell and Bach; the second
is surcharged with emotion; "Righteous Heaven" is picturesque and full
of splendid vigour; "Impartial Heaven" contains some of the most
gorgeous writing that even Handel achieved. But the last two choruses,
and "The Cause is decided" and "Oh, Joachim," are common, colourless,
barren; and were evidently written without delight, to maintain the
pretext that the work was an oratorio. But it stands to this day,
unmistakably an opera; and it is the songs that will certainly make it
popular some day; for some of them are on Handel's highest level, and
Handel's highest level has never been reached by any other composer.
His choruses are equalled by Bach's, his dramatic strokes by Gluck's,
his instrumental movements by Bach's and perhaps Lulli's; but the
coming of Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Weber, and Wagner has only
served to show that he is the greatest song-writer the world has known
or is likely to know. Even Mozart never quite attained that union of
miraculously balanced form, sweetness of melody, and depth of feeling
with a degree of sheer strength that keeps the expression of the main
thought lucid, and the surface of the music, so to speak, calm, when
obscurity might have been anticipated, and some roughness and storm
and stress excused. "Faith displays her rosy wing" is an absolutely
perfect instance of a Handel song. Were not the thing done, one might
believe it impossible to express with such simplicity--four sombre
minor chords and then the tremolo of the strings--the alternations of
trembling fear and fearful hope, the hope of the human soul in
extremist agony finding an exalted consolation in the thought that
this was the worst. As astounding as this is the quality of light and
freshness of atmosphere with which Handel imbues such songs as "Clouds
o'ertake the brightest day" and "Crystal streams in murmurs flowing";
and the tenderness of "Would custom bid," with the almost divine
refrain, "I then had called thee mine," might surprise us, coming as
it does from such a giant, did we not know that tenderness is always a
characteristic of the great men, of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner,
and that the pettiness, ill-conditionedness, and lack of generous
feeling observable in (say) our London composers to-day stamp them
more unmistakably than does their music as small composers. If the
poor fellows knew what they were about, they would at least conceal
the littlenesses that show they are destined never to do work of the
first order. The composer of the "Rex tremend�" (in the Requiem) wrote
"Dove sono," Beethoven wrote both the finale of the Fifth symphony and
the slow movement of the Ninth, Wagner both the Valkyries' Ride and
the motherhood theme in "Siegfried," Handel "Worthy is the Lamb" and
"Waft her, angels"; while your little malicious musical Mimes are
absorbed in self-pity, and can no more write a melody that
irresistibly touches you than they can build a great and impressive
structure. And if Mozart is tenderest of all the musicians, Handel
comes very close to him. The world may, though not probably, tire of
all but his grandest choruses, while his songs will always be sung as
lovely expressions of the finest human feeling.
"Samson" is not his finest oratorio, though it may be his longest. It
contains no "Unto us a Child is born" nor a "Worthy is the Lamb," nor
a "Now love, that everlasting boy"; but in several places the sublime
is reached--in "Then round about the starry throne," the last page of
which is worth all the oratorios written since Handel's time save
Beethoven's "Mount of Olives"; in "Fixed is His everlasting seat,"
with that enormous opening phrase, irresistible in its strength and
energy as Handel himself; and in the first section of "O first created
beam." The pagan choruses are full of riotous excitement, though there
is not one of them to match "Ye tutelar gods" in "Belshazzar." But
there is little in "Belshazzar" to match the pathos of "Return, O God
of hosts," or "Ye sons of Israel, now lament." The latter is a notable
example of Handel's art. There is not a new phrase in it: nothing,
indeed, could be commoner than the bar at the first occurrence of
"Amongst the dead great Samson lies," and yet the effect is amazing;
and though the "for ever" is as old as Purcell, here it is newly
used--used as if it had never been used before--to utter a depth of
emotion that passes beyond the pathetic to the sublime. This very
vastness of feeling, this power of stepping outside himself and giving
a voice to the general emotions of humanity, prevents us recognising
the personal note in Handel as we recognise it in Mozart. But
occasionally the personal note may be met. The recitative "My genial
spirits fail," with those dreary long-drawn harmonies, and the
orchestral passage pressing wearily downwards at "And lay me gently
down with them that rest," seems almost like Handel's own voice in a
moment of sad depression. It serves, at anyrate, to remind us that the
all-conquering Mr. Handel was a complete man who had endured the
sickening sense of the worthlessness of a struggle that he was bound
to continue to the end. But these personal confessions are scarce.
After all, in oratorio Handel's best music is that in which he seeks
to attain the sublime. In his choruses he does attain it: he sweeps
you away with the immense rhythmical impetus of the music, or
overpowers you with huge masses of tone hurled, as it were, bodily at
you at just the right moments, or he coerces you with phrases like the
opening of "Fixed in His everlasting seat," or the last (before the
cadence) in "Then round about the starry throne." It is true that with
his unheard-of intellectual power, and a mastery of technique equal or
nearly equal to Bach's, he was often tempted to write in his
uninspired moments, and so the chorus became with him more or less of
a formula; but we may also note that even when he was most mechanical
the mere furious speed at which he wrote seemed to excite and exalt
him, so that if he began with a commonplace "Let their celestial
concerts all unite," before the end he was pouring forth glorious and
living stuff like the last twenty-seven bars. So the pace at which he
had to write in the intervals of bullying or coaxing prima donnas or
still more petulant male sopranos was not wholly a misfortune; if it
sometimes compelled him to set down mere musical arithmetic, or
rubbish like "Honour and arms," and "Go, baffled coward," it sometimes
drew his grandest music out of him. The dramatic oratorio is a hybrid
form of art--one might almost say a bastard form; it had only about
thirty years of life; but in those thirty years Handel accomplished
wonderful things with it. And the wonder of them makes Handel appear
the more astonishing man; for, when all is said, the truth is that the
man was greater, infinitely greater, than his music.
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