Page:A Dictionary of Music and Musicians vol 2.djvu/633

Rh is repeated, and closes on the dominant; after svhich comes a fugued Allegro, beginning as follows:—

etc.

This is carried on, with fluent power, for 33 bars more; a short slow movement follows, chiefly for the oboe; and the overture concludes with a 'Gigue.' Handel's inventive originality, and his independence of all prescribed forms in the choruses of his oratorios, stand in curious contrast to his subservience to precedent in his overtures; those to his Italian operas and those to his English oratorios being similar in form, style, and development; insomuch, indeed, that any one might be used with almost equal appropriateness for either purpose. There is a minuet extant which is said (we believe on the authority of the late Mr. Jones, organist of Canterbury Cathedral), to have been designed by Handel as the closing movement of the overture to the 'Messiah' when performed without the oratorio. The first strain of this minuet is as follows:

etc.

As regards the Overture, then, Handel perfected the form first developed by Lulli, but cannot be considered as an inventor and grand originator, such as he appears in his sublime sacred choral writing.

Hitherto, as we have said, the dramatic Overture had no special relevance to the character and sentiment of the work which it preceded. The first step in this direction was taken by Gluck, who was for some time contemporaneous with Handel. It was he who first perceived, or at least realised, the importance of rendering the overture to a dramatic work analogous in style to the character of the music which is to follow. In the dedication of his 'Alceste' he refers to this among his other reforms in stage composition. [See, vol. i. 603b; , vol. ii. 516a.] The French score of 'Alceste' includes, besides the invariable string quartet, flutes, oboes, a clarinet [App. p.737 "chalumeau"], and three trombones. Even Gluck, however, did not always identify the overture with the openi to which it belonged, so thoroughly as was afterwards done, by including a theme or themes in anticipation of the music which followed. Still, he certainly rendered the orchestral prelude what, as a writer has well said, a literary preface should be—'something analogous to the work itself, so that we may feel its want as a desire not elsewhere to be gratified.' His overtures to 'Alceste' and 'Iphigénie en Tauride' run continuously into the first scene of the opera and the latter is perhaps the most remarkable instance up to that time of special identification with the stage music which it heralds; inasmuch as it is a distinct foreshadowing of the opening storm scene of the opera into which the prelude is merged. Perhaps the finest specimen of the dramatic overture of the period, viewed as a distinct orchestral composition, is that of Gluck to his opera 'Iphigénie en Aulide.'

The influence of Gluck on Mozart is clearly to be traced in Mozart's first important opera, 'Idomeneo' (1781), the overture to which, both in beauty and power, is far in advance of any previous work of the kind; but, beyond a general nobility of style, it has no special dramatic character that inevitably associates it with the opera itself, though it is incorporated therewith by its continuance into the opening scene. In his next work, 'Die Entführung aus dem Serail' (.1782), Mozart has identified the prelude with the opera by the short incidental 'Andante' movement, anticipatory (in the minor key) of Belmont's aria 'Hier soil ich dich denn sehen.' In the overture to his 'Nozze di Figaro' (1786) he originally contemplated a similar interruption of the Allegro by a short slow movement—an intention afterwards happily abandoned. This overture is a veritable creation, that can only be sufficiently appreciated by a comparison of its brilliant outburst of genial and graceful vivacity with the vapid preludes to the comic operas of the day. In the overture to his 'Don Giovanni' (1787) we have a distinct identification with the opera by the use, in the introductory 'Andante,' of some of the wondrous music introducing the entry of the statue in the last scene. The solemn initial chords for trombones, and the fugal 'Allegro' of the overture to 'Die Zauberflöte' may be supposed to be suggestive of the religious element of the libretto; and this may be considered as the composer's masterpiece of its kind. Since Mozart's time the Overture has adopted the same general principles of form which govern the first movement of a Symphony or Sonata, without the repetition of the first section.

Reverting to the French school, we find a characteristic overture of Méhul's to his opera 'La Chasse du Jeune Henri' (1797), the prelude to which alone has survived. In this however, as in