Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/456

Rh HANDEL perhaps unequalled. He has entered into the private and the political life as well as into the art life of Englishmen ; without him they cannot bury their dead or elect their legislators ; and never has a composer been more essenti ally national than the German Handel has become in England. It may on the other hand be said that but for his sojourn in that country Handel would never have been what he was. It was under the influence of English poetry, and of English national and religious life, that his artistic conception broadened and gained the dignity and grandeur which we see in his oratorios, and which was wanting, and, seeing the style of art, could not but be wanting, in his Italian operas. The day of Handel s arrival in London, late in the autumn of 1710, was indeed an eventful day in the life of Handel as well as in the annals of English music, an I the facts of his biography preceding that date may be summed up with comparative brevity. George Frederick Handel (in German the name is always Handel) was born at Halle in Saxony on February 23, 1685, the same year which gave birth to his great fellow composer Johann Sebastian Bach. 1 He was the son of George Handel, who according to the custom of the time com bined the occupations of barber and surgeon, and subse quently rose to be valet-de-chambre to the elector of Saxony. His second wife, Dorothea Taust, was the daughter of a clergyman, and to her the great composer remained attached with all the ties of filial affection. His father was sixty -three years old when Handel was born, and the musical talent shown by the youth at a very early age found little encouragement from the stern old gentleman, who looked upon art with contempt, and destined his son for the law. Many are the anecdotes relating to the sur reptitious way in which the youth practised the forbidden art on a little spinet smuggled into his attic by the aid of a good-natured aunt, and fortunately of too feeble tone to be audible in the lower part of the house. At the age of eight the boy accompanied his father on a visit to Saxe- Weissenfels, and it was there that the proficiency acquired in the manner above described was turned to excellent account ; for, having made acquaintance with the court musicians, and being allowed to practise on the organ, he was on one occasion overheard by the duke himself, who immediately recognizing his talent spoke seriously to the father on his behalf. To such a remonstrance coming from such a quarter the valet-de-chambre had of course to submit, and henceforth Handel was allowed to practise his art, and after his return to Halle even received musical instruction from Zachau, one of the best organists of the town. It was under his somewhat mechanical but thorough tuition that Handel acquired his knowledge of counterpoint ; he also soon became an excellent performer on the organ. His first attempts at composition date from an equally early period, and in his twelfth year he made his debut as a virtuoso at the court of Berlin with cuch success that the elector of Brandenburg, afterwards King Frederick I. of Prussia, offered to send him to Italy, a proposal declined by Handel s father for unknown reasons. In 1697 the latter died, and the young artist was henceforth thrown on his own resources. For some years he remained in Halle, where in 1702 he obtained a position as organist ; but in the following year we find him at Hamburg, at that time one of the musical centres of Germany. There the only German opera worth the name had been founded by Reinhold Reiser, the author of innumerable operas and operettas, and was flourishing at the time under his direc tion. Handel entered the orchestra, and soon rose from his place amongst the second violins to the conductor s seat at the clavicembalo, which he occupied during Reiser s 1 The date, 23d February 1684, given on his tombstone in West minster Abbey is incorrect. absence, necessitated by debt. It was at Hamburg that he became acquainted with Mattheson, a fertile composer and writer on musical subjects, whose Vollkommener Kapell meister (1739) and Ehrenpforte (1740) are valuable sources for the history of music. The friendship of the two young men was not without some curious incidents. On one occasion they set out together on a journey to Liibeck, where the place of organist at one of the churches was vacant. Arrived at Liibeck, they discovered that one of the conditions for obtaining the place was the hand of the elderly daughter of the former organist, the celebrated Buxtehude, whereat the two candidates forthwith returned to Hamburg. Another adventure might have had still more serious consequences. At a performance of Matthe- son s opera Cleopatra at Hamburg, Handel refused to give up the conductor s seat to the composer, who was also a singer, and was occupied on the stage during the early part of his work. The dispute led to an improvised duel out side the theatre, and but for a large button on Handel s coat which intercepted his adversary s sword, there would have been no Messiah or Israel in Egypt. In spite of all this the young men remained friends, and Mattheson s writings arc full of the most valuable facts for Handel s biography. He relates in his Ehrenpforte amongst other things that his friend at that time used to compose &quot; inter minable cantatas &quot; of no great merit, but of these no trace now remains, unless we assume that a &quot; Passion&quot; according to St John (German words by Postel), the MS. of which is at the Pioyal Library, Berlin, is amongst the works alluded to. It was composed in 1704. The year after this witnessed Handel s first dramatic attempt- a German opera, Almira, performed at Hamburg on January 8, 1705. with great success, and followed a few weeks later by another work of the same class, Nero by name. In 170G he left Hamburg for Italy, at that time still the great school of music, to which indeed Handel himself owed his skill and experience in writing for the voice. He remained in Italy for three years, living at various times in Florence. Piome, Naples, and Venice. He is said to have made the acquaintance of Lotti, of Alessandro Scarlatti, and of the latter s son Domenico, the father of modern pianoforte playing. His compositions during his Italian period were two operas, two oratorios, Resurrezione and II Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno, afterwards developed into the English oratorio The Triumph of Time and Truth, and numerous other choral works. It was during these years that the composer s earlier or Italian style reached its full maturity, and that his name became widely known in the musical world. In the chief cities of Italy &quot; il Sassone,&quot; as Handel, like his countryman Hasse twenty years later, was nicknamed, was received with every mark of favour and esteem. But his own country also began to acknow ledge his merits. At Venice in 1709 Handel received the offer of the post of capellmeister to the elector of Hanover, transmitted to him by his patron and staunch friend of later years Baron Rielmansegge. The composer at the time con templated a visit to England, and he accepted the offer only on condition of leave of absence being granted to him for that purpose. To England accordingly Handel journeyed after a short stay at Hanover, arriving in Lon don towards the close of 1710. Curiously enough he came as a composer of Italian opera, and in that capacity he earned his first success at the Haymarket with the opera Rinaldo, composed it is said in a fortnight, and first per formed on February 24, 1711. The beautiful and still universally popular air &quot;Lascia ch io pianga&quot;is from this opera. A similar air in the form of a sarabande occurs in Almira. After the close of the season in June of the same year Handel seems to have returned to Germany fora short time ; but the temptation of English fame or English gold