Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/458

436 life such as England alone had in the last century, such national epics as Judas Maccabeus and Israel in Egypt could have been engendered. In the same sense the Messiah became the embodiment of the deep religious feel- ing pervading the English people, and Handel, by leaving Italian opera for the oratorio, was changel from the entertainer of a caste to the artist cf the people in the highest and widest sense. The Jessiah is indeed the musi- eal equivalent of Milton’s Puradise Lost. This leads us to another and eyually important aspect of the same subject — the important influence of English poetry on Handel’s works. Not only are some of the greatest names of English literature — Milton (Allegro and Pensecroso), Dryden (Alex- ander’s Feast), Pope (St Cecilia’s Ode)—immediately con- nected with Handel’s compositions, but the spirit of these poets, and especially of Milton, pervades his oratorios even when he has to deal with the atrocious doggerel of Morell or Humphreys. In addition to this Handel received many a valuable suggestion from the works of Purcell and other early English musicians with which he was well acquainted. No wonder therefore that Englishmen claim Handel as one of themselves, and have granted him honours both during his lifetime and after his death such as have fallen to the share of fewartists. But in spite of all this it is impossible to deny that the chances of a national development of English music were, if not absolutely crushed, at least delayel for centuries by Handel. Under Elizabeth and James England had a school of music which, after the storms of the civil war, was once more revived by such masters a3 Pelhom Humphrey and his great pupil Purcell. The latter, although cut off in his youth, had left sufficient seed for a truly national growth of English music. But Handel soon concentrated the interest of connoisseurs and people on his owa work, and native talent had to abandon the larger sphere of the metropolis for the comparative seclusion of the cathedral. The following is a chronological list of Handel’s English oratorios taken from the catalogue of his works appended to Mr J. Marshall’s article in Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians, vol. 1. p. 657. Esther (1720), Deborah (1733), Athalia(1733), Saul (1738), Israel in Eqypt (1738), Messiah (1741), Samson (1741), Joseph (1743), Hercules (1744), Belshazzar (1744), Occasional (1746), Judas Maccabeus (1746), Alexander Balas (1747), Joshua (1747), Solomon (1748), Susanna (1748), Theodora (1749), Jephtha (1751), Triumph of Time and Truth (1757). The sequence of these dates will show that the transition from Italian opera to sacred music was very gradual, and caused by circumstances rather than by premeditated choice. It would lead us too far to enter here into the genesis of each of thes? works, but a few remarks must be added with regard to Hanlel’s summum opus the Messiah. It was written in twenty-four days and first performed April 18, 1742, at Dublin, where Handel was staying on a visit to the duke of Devonshire, lord-lieutenant of Ireland. Its first performance in London took place on March 23d of the following year. Its introduction into Handel’s native country was dye to Philip Emanuel Bach, the son of the great Bach, who conducted it at Hamburg. At Berlin it was for the first time given in April 1786, under the leader- ship of Adam Hiller, who also introduced it a few months later at Leipsic against the advice of all the musicians of Saxony. At the Berlin performance Signora Carrara, the celebrated singer, inserted in the first part an aria by Traetta, in which, according to a contemporary account, “she took much trouble to please the public, and the bravura passages of which she delivered with great success.” Two years before this had taken place the great Handel commemoration at Westminster Abbey, when on the third day of the festival, May 29, 1784, the Wessiah was splendidly performed by an orchestra and chorus of 525 performers. In the appreciation of Handel England thus was far in advance of Germany. The remainder of Handel’s life may be told in few words. Owing to the machinations of hisenemies he for a second time became a bankrupt in 1745, but nothing, not even his blindness during the last six years of his life, could daunt his energy. He worked till the last, and attended a performance of his Messiah a week before his death, which took place on April 14, 1759. He was buried in Westminster Abbey. His monument is by Roubilliac, the same sculptor who modelled the statue erected during Hamiel’s lifetime in Vauxhall Gardens. Handel was a man of character and high intelligence, aud his interest was not, like that of too many musicians, con- fined to his own art exclusively. He liked the society of politicians and literary men, and he was also a collector of pictures and articles of vertu. His power of work was enormous, and the list of his works would fill many pages. They belong to all branches of music, from the simple air to the opera and oratorio. His most important works of the two last-named classes have already been mentioned. But his instrumental compositions, especially his concerti for the organ and his suites de pieces for the harpsichord, ought not to be forgotten. Amongst the contrapuntists of his time Handel had but one equal—Bach. But he also was a master of the orchestra, and, what is more, possessed the rare gift of genuine melody, unfortunately too often impeded by the rococo embellishments of his arias. The extraordinary rapidity with which he worked has been already referred to. It is true that when his own ideas failed him he helped himself to those of others without the slightest compunction. The system of wholesale plagiarism carried on by him is perhaps unprecedented in the history of music. He pilfered not only single melodies, but fre- quently entire movements from the works of other masters, with few or no alterations and without a word cf acknowledg- ment.

1em  HAND TOOLS. Within the limits of the present article it would be impossible to describe even the majority of the instruments which may come under this designation, including as it does (in its popular if not in its technical sense) the whole of the appliances used by the handicrafts- man in the treatment, by means of his muscular energy, of the natural substances used in the arts and manufactures, ~-whether in the preliminary operations of setting-out and measuring bis materials, in reducing his work to the required form by cutting tools or otherwise, in gauging it and testing its accuracy, or in duly securing it whilst being thus treated. Omitting therefore the large but by no means unimportant class of measuring and gauging instruments, straight edges, templates, &c., we will confine our attention to examples of those in the use of which an actual expenditure of force is necessary. According to the structure and other proper- ties of the materials to be treated by them, these act almost without exception either by impact, by pressure, or by cutting, the last being effected sometimes with impact and sometimes with pressure. The principal tools acting purely by impact are noticed under. Those which depend solely on pressure are for the most part of an auxiliary character only, and their consideration will be deferred till we have glanced at a few of the much more numerous and more important class known as cutting or edge tools.