Page:Rolland - A musical tour through the land of the past.djvu/64

52 In 1741, an anonymous letter to the London Daily Post speaks of "the declared displeasure of so many gentlemen of rank and influence" in respect of Händel's attitude toward them.

Excepting the single opera Radamisto, which he dedicated to George I.—and this he did with dignity—he set his face against the humiliating and profitable custom of placing his compositions under the patronage of some wealthy person; and only when he was in the last extremity, when poverty and sickness had overwhelmed him, did he resolve to give a "benefit" concert: "that fashion of begging alms" as he called it.

From 1720 until his death in 1759 he was engaged in an unending conflict with the public. Like Lully, he managed a theatre, directed an Academy of Music and sought to reform—or to form—the musical taste of a nation. But he never had Lully's powers of control; for Lully was an absolute monarch of French music; and if Händel relied, as he did, on the king's favour, that favour was a long way from being as important to him as it was to Lully. He was in a country which did not obey the orders of those in high places with docility; a country which was not enslaved to the State; a free country, of a critical, unruly temper; and, apart from a select few, anything but hospitable, and inimical to foreigners. And he was a foreigner, and so was his Hanoverian king, whose patronage compromised him more than it benefited him.

He was surrounded by a crowd of bull-dogs with terrible fangs, by unmusical men of letters, who were likewise able to bite, by jealous colleagues, arrogant virtuosi, cannibalistic theatrical companies,