Page:Rolland - A musical tour through the land of the past.djvu/68

56 worshipped, lay dying he wrote Poro, that delightfully care-free opera. The terrible year 1717, when he lay at the point of death, in the depths of a gulf of calamity, was preceded and followed by two oratorios overflowing with joy and material energy: Alexander's Feast (1736) and Saul (1738), and also by the two sparkling operas, Giustino (1736) with its pastoral fragrance, and Serse (1738), in which a comic vein appears.

… La calma del cor, del sen, dell' alma, says a song at the close of the serene Giustino. And this was the time when Händel's mind was strained to breaking-point by its load of anxieties!

Herein the anti-psychologists, who claim that the knowledge of an artist's life is of no value in the understanding of his work, will find cause for triumph, but they will do well to avoid a hasty judgment; for the very fact that Händel's art was independent of his life is of capital importance in the comprehension of his art. That a Beethoven should find solace for his sufferings and his passions in works of suffering and passion is easily understood. But that Händel, a sick man, assailed by anxieties, should find distraction in works expressing joy and serenity presupposes an almost superhuman mental equilibrium. How natural it is that Beethoven, endeavouring to write his Symphony of Joy, should have been fascinated by