Page:Romain Rolland Handel.djvu/14

6 inventive side of the art; he showed him how to give his musical ideas the most perfect form, and he refined his taste. He possessed a remarkable library of Italian and German music, and he explained to Handel the various methods of writing and composing adopted by different nationalities, whilst pointing out the good qualities and the faults of each composer; and in order that his education might be at the same time theoretical and practical, he frequently gave him exercises to work in such and such a style.

This education with a true European catholicity was not confined to one particular musical style, but spread itself out over all schools, and caused him to assimilate the best points of all, for who can fail to see that the conception and practice of Handel, and indeed the very essence of his genius, was the absorption of a hundred different styles! "One of his manuscripts dated 1698, and preserved carefully all his life, contains," so says Chrysander, "some airs, choruses, capriccios, and fugues of Zachau, Alberti (Heinrich Albert), Froberger, Krieger, Kerl, Ebner, Strungk, which he had copied out whilst studying with Zachau." Handel could never forget these old masters, distinct traces of whom are found from time to time in his best-known works. He would doubtless too, with