Handel as a Transitional Figure

1 ILIAS CHRISSOCHOIDIS Handel as a transitional figure: reflections on his historiographical placement Handel’s academic reception sits on a conceptual fissure: on one side, stands the master of late Baroque music, a classification based primarily on stylistic grounds: the use of basso continuo, aria da capo, and so forth. On the other side, however, there is an artist operating within modernity and its institutions: his oratorios embraced and reflected British nationalism, the dissemination of his music was part of a rising wave of consumerism, his image was shaped by the press and through modern publicity techniques, and the dynamism of his career defied the social norms for Baroque musicians. This gap remains invisible in daily academic practice largely because Handel was processed in a German musicological factory (this is not meant in a pejorative way). Ignoring his life-long residence in Britain and absence of interest in the affairs of his native land, German musicians and 2 academics worked, already from the mid-18th century, for his intellectual repatriation as the second pillar in the great temple of German music, the first one being Bach, of course. Their efforts were successful, especially because Britain’s reverential attitude to the composer during the 19th-century stifled rigorous scholarship. Sustaining and probing a tradition was a contradiction in terms. And so, our present-day emphasis on Handel’s works and style, rather than on biography, social significance, and reception is of German rather than of British origin; and Romantic rather than Augustan in its outlook. We still view Handel as the colleague of Bach and Telemann, as Scarlatti’s successor or Haydn’s precursor, but hardly as the contemporary of Richardson, Fielding, Quin, Garrick, and Hogarth. This conclusion rises effortlessly, I would think, if one studies Handel’s life and career through 18th-century British sources, particularly the vast ocean of early English newspapers. From this contemporaneous perspective, popular notions like a historical synergy of Bach and Handel or Bach’s intellectual supremacy over Handel are incomprehensible. 3 In 1789, for instance, Burney had to rebuff the apostolic fervor of German authors who sought to crown Bach as the greatest of all composers. A little-scrutinized passage in the General History of Music states that Bach’s lofty position would have been justified had he composed for the stage and for the public of a major capital. Burney’s test is that of modernity: what makes a great composer is the breadth of his recognition from the general public rather than his position in fixed hierarchies of court, church, and guild. It goes without saying that Handel passes the test with flying colors. Even less comprehensible is the 1750 Baroque terminus in Handel’s case. It’s true that his compositional activity ended in 1752 because of sight loss, but his career as producer and performer of oratorios continued to evolve. In fact, 1750 marks the beginning of the historic association of Messiah with the Foundling Hospital, which established Handel as a leading philanthropist. In the following years, his oratorios spread widely through the provinces, building the cultural prestige that would made possible his national Commemoration in 1784. 4 Not even his death in 1759 discontinued the career of his oratorios. Days only after he had expired, his assistant John Christopher Smith, Jr. announced the continuation of their performances in the following season. Periodization needs strong division points. With the exception of his biological death, we find no disruption in the career and reception of his work. Confining Handel in the Baroque slot of our textbooks, syllabi, record shops etc. is highly problematic, then; it may serve our needs for law-and-order but obscures critical aspects of Handel as a historical phenomenon. * * * A window to explore Handel outside the gates of consensus scholarship and the dominant paradigm of style criticism is the concept of transition. Transition cancels fixed points and upsets hierarchies for the sake of flow, projection, and development. Its manifestation as social mobility, emigration, entrepreneurship, anti-authoritarianism, transcendence of boundaries and norms is predominant in Handel. 5 This short presentation will outline sites of transition where Handel’s modernity becomes visible. Handel crossed the English channel in late 1710 in search of advancing his career. By that time London was the richest city in Europe and its growing fascination with Italian opera placed the young composer in an advantageous position. Although British nobility was smaller in size than any of its counterparts in Europe, they controlled vast resources. In addition, the growing class of merchants and entrepreneurs promised a well-financed public entertainment sector. Finally, civil liberties made London especially attractive to independent minds. Handel was certainly one of them. The first recorded incidents in his life are acts of filial disobedience, which soon were followed by the loss of paternal authority, leaving room to assert his independence. His early career is one of strong mobility. Once he attained control of his creative powers, he sought patronage on a temporary basis and avoided long-term attachments. He toured Italy and despite enthusiastic reception he finally returned to Germany. Immediately after his appointment 6 in Hanover, he took a leave to visit London, finally breaching his contract and being dismissed from the Elector’s service. A life of subservience to princes and a career of regular duties seemed entirely unsuited for Handel. It is hard to imagine him sharing a table with an archbishop’s servants or catering every Esterhazyian wish as modern composers like Mozart and Haydn would do half-a-century later. London was thus a perfect destination for Handel. The capital of modernity, with a weak monarchy, expanding markets, and civil liberties, it became his ideal abode. There is nothing suggesting he ever thought of abandoning it and he specifically requested a burial and a monument in England’s most sacred ground, the Westminster Abbey. When Handel moved to England, therefore, he was changing gear from an old to a new world. Exactly because of Britain’s dynamism, Handel could not have predicted the shape of his career or the magnitude of his achievements. He spent the first years in London in rather uneventful circumstances, receiving a full pension from the Crown and enjoying the patronage of leading noblemen. 7 The creation of the Royal Academy of Music in 1719 put London’s Italian Opera on stable footing and allowed Handel’s regular exposure to the public. As a composer and music director, he was appearing at the King’s Theatre twice a week for nearly half-ayear. Not coincidentally, this period also witnessed a constant flow of his music in print and the first public eulogies to his art. Still, Handel was only a hired talent in an aristocratic enterprise. The financial collapse of the Academy in 1728 left London without Italian opera and enabled Handel to change gear. In partnership with Heidegger, he assumed administrative control of the company. His new authority exacerbated relations with Senesino, the company’s star from 1730 onwards, and the ensuing clash left Handel confronting his former patrons. It was the beginning of a painful process of social and artistic emancipation. The composer now was solely responsible for running an opera company and withstanding competition from a powerful constituency of his own clientele who had recruited Farinelli. With the exception of a truce in 1737-38, and the peripheral triumph in 8 Dublin in 1742, this was a period of wilderness for Handel and, in my view, the hallmark of his modernity. His refusal to work again for his former patrons, members of the Nobility, was considered scandalous by many, a kind of revolt against social order. We still don’t know what exactly motivated this daring attitude, but Handel did pay a heavy price in January 1745, when a boycott to his new production Hercules forced him to suspend an ambitious season of oratorio entertainments. The announcement letter was Handel’s first address to the general public. In a few remarkably succinct phrases, the composer defined the aims of his art and his relation with Britain. I regard it a monument in the social history of music, as it confirms Handel’s transition from a world of personal allegiance to one’s social superiors to one of public accountability. Occasionally life is fair, however, and the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745-46 put heavy pressure on anything Italian in Britain. Handel’s oratorios, which explored the trials and triumphs of a persecuted people acquired national relevance as never before. 9 In 1747, Judas Macchabeus, a tribute to the crushing of the Rebellion, inaugurated the last phase of Handel’s career, one of stability, profit, and public exultation, especially thanks to his philanthropic record at the Foundling Hospital. In less than forty years, then, Handel shifted cultural polarity: from foreign celebrity to national composer; from preeminent agent of the Italian style to creator of a British genre; and from heavily patronized talent to thoroughly independent artist and by far the wealthiest composer of his century. When the Viennese classics looked upon him, they didn’t see a master of a bygone age, but one whose lofty achievements were relevant to their artistic and social aspirations. Perhaps the most remarkable image of Handel comes in a paraphrase from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar: “Why Man! He does bestride the Musick World / Like a Colossus; and We poor, petty Composers, / Walk under his huge Legs, and pick up a / Crotchet to deck our humble Thoughts.” Much like the original Colossus, Handel stood between two different worlds. As an 10 artist, he combined the pragmatism that goes with a career in music theatre with a strong vision and personal integrity. He began his career in an age when star performers defined a production and consumed most of its budget. By the late 1740s, he had become a true auteur, controlling all aspects of his performances and savoring their profits. The world of opera that he so valiantly served relied on a strong visual component and virtuoso singers. His new genre of oratorio discarded visual representation altogether and replaced expensive and capricious stars with native singers, often from the spoken theater, and a massive chorus. Concurrently with downgrading star performers and democratizing the stage, Handel placed himself at the center of the performing act as composer, director, and soloist in his own organ concertos. As a strict disciplinarian in full control of dozen performers, he prefigured the modern almighty conductor. His attitude to the oratorio was entrepreneurial and involved constant experimentation. The calendar choice of Lenten Wednesdays and Fridays, the 11 introduction of organ concertos, the expanded role of the chorus, the increased visual suggestiveness of his music are among the areas he innovated. For the needs of his 1739 season, Handel seriously experimented with orchestral color, introducing trombones, carillons and effects in Saul and Israel in Egypt, and ordering an organ-clavichord. By the early 1740s his performances were known for their massive volume of sound, one that was only appropriate for noisy London. Indeed we know that by special permission Handel was allowed to use the kettle drums of the Tower. In short, English oratorio came from nowhere in commercial theater and Handel had the stamina, and surely the stubbornness, to develop and fully establish it in London’s notoriously competitive theatrical scene. Handel also stands between two different understandings of music, as performance and as text. His operas existed predominantly as performances, with each revival being practically a new version of the original production. 12 Such ontological flexibility gradually disappears with his oratorios, which become fixed works available for exact repetition. This change was owing to the massive reproduction of Handel’s works in print, the composer’s full control over his productions, and the establishment of a regular oratorio season in the late 1740s. Unlike opera companies, which survive thanks to repertory change, Handel managed to create an annual oratorio season based on a fixed body of works. In this sense, he was the creator of a performance canon, whose core is still with us today. Relevant to this point is Handel’s sumptuous edition of Alexander’s Feast with the engraved portrait by Houbraken. The publication of a full score is very rare for that time and shows Handel’s interest in permanently fixing one of his most celebrated works. No less attention should be paid to Handel’s contributions in raising the dignity and prestige of music. The incomparable Zadok the Priest, written for the coronation of George II in 1727, is probably the first piece of ceremonial music to become canonic outside its original 13 context, being regularly performed in concerts and retaining its popularity to this day. Alexander’s Feast and L’Allegro il Penseroso proved the suitability of English poetry for music and were considered paradigms of musico-poetic synergy. The oratorios in particular opened up new space in music culture. Connoisseurs recognized in these choruses the musical equivalent of historical painting, massive in scope, overwhelming in impact, and rich in detail. As I have argued elsewhere, Handel’s achievements were critical for the rise of British music historiography. It is no coincidence that Handel’s oratorios is the first body of music to be explicitly associated with an aesthetic category, the sublime. Their massive sound, intricate counterpoint and strong drama left many in awe. The tradition of rising at the sounding of Hallelujah in Messiah is only an example of the enormous power that Handel’s music exerted on audiences. Indeed, the reception of his oratorios prefigures our modern reverential attitude to art music. Needless to say, Handel the man is a locus of modernity. Supreme confidence in his own 14 powers and refusal to deal with the past were taken by many of his contemporaries as marks of pride, arrogance, and even mental instability. Unlike the musicians of his time, who were part of strict hierarchies, Handel linked himself to English society from an increasingly elevated position. His relation with the Foundling Hospital is the best example here. Charity concerts preceded Handel, of course. But he managed to give so much prestige to the hospital’s annual benefit that by the end of his life he ranked its third greatest benefactor. We can smile at the thought of Messiah being the first blockbuster in music history, but it’s true that Handel’s masterpiece along with several others of his works never failed to generate substantial revenue. Thus the sublimity of his music conjoined with social benevolence created a solid base for his canonization. Whether Handel used basso continuo, fugato, sequences, or aria da capo was of little concern to those who experienced his music’s aesthetic charge and social significance. Here lies my disagreement with a musicology that reduces the composer to an 15 agent in the stylistic evolution of Western music. The same choices in style and technique may function widely different across nations, cultures, or continents. For Burney, Bach’s counterpoint was too heavy and pedantic to survive posterity. Handel’s one, however, could engage the listener, as it was supporting broader dramatic aims. On the other side, a Handel adopting Gluck’s simplicity could have survived in late 18th-century stage but could never have become a cultural emblem of the British Empire. It is not style that makes Handel a modern composer but his balancing a strong artistic vision with the evolving public he was addressing. His music was not sufficiently antiquated to alienate future listeners nor contemporary enough to please his own generation alone. This achievement can fully be appreciated only if we slide away from the paradigm of textual criticism until we, too, can strike a balance between text and context, and find a point where neither the text ignores the listener nor the latter imposes agendas on the text. Viewing Handel as a transitional figure could thus become a promising topic for a 16 dynamic musicology. It would certainly be appropriate that salvation from scholarly dualisms of old vs. new, traditional vs. innovative, descriptive vs. critical, would come from the creator of Messiah. Should that ever happen, I would say “Hallelujah!”