been uninhabited for centuries. The music was different altogether from that to which he was accustomed. No nuances, no bowing, frequently no indication of rate, and often merely a “sketched-in” bass.... Tradition only could guide him, and the English, who alone could have preserved this, he considers, have lost it.

Can it be recovered to any extent, and, if so, how?

Behind each towering figure of genius are to be found numbers of eloquent men who prepared the way for him; and amongst these precursors there is frequently discovered one who exercised a dominating influence over the young budding genius. Such an influence was exercised by Zachau on Handel, and M. Rolland rightly gives due importance to the consideration of this old master’s teachings and compositions, a careful study of which should go far to supplying the right key to Handel’s music. One of the great shortcomings in the general musical listener is a lack of the historical view of music. It is a long cry from Bach and Handel to Debussy and Scriabin, but we shall be all the better for looking well at both ends of the long musical chain which connects the unvoiced expression of the past with the vague yet certain hopes of the future.

No doubt we have hardly yet recovered from the false position into which we have all helped to place Handel. He was never the great Church composer which has been assumed for so long. Perhaps, rather, he leaned to the pagan side of life in his art. As Mr. Streatfeild says, “You can no more call the Messiah a work of art than you can call the Book of Common Prayer popular as a masterpiece of literature.... Handel the preacher is laid for ever in the tomb, but Handel the artist with his all-embracing sympathy for human things and his delight in the world around him lives for evermore.” Handel has been greatly, almost wilfully, misrepresented; but he has played too great a part in the history of English music to be cast aside on this account. It is true that there are many difficulties in the way of a clearer understanding of his music. A two-hundred years’ overgrowth of vain vocal traditions is not going to be torn away in the space of a few years.

If the operas have been overlooked in favour of the oratorios, then his instrumental music has been even more neglected on account of the preponderance of his vocal movements. In a recent important contribution to Handelian biography only a few pages are given to the instrumental works. In this respect M. Rolland’s clear and critical biography fills in a distinct hiatus.

Moreover, Handel sojourned in Germany, Italy, finally (and longest) in England—but never in France. M. Rolland, therefore, a Frenchman and the author of that brilliant work Histoire de l’Opéra en Europe avant Lulli et Scarlatti, may, more than any other writer, be expected to bring a freshness of vision and an impartial judgment to bear on Handel’s works. And he has not disappointed us.

A. E. H.

GEORGE FREDERICK
HANDEL

HIS LIFE

The Handel family was of Silesian origin.[1] The grandfather, Valentine Handel, was a master coppersmith at Breslau. The father, George Handel, was a barber-surgeon, originally attached to the service of the armies of Saxony, then of Sweden, later of the French Emperor, and finally in the private service of Duke Augustus of Saxony. He was very rich, and purchased at Halle in 1665 a beautiful house, which is still in existence. He was married twice; in 1643 he married a widow of a barber, who was ten years older than himself (he had six children by her); and in 1683, the daughter of a pastor who was thirty years younger than he was: he had four children by her, of which the second was George Frederick.

Both parents sprang from that good old bourgeois stock of the seventeenth century which was such excellent soil for genius and for faith. Handel, the surgeon, was a man of gigantic stature, serious, severe, energetic, religiously attached to duty, upright and affable in his dealings with those around him.

His portrait exhibits a large clean-shaven face which has the impression of one who never smiled. The head is carried high, the eyes morose; prominent nose and a pleasant but obstinate mouth; long hair with white curls falling on his shoulders; black cap, collar of lace, and coat of black satin: the aspect of a parliamentary man of his time.—The mother was no less sturdy a character. Of a clerical family on the maternal side as well as on the paternal side, with a spirit imbued with the Bible, she had a calm courage, which came out prominently when the country was ravaged by pestilence. Her sister and her elder brother were both carried off by the plague; her father was also affected. She refused to leave them and remained quietly at home. She was then engaged to be married.—This sturdy couple transmitted to their distinguished son in place of good looks (which he certainly had not, and which never disquieted him) their physical and moral health, their stature, their keen intelligence and common sense, their application to work, and the indestructible essence of their quiet, calm spirit.

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George Frederick Handel was born at Halle on Monday, February 23, 1685.[2] His father was then sixty-three years, and his mother thirty-four.[3]

The town of Halle occupied a singular political situation. It belonged originally to the Elector of Saxony; by the Treaties of Westphalia it was ceded to the Elector of Brandenburg; but it paid tribute to the Duke Augustus of Saxony during his lifetime. After the death of Augustus in 1680, Halle passed definitely to Brandenburg; and in 1681 the Grand Elector came to receive homage there. Handel then was born a Prussian; but his father was in the service of the Duke of Saxony, and he retained relationship with the son of Augustus, Johann Adolf, who moved his court after the Prussian annexation to the neighbouring town of Weissenfels. Thus the childhood of Handel was influenced by two intellectual forces: the Saxon and the Prussian. Of the two the more aristocratic, and also the more powerful was the Saxon. Most of the artists had emigrated with the Duke to Weissenfels. It was there that the genial Heinrich Schütz was born and died:[4] it was there that Handel found his first impetus, and where the calling of the child was first recognized. The precocious musical tendencies of the little George Frederick were somewhat curbed by the formal opposition of his father.[5] The sturdy surgeon had more than objection—he possessed an aversion to the profession of artist. This sentiment was shared by nearly all the sturdy men of Germany. The calling of musician was degraded by the unedifying spectacle of many artists in the years of relaxation which followed the Thirty Years’ war.