Though Handel continues to loom large in the world of classical music, he is valued for a small portion of his tremendous body of work—mainly “Messiah” and a handful of other pieces. But I continue to find fresh gems from this composer who, for all his fame, is not really all that well known.
I came a bit late to the music of George Frideric Handel. Growing up as a classical music lover, I tended to take the great Saxon for granted. His Messiah was ubiquitous around Easter and (especially) Christmas. The majesty of Handel’s music, the resounding splendor of his choruses and the spacious beauty of his vocal arias, was beyond dispute. It just so happened that the music of his German contemporary Bach spoke to me more; and being a violinist, Bach offered me more to work with than Handel, whose violin sonatas are comparatively minor parts of his output. Handel seemed to me a big, honorable figurehead in the musical pantheon but not a composer with any personal appeal or significance to me. I dutifully took part in performances of Handel works—Messiah, Dixit Dominus, the Birthday Ode to Queen Anne, Alcina, the Brockes Passion—but they were always just “jobs.” Once a group of fellow musicians and I took a Handel trio sonata up to perform at an early-music festival near Boston. Once again, it was a pleasant experience, but nothing earth-shaking or life-changing.
At long last I am beginning to crack the Handel code, to understand why this composer is so universally admired, and I am proud to say that I am also coming to admire and love his music. Handel lived a life more eventful than many composers and, far from the stolid and well-fed figure he appears in paintings, Handel was dynamic and always in motion. And his music reflects that dynamism and excitement.
A large part of my failure to appreciate Handel was due to misunderstanding his main emphasis as a composer. While Handel wrote some fine instrumental pieces (the Water Music, the concerti grossi), his chief strength and his main reason for being was as a musical dramatist and storyteller—a creator of stirring operas and oratorios. Musical dramas take a greater investment of time and attention to appreciate and get to know, and I find that it has taken more maturity for me to delve into this side—the main side—of Handel’s work. Having at last the time to do so, I am beginning to see and hear what I have been missing all these years: music of great passion, dramatic flair, and emotional depth that in many ways sums up the Baroque in music.
Handel has certainly never been unappreciated, aside from Johnny-come-latelies like myself. There has never been a time when Messiah has not been performed, from its 1741 premiere in Dublin to today, and many other Handelian works have been revived after ages of neglect due to changing tastes. Handel is right up there in the classical pantheon, not far below the great trinity of J. S. Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven. It is telling that Beethoven himself considered Handel the greatest composer, going on to say that “I would uncover my head and kneel down on his tomb.” Beethoven, known for the philosophical depth and spiritual vision of his music, found in Handel a kindred spirit.
Comparisons between Bach and Handel, the two eminent German Baroque composers, have often been made. In a way, such comparisons help to define who Handel was. Bach, the devout Lutheran Christian, wrote music for the glory of God and the benefit of his community, never traveling outside his native country. One of the greatest of musical minds, he wrote cerebral works with a strong emphasis on counterpoint or the intricate combining of musical lines. Bach was little known during his life and after his death fell into relative obscurity. Handel, a cosmopolitan, traveled Europe and sought—and achieved—wide fame and popularity, ending his life far away from home in London. While Bach concentrated heavily on church music, Handel conquered the secular world of opera and brought theatrical thrills to the semi-religious genre of oratorio. Bach married twice and had 20 children, only some of whom survived; Handel was a lifelong bachelor, pouring all his passion into his art. Two men born in the same year (1685) some 80 miles apart, and sharing similar training and background in Lutheran Germany. Both experienced failing eyesight in their later years and even had the same surgeon. Yet they were so different in goals, temperament, and lifestyle. And they apparently never met.
One critic writes that Bach wrote some of the most introspective music of the Baroque, and Handel some of the most public-spirited. Handel’s music is more immediately accessible, less dense and intense than Bach’s. Where Bach is a lofty idealist, Handel is a practical everyman. But perhaps the contrasts between these two musical giants are deceptive.
Handel’s corpus of work presents a cosmos of human drama and expression in no way inferior to Bach’s. Extremely prolific, Handel mined the Old Testament and classical history and mythology for musical dramas that resonated with the public of England, his adopted country from his 29th year onward. The untimely death of Henry Purcell, England’s outstanding composer, in 1695 had left a void which Handel gladly filled.
Handel settled in London having already established a reputation as a composer of opera in Hamburg, Germany and in Italy. His sojourn in Italy brought him face to face with the sensuous splendor of the Italian Baroque and led him to write religious works in Latin and Italian (Dixit Dominus, La risurrezione) as well as Italian operas. Handel would create a cultural synthesis fusing together Lutheran Germany, Catholic Italy, and Anglican England.
In his operas, Handel’s genius for portraying human character in music transcended the rather stilted conventions of opera seria (serious opera), with its rigidly formal structure and solemn plots dominated by classical heroes. Giulio Cesare (Julius Caesar in Egypt), Serse (Xerxes), and Tamerlano (Tamerlane) are just a few of his 42 operas that have found new audiences in modern revivals. It is likely that Handel, for most of his career, thought of himself primarily as an opera composer and a man of the theater. He managed productions, secured star singers, led rehearsals, and conducted the operas from his post at the harpsichord—altogether a prodigious collection of talents that might lead us to think of him as akin to a modern movie director rather than merely a “composer.”
But when the fashion changed in London and Italian opera fell from favor, Handel reinvented himself and changed Western music forever. He switched from operas to oratorios, non-staged dramas on biblical themes and set to English texts. Possessed by a fever of inspiration and religious fervor, in 1741 he wrote Messiah in two weeks to a text drawn from the Old and New Testaments by his friend Charles Jennens. It became one of the most revered musical works of all time, especially in English-speaking countries. A flood of oratorios both preceded and followed Messiah: Saul, Israel in Egypt, Judas Maccabaeus, Susanna, Solomon, Theodora, Jephtha. Most of these works endeared themselves to the English public of all classes, who identified with the biblical Hebrews and their spiritual odyssey. In the annals of dramatizing the sacred books, Handel’s oratorios stand high; they are signal contributions to Christian culture and Western civilization.
Handel’s ability to reinvent himself was just one illustration of a brave and adventurous life. Composers were expected to be versatile practicing musicians in those days, and Handel was adept at the violin, oboe, harpsichord, and organ. But unlike Bach, Handel was not born into a musical family. His father was a barber surgeon to a royal court who wanted his son to study law for a secure future. Handel had to fight to pursue his dream of becoming a musician, with no promise of either security or prosperity. An artistic career in Handel’s day was a search for freedom of expression and a secure livelihood, in a world in which artists depended on powerful patrons to survive. On top of this, the celibate Handel lacked the succor that a family could provide and may perhaps have been affected by loneliness.
Consider: Handel had to move to a new country and not only learn a new language but learn to set it to music—no easy matter, particularly in the case of English. That Handel succeeded in spades is a testament to his genius and adaptability. For the anglophone world in particular Handel is a blessing, as his oratorios have a linguistic immediacy for us that many classical vocal works lack. We don’t need a translation for Messiah; the words from the King James Bible are common property and have instant resonance. The texts to Handel’s English works, by various authors including the great John Milton, have that wonderful 18th-century English pomp and stately eloquence and are the perfect match to Handel’s music. The music itself monumentalizes the words, creating a new cultural touchstone and reference point for the Judeo-Christian story.
In the prosperous England of the two Georges Handel found something of a paradise, an ideal place for him to create and flourish. The London of Alexander Pope, Hogarth, and Dr. Johnson was a vibrant place for art, literature, and culture generally. Handel enjoyed the patronage of the two Georges, I and II—the first of whom had been his former employer back in Hamburg, now as luck would have it transplanted to England—and paid honor to them in his works, as composers were generally expected to do; such oratorios as Alexander’s Feast and Solomon pay veiled tribute to the British monarch in the guise of Alexander the Great and King Solomon. For the royal family Handel composed many works for specific occasions like the Ode for St. Cecilia’s Day, the Water Music, and the Royal Fireworks Music, which have transcended their original purpose and remain just as regally celebratory today.
There was a sense among many 18th-century Englishmen that they had reached utopia: a peaceful, freedom-loving, prosperous society that was the pinnacle of human civilization. Of course, such an attitude can easily lead to complacency and moral blindness, and Handel was not averse to challenging the society of which he was a part. Theodora, one of Handel’s finest oratorios, did not please at its premiere because the text (by Thomas Morell) seemed to draw uncomfortable parallels between Roman persecution of early Christians and the British Crown’s restrictions on religious minorities (this according to the analysis of musicologist Christoph Heyl).
But on the whole Handel was not out to change the world order, even if he hoped that his Messiah would change the souls of his listeners. His art reflects serenity, prosperity, and well-being. He added to the richness of his era, but while rooted in his time and place his art turns out to be universal. I consider Handel as one of the purest exponents of the Baroque aesthetic in music, more so even than Bach. While Bach is certainly of the Baroque, it makes just as much sense to think of him as recapitulating all of music history before him. Handel was in a sense more a man of his time. His early immersion in the Baroque world of Italy was decisive for his outlook and musical style. Handel is freewheeling and exuberant where Bach is tightly controlled and intellectual. Music journalist Harold C. Schoenberg observes that Bach wrote counterpoint for its own sake, as an intellective exercise and a demonstration of skill. For Handel, fugue and polyphony served another end—they enhanced his music’s strong sense of drama and spectacle.
Whether vocal or instrumental, Handel’s music was keyed to immediate communication with the audience. Strong, succinct motifs were his musical building blocks—think of the “Hallelujah” in Messiah’s famous chorus—which he built into broad, powerful edifices of sound that impress the listener through repetition, without the need for extensive study or background knowledge. Mozart, another Handel fan, said that the earlier composer “understood effect better than any of us—when he chooses, he strikes like a thunderbolt.” The vocal coloratura (fast, florid ornamental notes) in his oratorios and operas is not just a display of skill; in a very Baroque way, it projects an effusion of human passion.
The violinist Yehudi Menuhin once said that returning to Handel after being immersed in late Romantic repertoire (e.g., Mahler or Strauss) was a cleansing experience. Handel’s music is healthy, morally pure, full of virtuous vigor and a simple celebration of the beauties of life. There is nothing neurotic, no excessive introspection in this music. It is predominantly outward-looking and festive, though it can also express private sorrow and joy. There is something fundamentally right about Handel’s worldview. Harold C. Schonberg describes Handel the man as having “an explosive temperament and withal a sweet-tempered and even generous philanthropist… a man with a simple, uncomplicated faith and an equally simple and uncomplicated view toward life.” Serving his king and his society, Handel was a model artist-citizen, well-loved in his lifetime and revered after his death with no lapse in popularity up to our own day.
Bach is supreme, but so highly exalted and exhaustive. Vivaldi is brilliant but a bit on the lightweight side. Handel is just right: both down to earth and sublime. His tombstone in Westminster Abbey sums up the appeal of his music better than any prose I have seen:
“The most Excellent Musician
any age ever produced
Whose Compositions were
A Sentimental Language
Rather than mere Sounds;
And surpassed the Power of Words
In expressing various Passions
Of the Human Heart.”
It used to be that Handel was played and sung in a pompous manner, full of Victorian sanctimony reflecting the mood of the later British Empire. That has been corrected in recent times, as more historically informed musicians have let some fresh air and dance-like energy into the music. That is all to the better; but although Handel continues to loom large in the world of classical music, he is valued for a small portion of his tremendous body of work—mainly Messiah and a handful of other pieces. If anything, Messiah is a bit overexposed; there is so much to explore from this prolific master and particularly his other nearly 30 oratorios, where arguably his greatness is shown the most. My personal picks are Alexander’s Feast, Solomon, and Theodora, but I continue to find fresh gems from this composer who, for all his fame, is not really all that well known.
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The featured image is a portrait of George Frideric Handel (between circa 1726 and circa 1728) by Balthasar Denner, and is in the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
