George Frideric Handel |
George Frideric Handel
G. F. Handel is one of the biggest names in the history of musical art. The great composer of the Enlightenment, he opened up new perspectives in the development of the genre of opera and oratorio, anticipated many musical ideas of subsequent centuries – the operatic drama of K. V. Gluck, the civic pathos of L. Beethoven, the psychological depth of romanticism. He is a man of unique inner strength and conviction. “You can despise anyone and anything,” said B. Shaw, “but you are powerless to contradict Handel.” “… When his music sounds on the words “sitting on his eternal throne”, the atheist is speechless.”
Handel’s national identity is disputed by Germany and England. Handel was born in Germany, the creative personality of the composer, his artistic interests, and skill developed on German soil. Most of the life and work of Handel, the formation of an aesthetic position in the art of music, consonant with the enlightenment classicism of A. Shaftesbury and A. Paul, an intense struggle for its approval, crisis defeats and triumphant successes are connected with England.
Handel was born in Halle, the son of a court barber. The early manifested musical abilities were noticed by the Elector of Halle, the Duke of Saxony, under whose influence the father (who intended to make his son a lawyer and did not attach serious importance to music as a future profession) gave the boy to study the best musician in the city F. Tsakhov. A good composer, an erudite musician, familiar with the best compositions of his time (German, Italian), Tsakhov revealed to Handel a wealth of different musical styles, instilled an artistic taste, and helped to work out the composer’s technique. The writings of Tsakhov himself largely inspired Handel to imitate. Early formed as a person and as a composer, Handel was already known in Germany by the age of 11. While studying law at the University of Halle (where he entered in 1702, fulfilling the will of his father, who had already died by that time), Handel simultaneously served as an organist in the church, composed, and taught singing. He always worked hard and enthusiastically. In 1703, driven by the desire to improve, expand areas of activity, Handel leaves for Hamburg, one of the cultural centers of Germany in the XNUMXth century, a city that has the country’s first public opera house, competing with the theaters of France and Italy. It was the opera that attracted Handel. The desire to feel the atmosphere of the musical theater, practically get acquainted with opera music, makes him enter the modest position of second violinist and harpsichordist in the orchestra. The rich artistic life of the city, cooperation with outstanding musical figures of that time – R. Kaiser, opera composer, then director of the opera house, I. Mattheson – critic, writer, singer, composer – had a huge impact on Handel. The influence of the Kaiser is found in many of Handel’s operas, and not only in the early ones.
The success of the first opera productions in Hamburg (Almira – 1705, Nero – 1705) inspires the composer. However, his stay in Hamburg is short-lived: the bankruptcy of the Kaiser leads to the closure of the opera house. Handel goes to Italy. Visiting Florence, Venice, Rome, Naples, the composer studies again, absorbing a wide variety of artistic impressions, primarily operatic ones. Handel’s ability to perceive multinational musical art was exceptional. Just a few months pass, and he masters the style of Italian opera, moreover, with such perfection that he surpasses many authorities recognized in Italy. In 1707, Florence staged Handel’s first Italian opera, Rodrigo, and 2 years later, Venice staged the next, Agrippina. Operas receive enthusiastic recognition from Italians, very demanding and spoiled listeners. Handel becomes famous – he enters the famous Arcadian Academy (along with A. Corelli, A. Scarlatti, B. Marcello), receives orders to compose music for the courts of Italian aristocrats.
However, the main word in the art of Handel should be said in England, where he was first invited in 1710 and where he finally settled in 1716 (in 1726, accepting English citizenship). Since that time, a new stage in the life and work of the great master begins. England with its early educational ideas, examples of high literature (J. Milton, J. Dryden, J. Swift) turned out to be the fruitful environment where the composer’s mighty creative forces were revealed. But for England itself, the role of Handel was equal to an entire era. English music, which in 1695 lost its national genius G. Purcell and stopped in development, again rose to world heights only with the name of Handel. His path in England, however, was not easy. The British hailed Handel at first as a master of Italian-style opera. Here he quickly defeated all his rivals, both English and Italian. Already in 1713, his Te Deum was performed at the festivities dedicated to the conclusion of the Peace of Utrecht, an honor that no foreigner had previously been awarded. In 1720, Handel takes over the leadership of the Academy of Italian Opera in London and thus becomes the head of the national opera house. His opera masterpieces are born – “Radamist” – 1720, “Otto” – 1723, “Julius Caesar” – 1724, “Tamerlane” – 1724, “Rodelinda” – 1725, “Admet” – 1726. In these works, Handel goes beyond the framework of the contemporary Italian opera seria and creates (its own type of musical performance with brightly defined characters, psychological depth and dramatic intensity of conflicts. The noble beauty of the lyrical images of Handel’s operas, the tragic power of culminations had no equal in the Italian operatic art of their time. His operas stood at the threshold of the impending operatic reform, which Handel not only felt, but also largely implemented (much earlier than Gluck and Rameau).At the same time, the social situation in the country, the growth of national self-consciousness, stimulated by the ideas of the Enlightenment, the reaction to the obsessive predominance of Italian opera and Italian singers give rise to a negative attitude towards the opera as a whole.Pamphlets are created on Italian operas, the very type of opera, its character is ridiculed. and, capricious performers. As a parody, the English satirical comedy The Beggar’s Opera by J. Gay and J. Pepush appeared in 1728. And although Handel’s London operas are spreading throughout Europe as masterpieces of this genre, the decline in the prestige of Italian opera as a whole is reflected in Handel. The theater is boycotted, the success of individual productions does not change the overall picture.
In June 1728, the Academy ceased to exist, but Handel’s authority as a composer did not fall with this. The English King George II orders him anthemes on the occasion of the coronation, which are performed in October 1727 in Westminster Abbey. At the same time, with his characteristic tenacity, Handel continues to fight for the opera. He travels to Italy, recruits a new troupe, and in December 1729, with the opera Lothario, opens the season of the second opera academy. In the composer’s work, it is time for new searches. “Poros” (“Por”) – 1731, “Orlando” – 1732, “Partenope” – 1730. “Ariodant” – 1734, “Alcina” – 1734 – in each of these operas the composer updates the interpretation of the opera-seria genre in different ways – introduces the ballet (“Ariodant”, “Alcina”), the “magic” plot saturates with a deeply dramatic, psychological content (“Orlando”, “Alcina”), in the musical language it reaches the highest perfection – simplicity and depth of expressiveness. There is also a turn from a serious opera to a lyric-comic one in “Partenope” with its soft irony, lightness, grace, in “Faramondo” (1737), “Xerxes” (1737). Handel himself called one of his last operas, Imeneo (Hymeneus, 1738), an operetta. Exhausting, not without political overtones, the struggle of Handel for the opera house ends in defeat. The Second Opera Academy was closed in 1737. Just as earlier, in the Beggar’s Opera, the parody was not without the involvement of Handel’s widely known music, so now, in 1736, a new parody of the opera (The Wantley Dragon) indirectly mentions Handel’s name. The composer takes the collapse of the Academy hard, falls ill and does not work for almost 8 months. However, the amazing vitality hidden in him takes its toll again. Handel returns to activity with new energy. He creates his latest operatic masterpieces – “Imeneo”, “Deidamia” – and with them he completes work on the operatic genre, to which he devoted more than 30 years of his life. The composer’s attention is focused on the oratorio. While still in Italy, Handel began composing cantatas, sacred choral music. Later, in England, Handel wrote choral anthems, festive cantatas. Closing choruses in operas, ensembles also played a role in the process of honing the composer’s choral writing. And Handel’s opera itself is, in relation to his oratorio, the foundation, the source of dramatic ideas, musical images, and style.
In 1738, one after another, 2 brilliant oratorios were born – “Saul” (September – 1738) and “Israel in Egypt” (October – 1738) – gigantic compositions full of victorious power, majestic hymns in honor of the strength of the human spirit and feat . 1740s – a brilliant period in the work of Handel. Masterpiece follows masterpiece. “Messiah”, “Samson”, “Belshazzar”, “Hercules” – now world-famous oratorios – were created in an unprecedented strain of creative forces, in a very short period of time (1741-43). However, success does not come immediately. Hostility on the part of the English aristocracy, sabotaging the performance of oratorios, financial difficulties, overworked work again lead to the disease. From March to October 1745, Handel was in a severe depression. And again the titanic energy of the composer wins. The political situation in the country is also changing dramatically – in the face of the threat of an attack on London by the Scottish army, a sense of national patriotism is mobilized. The heroic grandeur of Handel’s oratorios turns out to be consonant with the mood of the British. Inspired by national liberation ideas, Handel wrote 2 grandiose oratorios – Oratorio for the Case (1746), calling for the fight against the invasion, and Judas Maccabee (1747) – a powerful anthem in honor of the heroes defeating enemies.
Handel becomes the idol of England. Biblical plots and images of oratorios acquire at this time a special meaning of a generalized expression of high ethical principles, heroism, and national unity. The language of Handel’s oratorios is simple and majestic, it attracts to itself – it hurts the heart and cures it, it does not leave anyone indifferent. Handel’s last oratorios – “Theodora”, “The Choice of Hercules” (both 1750) and “Jephthae” (1751) – reveal such depths of psychological drama that were not available to any other genre of music of Handel’s time.
In 1751 the composer went blind. Suffering, hopelessly ill, Handel remains at the organ while performing his oratorios. He was buried, as he wished, at Westminster.
Admiration for Handel was experienced by all composers, both in the XNUMXth and XNUMXth centuries. Handel idolized Beethoven. In our time, Handel’s music, which has a tremendous power of artistic impact, acquires a new meaning and meaning. Its mighty pathos is in tune with our time, it appeals to the strength of the human spirit, to the triumph of reason and beauty. Annual celebrations in honor of Handel are held in England, Germany, attracting performers and listeners from all over the world.
Y. Evdokimova
Characteristics of creativity
Handel’s creative activity was as long as it was fruitful. She brought a huge number of works of various genres. Here is opera with its varieties (seria, pastoral), choral music – secular and spiritual, numerous oratorios, chamber vocal music and, finally, collections of instrumental pieces: harpsichord, organ, orchestral.
Handel devoted over thirty years of his life to opera. She has always been at the center of the composer’s interests and attracted him more than all other types of music. A figure on a grand scale, Handel perfectly understood the power of the influence of opera as a dramatic musical and theatrical genre; 40 operas – this is the creative result of his work in this area.
Handel was not a reformer of the opera seria. What he sought was the search for a direction that later led in the second half of the XNUMXth century to Gluck’s operas. Nevertheless, in a genre that already largely does not meet modern demands, Handel managed to embody lofty ideals. Before revealing the ethical idea in the folk epics of biblical oratorios, he showed the beauty of human feelings and actions in operas.
To make his art accessible and understandable, the artist had to find other, democratic forms and language. In specific historical conditions, these properties were more inherent in the oratorio than in the opera seria.
Work on the oratorio meant for Handel a way out of a creative impasse and an ideological and artistic crisis. At the same time, the oratorio, closely adjoining the opera in type, provided the maximum opportunities for using all the forms and techniques of operatic writing. It was in the oratorio genre that Handel created works worthy of his genius, truly great works.
The oratorio, which Handel turned to in the 30s and 40s, was not a new genre for him. His first oratorio works date back to the time of his stay in Hamburg and Italy; the next thirty were composed throughout his creative life. True, until the end of the 30s, Handel paid relatively little attention to the oratorio; only after abandoning the opera seria did he begin to develop this genre deeply and comprehensively. Thus, the oratorio works of the last period can be regarded as the artistic completion of Handel’s creative path. Everything that had matured and hatched in the depths of consciousness for decades, that was partially realized and improved in the process of working on opera and instrumental music, received the most complete and perfect expression in the oratorio.
Italian opera brought Handel mastery of vocal style and various types of solo singing: expressive recitative, ariose and song forms, brilliant pathetic and virtuoso arias. Passions, English anthemes helped to develop the technique of choral writing; instrumental, and in particular orchestral, compositions contributed to the ability to use the colorful and expressive means of the orchestra. Thus, the richest experience preceded the creation of oratorios – the best creations of Handel.
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Once, in a conversation with one of his admirers, the composer said: “I would be annoyed, my lord, if I gave people only pleasure. My goal is to make them the best.”
The selection of subjects in the oratorios took place in full accordance with humane ethical and aesthetic convictions, with those responsible tasks that Handel assigned to art.
Plots for oratorios Handel drew from a variety of sources: historical, ancient, biblical. The greatest popularity during his lifetime and the highest appreciation after Handel’s death were his later works on subjects taken from the Bible: “Saul”, “Israel in Egypt”, “Samson”, “Messiah”, “Judas Maccabee”.
One should not think that, carried away by the oratorio genre, Handel became a religious or church composer. With the exception of a few compositions written on special occasions, Handel has no church music. He wrote oratorios in musical and dramatic terms, destining them for the theater and performance in the scenery. Only under strong pressure from the clergy did Handel abandon the original project. Wanting to emphasize the secular nature of his oratorios, he began to perform them on the concert stage and thus created a new tradition of pop and concert performance of biblical oratorios.
The appeal to the Bible, to plots from the Old Testament, was also dictated by no means religious motives. It is known that in the era of the Middle Ages, mass social movements were often clothed in a religious guise, marching under the sign of the struggle for church truths. The classics of Marxism give this phenomenon an exhaustive explanation: in the Middle Ages, “the feelings of the masses were nourished exclusively by religious food; therefore, in order to provoke a stormy movement, it was necessary to present the own interests of these masses to them in religious clothes ”(Marx K., Engels F. Soch., 2nd ed., vol. 21, p. 314.).
Since the Reformation, and then the English revolution of the XNUMXth century, proceeding under religious banners, the Bible has become almost the most popular book revered in any English family. Biblical traditions and stories about the heroes of ancient Jewish history were habitually associated with events from the history of their own country and people, and “religious clothes” did not hide the very real interests, needs and desires of the people.
The use of biblical stories as plots for secular music not only expanded the range of these plots, but also made new demands, incomparably more serious and responsible, and gave the subject a new social meaning. In the oratorio, it was possible to go beyond the limits of love-lyrical intrigue, standard love vicissitudes, generally accepted in modern opera seria. Biblical themes did not allow in the interpretation of frivolity, entertainment and distortion, which were subjected to ancient myths or episodes of ancient history in seria operas; finally, the legends and images that have long been familiar to everyone, used as plot material, made it possible to bring the content of the works closer to the understanding of a wide audience, to emphasize the democratic nature of the genre itself.
Indicative of Handel’s civic self-awareness is the direction in which the selection of biblical subjects took place.
Handel’s attention is riveted not to the individual fate of the hero, as in the opera, not to his lyrical experiences or love adventures, but to the life of the people, to a life full of pathos of struggle and patriotic deed. In essence, biblical traditions served as a conditional form in which it was possible to glorify in majestic images the wonderful feeling of freedom, the desire for independence, and glorify the selfless actions of folk heroes. It is these ideas that constitute the real content of Handel’s oratorios; so they were perceived by the composer’s contemporaries, they were also understood by the most advanced musicians of other generations.
V. V. Stasov writes in one of his reviews: “The concert ended with Handel’s choir. Which of us did not dream about it later, as some kind of colossal, boundless triumph of an entire people? What a titanic nature this Handel was! And remember that there are several dozens of choirs like this one.”
The epic-heroic nature of the images predetermined the forms and means of their musical embodiment. Handel mastered the skill of an opera composer to a high degree, and he made all the conquests of opera music the property of an oratorio. But unlike the opera seria, with its reliance on solo singing and the dominant position of the aria, the choir turned out to be the core of the oratorio as a form of conveying the thoughts and feelings of the people. It is the choirs that give Handel’s oratorios a majestic, monumental appearance, contributing, as Tchaikovsky wrote, “the overwhelming effect of strength and power.”
Mastering the virtuoso technique of choral writing, Handel achieves a variety of sound effects. Freely and flexibly, he uses choirs in the most contrasting situations: when expressing sorrow and joy, heroic enthusiasm, anger and indignation, when depicting a bright pastoral, rural idyll. Now he brings the sound of the choir to a grandiose power, then he reduces it to a transparent pianissimo; sometimes Handel writes choirs in a rich chord-harmonic warehouse, combining voices into a compact dense mass; the rich possibilities of polyphony serve as a means of enhancing movement and effectiveness. Polyphonic and chordal episodes follow alternately, or both principles – polyphonic and chordal – are combined.
According to P. I. Tchaikovsky, “Handel was an inimitable master of the ability to manage voices. Without forcing choral vocal means at all, never going beyond the natural limits of vocal registers, he extracted from the chorus such excellent mass effects that other composers have never achieved … “.
Choirs in Handel’s oratorios are always an active force that directs musical and dramatic development. Therefore, the compositional and dramatic tasks of the choir are exceptionally important and varied. In oratorios, where the main character is the people, the importance of the choir increases especially. This can be seen in the example of the choral epic “Israel in Egypt”. In Samson, the parties of individual heroes and people, that is, arias, duets and choirs, are distributed evenly and are complemented by one another. If in the oratorio “Samson” the choir conveys only the feelings or states of the warring peoples, then in “Judas Maccabee” the choir plays a more active role, taking a direct part in the dramatic events.
The drama and its development in the oratorio are known only through musical means. As Romain Rolland says, in the oratorio “the music serves as its own decoration.” As if making up for the lack of decorative decoration and theatrical performance of the action, the orchestra is given new functions: to paint with sounds what is happening, the environment in which events take place.
As in opera, the form of solo singing in the oratorio is the aria. All the variety of types and types of arias that have developed in the work of various opera schools, Handel transfers to the oratorio: large arias of a heroic nature, dramatic and mournful arias, close to operatic lamento, brilliant and virtuosic, in which the voice freely competes with the solo instrument, pastoral with transparent light color, finally, song constructions such as arietta. There is also a new variety of solo singing, which belongs to Handel – an aria with a choir.
The predominant da capo aria does not exclude many other forms: here there is a free unfolding of the material without repetition, and a two-part aria with a contrasting juxtaposition of two musical images.
In Handel, the aria is inseparable from the compositional whole; it is an important part of the general line of musical and dramatic development.
Using in the oratorios the outer contours of opera arias and even the typical techniques of operatic vocal style, Handel gives the content of each aria an individual character; subordinating the operatic forms of solo singing to a specific artistic and poetic design, he avoids the schematism of seria operas.
Handel’s musical writing is characterized by a vivid bulge of images, which he achieves due to psychological detailing. Unlike Bach, Handel does not strive for philosophical introspection, for the transmission of subtle shades of thought or lyrical feeling. As the Soviet musicologist T. N. Livanova writes, Handel’s music conveys “big, simple and strong feelings: the desire to win and the joy of victory, the glorification of the hero and bright sorrow for his glorious death, the bliss of peace and tranquility after hard battles, the blissful poetry of nature.”
Handel’s musical images are mostly written in “large strokes” with sharply emphasized contrasts; elementary rhythms, the clarity of the melodic pattern and harmony give them a sculptural relief, the brightness of poster painting. The severity of the melodic pattern, the convex outline of Handel’s musical images were later perceived by Gluck. The prototype for many of the arias and choruses of Gluck’s operas can be found in Handel’s oratorios.
Heroic themes, monumentality of forms are combined in Handel with the greatest clarity of musical language, with the strictest economy of funds. Beethoven, studying Handel’s oratorios, enthusiastically said: “That’s who you need to learn from modest means to achieve amazing effects.” Handel’s ability to express great, lofty thoughts with severe simplicity was noted by Serov. After listening to the choir from “Judas Maccabee” in one of the concerts, Serov wrote: “How far modern composers are from such simplicity in thought. However, it is true that this simplicity, as we have already said on the occasion of the Pastoral Symphony, is found only in geniuses of the first magnitude, which, no doubt, was Handel.
V. Galatskaya
- Handel’s oratorio →
- Operatic creativity of Handel →
- Instrumental creativity of Handel →
- Handel’s clavier art →
- Chamber-instrumental creativity of Handel →
- Handel Organ Concertos →
- Handel’s Concerti Grossi →
- Outdoor genres →
