The overtures of Handel are extremely short, as was then the custom; they have none of those symphonic dimensions which are now given to that style of composition. "The most elaborate of them never cost him (as Hawkins affirms1) more than a morning's labour." Nevertheless, some of them include marvellous fugues. The celebrated critic Marpurg, in his Lettres sur la Musique, declares that he could never listen without emotion to that one in the second overture to Admetus. The celebrity which the Hautboy Concertos enjoyed during the last century makes one regret that Handel lived in a time when concerted music had not taken its full development.

Men who have been thus admirable in all the branches of art are rare. It is to be remarked that men like Gluck, Cimarosa, Mehul, and Rossini have not dared to write for instruments; they lack this gem in their glorious diadems. There, in fact, is the rock upon which all those geniuses, upon whom Nature has not lavished all her gifts, make shipwreck. Judges say that Leo, Porpora, Hasse, and Piccini are quite beneath themselves in their instrumental music. They inhabit Olympus, but they are only demi-gods.

In that musical Olympus the most divine masters have given to Handel the place of Jupiter Tonans. "He is the father of us all," exclaimed the patriarchal Haydn." "Handel," said the dramatic Mozart, "knows better than any one of us all what is capable of producing a great effect; when he chooses he can strike like a thunderbolt." The lyrical Beethoven called him "the monarch of the musical kingdom. He was the greatest composer that ever lived," said he to Mr. Moscheles." "I would 1 Page 914.

2 Quoted by Burney. Admetus, Scipio, Saul, and Solomon have, exceptionally, two overtures, one for the first act and another for the second. Amadis has really two overtures for the first act.

3 Vie de Haydn, by Stendahl.

Holmes's Life of Mozart, page 306. Mozart was such an admirer of Handel that he amplified, in 1789, the orchestration of The Messiah, of Acis and Galatea, of Alexander's Feast, and of the Ode on St. Cecilia's Day. As was the custom in these days, Handel has unfortunately left in his oratorios the organ parts ad libitum, giving only an indication of the bass. Mozart also filled up some gaps in the works which have been named.

Life of Beethoven, by Moscheles, vol. i., page 292.

HANDEL AS A PERFORMER.

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uncover my head, and kneel before his tomb." Beethoven was on the point of death, when one of his friends' sent him, as a present, forty volumes by Handel. He ordered that they should be brought into his chamber, gazed upon them with a reanimated eye, and then pointing to them with his finger, he pronounced these words, "There, is the truth."2

What a magnificent subject for a picture. David did not select a more inspiring one in the " Death of Socrates," to which he has given a second immortality. Is it not grand to see these noble geniuses standing before each other upon the threshold of eternity? Is it not beautiful to see the author of the English oratorios arising, as it were, from the tomb to present his works to the author of the Symphony in D, who greeted him with a sublime death?

Handel was not less excellent as a performer than as a composer. He played to perfection on the harpsichord, and above all upon the organ, his favourite instrument. As an improviser, there was only Sebastian Bach who could be compared with

This friend was Mr. Stumpff, a harpmaker in London. Mr. Lonsdale, the musical publisher in Bond Street, perfectly recollects having sold him a copy of Arnold's edition of Handel's works. Mr. Martin, Mr. Stumpff's successor, has discovered in the MS. journal of his predecessor the following memorandum, which he has kindly communicated to me through Mr. Robert Lonsdale:

"London, August 24th, 1826.

"My nephew Henry Stumpff left to return to his father, and went by a Hamburgh vessel called the Thetis, Captain J. Rutherford. He took two packing-cases: one containing his tools and wearing apparel, and the other the works of Handel, in forty volumes, directed to the greatest living composer, Luis von Beethoven, as a present sent to him, and directed to him at Wien, to the care of Mr. Stincher, pianofortemaker there. Henry will find a conveyance from his home to Wien, and pay all expenses.

"In the score called The Messiah, I have written the following words:

"Herr Luis von Beethoven is begged most kindly to accept this well-known and complete edition of Handel's works, in forty volumes, in sign of the great esteem and profound veneration of P. A. Stumpff.'

"In London. The above collection cost £45.”

These facts give authenticity to the anecdote related by the Harmonicon. Beethoven fell ill in December, 1826, and died on the 27th of March, 1827. It is an unheard-of thing that the collection of Handel's works which Beethoven left did not find a purchaser at Vienna. It was offered for sale shortly afterwards to Mr. Lonsdale by Mr. Diabelli, a musical publisher at Vienna !

2 Harmonicon, January, 1828-9.

him. Hawkins, who heard him, says:-"Who shall describe its effects on its enraptured auditory? Silence, the truest applause, succeeded the instant that he addressed himself to the instrument, and that so profound that it checked respiration, and seemed to control the functions of nature; while the magic of his touch kept the attention of his hearers awake only to those enchanting sounds to which it gave utterance."

Handel exercised the same power over his hearers from his infancy. At eleven years of age he threw all Berlin into an ecstasy; at twenty, Hamburg declared his voluntaries of fugues and counterpoint to be superior to those of Kuhnau of Leipsic, who had been regarded as a prodigy. Festing and Dr. Arne, who were present in 1733 at the ceremony of the Oxford Public Act, when he played a voluntary upon the organ, told Burney that "neither themselves, nor any one else of their acquaintance, had ever before heard such extempore or such premeditated playing on that or any other instrument." His execution seized everybody with amazement from the very first moment. Busby relates the following fact:--" One Sunday, having attended divine worship at a country church, Handel asked the organist to permit him to play the people out, to which he readily consented. Handel accordingly sat down to the organ, and began to play in such a masterly manner as instantly to attract the attention of the whole congregation, who, instead of vacating their seats as usual, remained for a considerable space of time fixed in silent admiration. The organist began to be impatient (perhaps his wife was waiting dinner), and at length addressed the great performer, telling him he was convinced that he could not play the people out, and advised him to relinquish the attempt, for while he played they would never quit the church."

In like manner, when he was at Venice he enjoyed a curious triumph. Arriving in the middle of the carnival, he was conducted that very evening to a masked fête, at which he played upon the harpischord, with his mask upon his face; on hearing which, Domenico Scarlatti, who happened to be present, cried out, ""Tis the Devil, or the Saxon of whom every one is talking."

1 Mattheson.

HIS UNTIRING INDUSTRY.

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Scarlatti was the first player upon the harpsichord in Italy. What took place at Rome between Handel and Corelli still more forcibly proves that our composer was stronger upon the violin than the greatest virtuoso of his time. Mainwaring relates' that Arcangelo Corelli had great difficulty in playing certain very bold passages in Handel's overtures, and that the latter, who was unfortunately very violent, once snatched the violin out of his hand and played it himself as it ought to be.

Every musical faculty was carried in him to the highest point. He had an inexhaustible memory. Burney heard him, whilst giving lessons to Mrs. Cibber, play a jig from the overture of Siroe, which he had composed twenty years before. It has been seen that the blindness with which he was attacked in 1753 did not prevent him from playing an organ concerto at every performance up to the termination of his career, and he did not always improvise. He sang also marvellously well. "At a concert, at the house of Lady Rich, he was once prevailed with to sing a slow song, which he did in such a manner, that Farinelli, who was present, could not be persuaded to sing after him."

But let me remind the young, that however prodigious may be the gifts accorded by Nature to her elect, they can only be developed and brought to their extreme perfection by labour and study. Michael Angelo was sometimes a week without taking off his clothes. Like him, and like all the other kings of art, Handel was very industrious. He worked immensely and constantly. Hawkins says that "he had a favourite Rucker harpsichord, every key of which, by incessant practice, was hollowed like the bowl of a spoon." He was not only one of the most gifted of musicians, but also one of the most learned. All competent critics admit that his fugues prove that his knowledge was consummate.

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It is a singular circumstance in his life that his genius gave him an indirect part in almost all the events of his century. His music was required to celebrate successively the birthday of Queen Anne, the marriage of the Prince of Wales (George the 1 Page 57.

2 Hawkins, page 913.

3 Idem, page

912

Third's father), that of the Princess Royal to the Prince of Orange, the coronation of George the Second, the burial of Queen Caroline, (all great events in those days), the Peace of Utrecht and that of Aix-la-Chapelle, and the victories of Culloden and Dettingen. To this day there is no great public funeral at which the Dead March in Saul is not used for the purpose of impressing the mind with the solemnity of the

occasion.

One may be disposed to say that Handel himself was a great conqueror. Thanks to his indefatigable perseverance, to his moral courage, to his indomitable will, and to his masterpieces, he succeeded, before he died, in dissipating the cabals which had been formed against him, in crushing folly, and in conquering universal admiration. The public was enlightened by the torch which he held constantly in his hand; the impression which he left behind is profound and living. It is ineffaceable. There is no other similar example, in the history of art, of the influence which one man can exercise over an entire people. All the music of this country is Handelian, and if the English love, seek after, and cultivate, more than any other nation, Bach, Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven, they are indebted to the author of The Messiah for it. No man in any country has dominated more generally over men's minds in his sphere of action, no composer ever enjoyed in his native land a more unlimited popularity.

Let me say, in conclusion, that George Frideric Handel has done honour to music, at least as much by the nobility of his character as by the sublimity of his genius. He was one of the too few artists who uphold the dignity of art to the highest possible standard. He was the incarnation of honesty; the unswerving rigidity of his conduct captivates even those who do not take him for a model. His character reminds me of our Bernard Palissy. Both were artists in all the grandeur of the word; both worked ceaselessly for improvement without ever feeling weary; both were virtuous, pure, the slaves of duty, proud, and intrepid; the most terrible adversities could not compel them to pass through the fire to Moloch; their