Death of Keiser

remembered. Where had he been? No one inquired; no one wanted to know. It was sufficient that he had returned. He rushed back to his old place. The haunts where he had ruled and patronised, found new life, the former bacchanalians crept from their secret haunts and gathered about him with their "Hail, master!" During the year of his return Keiser composed and produced eight operas, and in some of them was the tender spirit of his old fire. He made money again, and spent it as readily. He rushed into matrimony with the daughter of one of the principal patricians of the city. But his vices, the Hamburg that was his, wore him down. The flames that came from the stirred fire dropped away into embers, and Keiser passed out, leaving a Hamburg from which the glories of its art had departed. He drifted away. He died. A contemporary paragraph which appeared after his death best describes the wreckage: 1 66 Mad. Neuberinn (Neuber) will this summer, as it is thought, produce comedies again at the opera house. Stage, costumes, and scenery are quite used up. Monza was obliged to leave Hamburg utterly destitute and covered with debts. Mme Keiser, as well as Monza, have again tried to get the opera, but up till now without success. The former is quite unable to do so, partly because she has no money, partly also, because she has lost all her esteem. Moreover, she has no singers. Monza, however, is amply provided with those, and might sooner attain his object, but the old debts will not permit him to return. The theatre is ruined, there are no costumes, and the building itself is very dilapidated. Some old amateurs still allow the Kaiserinn' (Mme Keiser) to enjoy their former munificence, and these as well as something more (the daughters' savoir-faire) keep her."

A trail of ruin; threadbare costumes and broken scenery and a widow trying to make a living. All that was left of what had once been Reinhold Keiser! What an artist he had been! How he had loved life! How he had worked. How he had played. He had stormed his way with the courage of a gladiator, and dropped out, a forgotten husk of a man.

But the youth whom he had first known as ripieno violin had now passed along the solitary way that led to the more certain memories of the great.

1 "Matthesoniana Politica" (Hamburg State and University Library).

CHAPTER IV

THE ITALIAN JOURNEY

HANDEL arrived in Italy as mysteriously as he had left Hamburg. By what route he travelled, or how long the journey occupied him, there is no knowing. He was doubtless alone, for there was not a single soul in Hamburg in whom he had sufficient interest to solicit his companionship for the exploit. It is more probable that he embarked on the journey with the same impulse he had shown when he left Halle for Hamburg. He had no engagement in view; no means of earning his living except by his talents, and, as this was not an age when. musical talent always came by its own reward, the adventure was beset with some risks and considerable difficulty. material things it seemed to offer nothing. But it must be remembered that Handel was a dreamer; throughout his life he remained a dreamer who expected or hoped to meet the realisation of his dreams at the turn of the road.

Of

Handel's position when he reached Italy was little better than that of the strolling musician, so far as his prospects were concerned. Doubtless he had written to his erstwhile friend Prince Gaston de' Medici announcing his coming, for as soon as he reached Florence he went to the palace of Pratolino in the hills beyond the city, where Ferdinand, Prince of Tuscany, brother of Prince Gaston, kept a palace of extreme extravagance and indolence, but brightened by the most wonderful music in Italy. Doubtless, too, Handel acquainted his mother at Halle with his decision to seek fresh fortune in Italy, for he was in regular correspondence with her. One can imagine the consternation in the Schlamm house which such news would occasion. They must have known, Dorothea and the simpleminded Tante, that the boy had little money. Probably he

Handel in Rome

had told them all about the 200 ducats he had saved. To throw off the land of his birth, to seek a nation of whose language he could not speak a single word, to abandon all his Hamburg engagements and travel far with no money and only a single friend at the end of the journey, must have filled them with anxiety, if not alarm. One may conceive that many prayers went from the Schlamm house to high heaven on behalf of the youthful traveller. And oft-times Frau Handel must have desired that the imperious barber-surgeon had been alive again to restrain this wild strain of adventure in their child.

Once in the atmosphere of real music again, Handel became a slave to work. He produced a score of cantatas, he rewrote part of Almira-the only work of his which had in any way justified his belief in himself as yet. The flame of ambition began to blaze up stronger than ever. But he did not remain long enough in Florence to create any impression. He went on to Rome.

There was probably sound common sense in this decision. The music at the Pratolino Court, though beautiful—the fact that Alessandro Scarlatti had been in charge of it till shortly before Handel's arrival, is sufficient proof of its qualitycannot have been of the nature likely to bring Handel any means of livelihood. The musicians there were drawn from the best talent in Italy, so that this youth, who had yet to prove his brilliance to the Italians, cannot have been very seriously regarded as a composer, however efficient he unquestionably showed himself to be as a performer. The two hundred ducats with which he had started were running low, and there was need for something more substantial than the associations of an extravagant Court. The Prince can have had little use for him at this period or he would not have let him go. Rome, on the other hand, was the home of religious music, and its musical circle was extraordinarily gifted. The wealthy Roman families gave all the time and energy to good music which such families in many other Italian cities devoted to gambling,

1 Chrysander says that Handel spent the Christmas of 1706 with his mother at Halle on his way to Italy. But this is an entirely erroneous conclusion, for he was in Rome on 14th January 1707.

drinking and loose living generally. In many ways the Florentine music which Handel knew differed from that of Rome. It must have been obvious to Handel, then, that if Italy was to offer him a musical career, knowledge of Rome and her form of art was essential.

Hitherto there has been a great deal of uncertainty as to exactly when he arrived in Rome. Because he put the date 11th April on the autograph of his Dixit Dominus, which was performed there at Easter, it is generally concluded that he arrived at the capital about that period. But there is an entry in the Valesio Diary in the Archivio Storico Capitolino at Rome, and dated 14th January 1707, which sets the matter at rest. The paragraph in question reads as follows:

"There has arrived in this city a Saxon, an excellent player on the cembalo and a composer of music, who has to-day displayed his ability in playing the organ in the Church of St John (Lateran) to the amazement of everyone." 1

1

Handel thus established himself as a musician from the time of his arrival in the capital. Moreover, the letters of introduction he carried enabled him to get into the Roman salons. At this period opera, as such, was forbidden in Rome under the Papal Edict, but religious music in its various forms was at its height. To this form of composition Handel at once devoted himself. He set several of the Psalms, and produced a stream of fragmentary pieces for the voice, or for this instrument, or for that, which showed that his versatility was breaking out in a rapidly maturing form. Nevertheless, all that Rome gave him at this time was experience-experience in religious musical expression, which was to shape itself with the years.

There was little he could do in Rome that would prove profitable. Whilst studying the Roman music he had been.

"

1 This information, which was found by Mr L. A. Sheppard of the British Museum, searching in Italy on my behalf, of a certainty refers to Handel, who was usually called "Il Sassone by the Italians. The point is important, because if Handel arrived in Rome on or before 14th January it makes impossible Streatfeild's suggestion that his Opera Rodrigo was produced at Florence during the carnival season of this year. The fact that Handel played the organ of St John Lateran was also hitherto unknown.-Author.

2 Romain Rolland, "Handel," p. 40.