whom the Dom belonged, for permitting such impious behaviour to endure. In March 1702 the Calvinists took action. They threw out Leporin, and they put in the student Handel as a temporary measure, although a certain section of the Calvinists of the town took exception to the decision, because Handel was a Lutheran. The step had been under consideration for some time, for negotiations were in progress when he first joined the University, but his religion, his extreme youth, were points for doubt. Strictly speaking, he had no right at the Dom whatever, but as the appointment was for a year's probation at an annual salary of fifty thaler, the controversy quickly subsided, and the Calvinists continued their worship in peace. In addition, Handel was given lodging at the Moritzburg" below by the gate," but he failed to live there; instead, he let the apartment for sixteen thaler a year.1

For over a year he presided at the organ at the Dom. But all the while big resolves were forming in his mind. He had no desire to serve his life as an organist, much as he loved the instrument. And his ambition was goading him beyond the narrow confines of Halle, with its petty feuds and commercial smugness. Some searching instinct suggested to him that beyond the far horizon attainment might be found. He was intrigued by the stories of Italian music which had stormed Europe, of the melodious glories of Hamburg. A new school of music was seeking birth in the German city.

He was eighteen years of age-a year of decision, and against the desire for independence and travel, the home ties could offer but a poor defence.

In 1703 he resigned his post as organist at the Dom, and

1 Chrysander credits Handel with considerable activity in connection with the town music during his appointment at the Dom, but is sadly in error. He had read in Dreyhaupt (vol. i. p. 991) that the church music performances were divided among the various churches. But the Dom is not enumerated among these churches. As a matter of fact, the town choir was entrusted with these performances, and this choir belonged to the Gymnasium. Teachers of the Lutheran Gymnasium, were, according to the custom of the time, also Cantors of the town churches, and they employed their choir in the church music performances. The reformed organist could have no part in these; in consequence Handel's activity was restricted to the Dom church. Chrysander is therefore far from the mark when he says (p. 63): "In this manner it was an easy matter for Handel to possess himself of the entire musical government. Whatever he composed was performed without delay."

Handel sets out for Hamburg

was succeeded by Johann Kohlhart,' oddly enough another Lutheran. Handel wasted little time. Leaving the University he packed up his few belongings at the Schlamm, bade farewell to his mother and sisters and Aunt Anna and set out in the early summer for Hamburg.

Happily for himself, the old barber-surgeon slept on in his grave, unknowing that all he had striven for had broken down. The son of his late years had failed him.

1 Johann Kohlhart was born at Wettin, 11th January 1661; was Cantor at Glauchau 1682, and Octavus at the Lutheran Gymnasium 1701. Besides his duties at the Dom church he had to take over the Cantorship of St Ulrich Church in 1712. He died 9th April 1732.—“ Hallische Schul-Historica,” iii. p. 12.

CHAPTER III

THE HAMBURG ADVENTURE

1703-1705

HAMBURG was the city of adventure. In 1703 it was an evil spot for a youth of eighteen without a friend, and certainly with very little money. Moreover, there was in prospect for Handel no definite means of earning his living. He had left Halle aimlessly to find fortune, and Hamburg was the beginning of the great search.

For thirty years, Italian music had swept in a tide across musical Germany. The theatres resounded to the singing of Italian words; Italian maestri found a welcome; too often to the detriment of more talented musicians of native birth. But in 1703 the musical glories of Berlin were fading, and Hamburg, a city free from any subjection of its arts to Electoral control, was the centre of new and uprising thought in music. Keiser, that strange figure who produced operas some hundred and twenty in all-as easily as he could pour water from a bottle, was on the crest of the wave. He was a force in German music. In addition to his operatic achievements he was then running concerts, where the very best music was heard, and the best food and wines could be consumed. He was making money and spending money in sensuality, yet working like a Trojan. An idol of the people who, after forty years of adulation in Hamburg, was to disappear in the slough of vice that enthralled him. Musicians, artists, writers, mingled in a life of gaiety and poverty, with occasional affluences, which were dissipated in debauchery of every kind. Yet Hamburg was full of clever men at the period, débauchés, most of whom spent their money as they earned it, but clever for all that.

In 1690 Rathmann G. Schott had founded and owned the first opera house there, and four years later he let it to a Jew,

Lewdness Rampant

Jacob Kremberg, on a five years' lease with the machinery, scenes, costumes, etc., and with the additional loan of all the operas previously performed there at Schott's expense.1 Schott was very opposed to the inroad of Italian music. He had built that opera house to exploit German work, and soon after Kremberg took over the place trouble occurred. Kremberg began to run Italian comedies, many of them lewd and lacking in cleverness. But so long as he paid his annual rental of six hundred Reichs-Thaler, Schott was more or less powerless to interfere. In vain Schott protested; Kremberg was drawing good houses and went on. Then Schott appealed to the Syndic Lucas van Bostel to prohibit these performances. How long the squabble might have gone on there is no knowing, but Kremberg struck a bad season, ran heavily into debt and compromised with Schott. The matter, however, did not end there. In 1702-just a year before Handel reached Hamburg-Schott died, and hardly had they buried him than Kremberg broke out afresh with an orgy of foreign, and, in most instances, indifferent pieces. Stung to anger, Schott's widow sought an injunction against him. But it was never obeyed, and just as Handel came to the city she complained to the courts that their order had been set aside.

Handel, therefore, found the opera in a strange state of disorder. What his thoughts may have been when he discovered that the new heart of Germany's music was kept pulsing by dissolutes, that Art was prostituted by lewdness and debauchery of the worst type, one can imagine. He had lived a sheltered life at the Schlamm; he had never come face to face with that gaiety of the epoch which found expression in the larger cities. Halle, with its strong Lutheran and Calvinistic traits, can have known nothing of it. Apart from a students' "rough house" none of the boisterousness of real youth had been known to Handel.

It was probably fortunate for him that, almost upon his arrival at Hamburg, he fell in with Johann Mattheson. For Handel it was a fortunate meeting, since he possessed the wilful self-assurance that comes to youth at eighteen-assurance which had to suffer many blows in the hard school of experi

1 State Archive, Hamburg.

ence at Hamburg. Fortunate, too, for Mattheson was this meeting, for his association with Handel has kept alive a name which otherwise never would have passed beyond the frontiers of Germany at any rate.

Mattheson was a creature of conflicting personality. He had sprung from nothing with the aid of a good education and his own cleverness. He was four years older than Handel, and his father was a collector in the Hamburg customs. At nine he had been proficient at the organ and harpsichord and possessed of a wonderful treble voice. At sixteen he was singing in opera at the Hamburg Opera House, at eighteen his first opera Die Pleiaden was produced there, with himself in one of the principal parts, and conductor of the orchestra when he was not on the stage. His was a brilliance which carried him high, only suddenly to lose its strength. He was vain with a consuming vanity; more than a little mean, pedantic in dress. He composed well, sang and acted well, wrote well-always a swift moving spirit that never rested or was still. If he had been gifted with genius instead of mere cleverness he would have been one of the most uplifting figures in the musical history of his age.

66

There was nothing Mattheson loved better than his art— except himself. Throughout his life he had a supremely good nature, which he exercised generously, because he felt that the world could produce no serious rival. Towards Handel he adopted the attitude of the experienced and worldly-wise teacher. Later, when he wrote about Handel in his "EhrenPforte," he appears rather like a nursemaid taking the little boy out. "Handel came to Hamburg rich in ability and good intentions," he says. I was almost his first acquaintance and, through me, he was taken round to all the organs, choirs, operas and concerts." And later: "He composed long, long arias and absolutely endless cantatas, but he had not yet got the knack of the right taste." And later still, a gibe at Handel's poverty, sugared by an admission of help: "He mostly came for free meals to my late father's, and in return revealed to me certain special tricks of counterpoint. I for my part helped him considerably in dramatic style."

Time has proved the irony of this statement.

Mattheson's