Mozart is a prince of
song-writers; but Handel is their king. He does not get the breezy
picturesqueness of Purcell, nor the entrancing absolute beauty that
Mozart often gets; but as pieces of art, each constructed so as to
get the most out of the human voice in expressing a rich human passion
in a noble form, they stand unapproachable in their perfection. For
many reasons the English public refused to hear them in his own time,
and Handel, as a general whose business was to win the battle, not in
this or that way, but in any possible way, turned his attention to
oratorio, and in this found success and a fortune. In this lies also
our great gain, for in addition to the Italian opera songs we have the
oratorio choruses. But when we come to think of it, might not
Buononcini and Cuzzoni laugh to see how time has avenged them on their
old enemy? For Handel's best music is in the songs, which rarely find
a singer; and his fame is kept alive by performances of "Israel in
Egypt" at the Albert Hall, where (until lately) evangelical small
grocers crowded to hear the duet for two basses, "The Lord is a man of
war," which Handel did not write, massacred by a huge bass chorus.
His "Messiah" is in much the same plight as Milton's "Paradise Lost,"
the plays of Shakespeare and the source of all true religion--it
suffers from being so excessively well known and so generally accepted
as a classic that few want to hear it, and none think it worth knowing
thoroughly.
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