A General History of Music: From the Earliest Ages to the Present Period

"That’s right, although he was younger than Handel. The reason I chose Burney was that, again, I wanted to cover the variety of sources that you have available when looking at Handel. The books we’ve talked about so far are written by modern scholars, but clearly contemporary sources are absolutely vital. One of the interesting things about the 18th century is that it was the era which, in a sense, invented the idea of the music scholar, the music historian. The first serious attempts at writing scholarly music history and biographies of composers date from the 18th century. You have the biography of Bach written by Nikolaus Forkel , who didn’t know him personally, but knew Bach’s son. A friend of Bach’s called Johann Mattheson wrote an extremely engaging and witty series of accounts of contemporary composers. Not always reliable, but funny. He knew Bach and Handel, and lots of people. He’s the one who told the story of Handel and him having a duel; they had a row over who was supposed to be playing the recitative in the opera in Hamburg. If that story is true – it doesn’t sound terribly likely. “Burney was probably the greatest of the 18th century musical historians” Handel was, in fact, the subject of the first book-length biography of a composer ever published, which is an interesting indication. It was written after his death by John Manwairing. It’s a useful source, but unfortunately has been shown to be not very accurate. For example, it gets the year of his birth wrong, which also appears on the monument to him in the nave of Westminster Abbey. But Burney, I think it’s fair to say, was probably the greatest of the 18th century musical historians and took his subject extremely seriously. He was himself a composer and musician, a little bit younger than Handel – the people he knew were more of the circle of Mozart, later in the 18th century. He was a member of a very musical family. His sister Fanny Burney was a celebrated performer. He travelled widely and he wrote a large number of books about music in Europe and an extremely important book for Handel scholars about the centenary celebrations when Messiah was performed in Westminster Abbey, along with some other works. But his General History , which is extremely long, detailed and pretty engaged in the written history of music, talks about Handel’s life and work in London, and is an extremely useful source. Not just about the details, but about the reception of the music, which I think is extremely interesting. I think this is where someone like Burney became significant, because there is a sense that this is something that hadn’t been done before. The answer to your question is that, to a large extent, Handel and Bach regarded themselves as professionals, as serious composers, but what they were doing was writing music for now . The assumption that was implicit was that in 10, 20 years’ time, somebody else would be doing something new. It was assumed that each generation would move on from the one before. Handel would revive old pieces, but this idea about writing for posterity is quite a new idea, and not really one that I think was in the forefront of their minds. It’s the late 18th century that really started to do this. In London, you had something called the ‘Society for the Performance of Ancient Music’, which was set up deliberately to keep old music in the repertoire. Before that, it was assumed that each generation made its own music and would move on from the music of the past. Interestingly, ‘ancient’ music was defined as anything more than 20 years old. So, you know, if you’re in the 1780s or 1790s, and you’re listening to J.C. Bach and Haydn, then the music of Handel and J.S. Bach is ‘old music.’ Why would you listen to that? It would be like, you know, travelling by horse and cart when you could get the train. What would be the point of that? Why would you play an old fashioned recorder when you could play on a modern flute? It would just be a daft thing to do. “‘Ancient’ music was defined as anything more than 20 years old” But people began to take the idea of looking at the past seriously. This is a very interesting moment in music, because it then also affects the role of new music. You’re no longer assuming that each generation moves on and progresses from one to the other. In which case, what does new music do – what is it for? There’s another 18th century writer called Sir John Hawkins who was a very good, interesting writer about music, who said something like: ‘It is axiomatic that you search for perfection in music. Each generation will make improvements on the one before.’ I’ll just mention one more thing before we go on. Burney did claim to have met Handel once, when he was a schoolboy in Chester, and actually it was when Handel was on the way to Dublin to perform Messiah. He has this rather good story about Handel’s boat being delayed by bad weather, and he was laid over in Chester for a few days. He had the manuscript of the script of Messiah with him, so he got in touch with the local cathedral organist, and gathered some singers together for a sing-through. The bass, apparently, was a good singer but couldn’t sight-read. Burney tells a story about how Handel lost his temper and shouted, ‘you told me you could sing music at sight!’ And the singer said, ‘Yes! So I can, sir. But not at first sight.’ Burney writes this in this comic mock-German accent – it was said that Handel never lost his accent – although I should say that quite a lot of people question whether that anecdote is actually true or not. But it’s a good story."