Handel: The Man and His Music

"That’s right. This is a really good book. I mean, it goes without saying that there are lots of books about Handel. He has been tremendously famous and popular — in his day, and from then on. You asked about his significance. One of the fascinating things about Handel is the way that his reputation has travelled through time, because he and his great contemporary Bach were born only about six weeks apart, and quite close together geographically. Yet they never actually met. They tried on a couple of occasions, but it never actually happened. But their reputations form a fascinating overview of how history works, or how music history works. Handel, during his lifetime, was a working professional composer, tremendously successful but with his share of problems, troubles and professional rivalries. Then, towards the end of his life and afterwards, he became this sort of national totem, which to a large extent misrepresented his work. The fascinating history of Messiah itself is the way it turned from an 18th century oratorio into this huge nationalistic celebration performed by choirs of hundreds, then later thousands, and re-orchestrated by everyone from Henry Wood to people with brass bands. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter So it’s fascinating to look at a writer like Jonathan Keates reviewing not just what Handel did, but what history has done to Handel – and how we, to a large extent, reclaimed him. He begins the update of this book: “Since 1985, when the first edition of this book appeared, Handel has been dramatically reclaimed.” That’s the context in which he wrote the revision of his book. Scholarship and the Historically Informed Performance movement has stripped away two hundred years of a performance tradition which cast Handel’s music in the form and sounds of its own time, and restored it to the kind of scale and style which he would have heard himself, with wonderful and revelatory results. Yes, that’s one of the things that is so fascinating about him. He was immensely well known, had a wide circle of friends, was extremely erudite. He clearly enjoyed company; his friends often talk about him attending dinner parties, and obviously music-making is an extremely sociable activity. But it seems that at the end of the day, when all of that was done, he would go home to Brook Street and shut the door. He was an intensely private man. There are very few letters by Handel which survive, and that’s the way history works. It’s largely the same with Bach, you know. You get a lot of administrative records, stuff like that, but very little where they write about their thoughts and feelings. “Famously, there’s nothing about his emotional life, no hint of any kind of romantic attachment” Partly that’s just what’s happened to survive, but yes – as a person – it’s difficult to get close to him. Famously, there’s nothing about his emotional life, no hint of any kind of romantic attachment. That’s fair enough, but it’s a bit of a puzzle, when you bear in mind how beautifully he wrote about those things in his operas and oratorios, and in particular about father-daughter relationships. It’s a curious thing; that’s something he never knew. Just part of the mystery of creativity. All you can say is that there is simply no evidence. Of course, you then tie yourself in knots as to whether that’s because there’s no possibility of there being any evidence. But what can you say? I think we have to be cautious about that kind of inference. Not really, I don’t think so. I mean, I can’t recall offhand much reference to that kind of thing. When he arrived, the newspapers would refer to him as ‘the famous German composer Mr Handel,’ but after that he seemed to become fairly well absorbed. There’s a lot of attention given to his Italian opera, which is a good indication of his internationalism. He was a composer who was German by birth, lived in London, and wrote most of his most celebrated music in Italian. It was an extremely international business. It’s easy to think that, while we hop around Europe all the time now, in past centuries people didn’t travel. Actually, they did. There was an awful lot of travel around Europe, and the singers in particular were, to a large extent, foreign stars who were brought in as attractions. A little like football clubs today. “Singers were, to a large extent, foreign stars brought in as attractions. A little like football clubs today” For example, one of Handel’s principal duties was to go around Europe touting for the best talent. And that’s when you got these very interesting mixtures of homegrown singers and foreign talents – often the men tended to be English, and the higher voices tended to be foreign, the women and the castrati as well. That’s not always the case. There was a singer called Reinhold, one of Handel’s basses who, like him, came originally from Germany but lived in London. But his celebrated tenor was a man called John Beard, who had been a choirboy at the Chapel Royal. Then you get starry Italian sopranos who were brought in – competing superstars. They did! They had a punch-up on stage: Faustina Bordoni and Francesca Cuzzoni. From the evidence that there is, I would say no. I think he was one of these people who took what he did very seriously indeed – but he didn’t take himself very seriously. It’s a good combination. He was clearly absolutely committed to his art, and to high standards; there are lots of stories about him being very impatient with musicians who didn’t do things the way he wanted them to. Of course, many of these stories will have been embellished over the years, but they must have elements of truth. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . There’s an occasion that I think is well attested where a singer was over-ornamenting a musical line and he threatened to throw her out the window. One of his collaborators was a violinist called Matthew Dubourg, who led the orchestra in the first performances of the Messiah . Part of the aesthetic of Baroque music was the performers would add ornament and embellishment and cadenzas to the line, and even then it was a matter of debate about how far you should go with this. Dubourg introduced a little cadenza into one of the pieces – which was expected – but he went off on a bit of a flight of fancy, and when he finally got back to the key of the piece, apparently Handel turned to him and said: ‘You are welcome home, Mr Dubourg!’ There’s another story where he was rehearsing a recitative in an opera, and the singer complained about the way he was playing the harpsichord and said to him: ‘Mr Handel, if you continue to play like that I shall jump on your harpsichord.’ He replied: ‘Well if you do, pray give me notice in advance and I will advertise, because I’m sure more people will pay to see you jump than to hear your sing.’ I think that’s probably not entirely true, but it’s a good story. All these anecdotes reflect aspects of character, of course."