A Portrait of Händel
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would begin another, sometimes working on two, if not three, simultaneously.[1]
He would never have had the patience of Gluck, who began, before writing, by "going through each of his acts, and then the whole piece; which commonly cost him"—so he told Corancez—"a year, and oftener than not a serious illness."—Händel used to compose an act before he had learned how the piece continued, and sometimes before the librettist had time to write it.[2]
- ↑ As an example of this fever of creation, I shall take the two years 1736–8, when Händel was ill and came near to dying. Here is a summary of these years: In January, 1736, he wrote Alexander's Feast. In February–March, he conducted a season of oratorio. In April he wrote Atalanta and the Wedding Anthem. In April and May he direccted an opera season. Between the 14th August and the 7th September he wrote Giustino, and between the 15th September and the 14th of October, Arminio. In November he directed an opera season. Between the 18th November and the 18th January, 1737, he wrote Berenice. In February and March he directed a double season of opera and oratorio. In April he was stricken with paralysis; during the whole of the summer he seemed on the point of death. The baths of Aix-la-Chapelle cured him. He returned to London early in November, 1737. On the 15th of November he began Faramondo; on the 17th December he commenced the Funeral Anthem, which he had performed at Westminster on the 17th; by the 24th he had completed Faramondo; on the 25th he began Serse, which he finished on the 14th February, 1738. On the 25th February he gave the first performance of a new pasticcio: Alessandro Severo.—And a few months later we find him writing Saul, which occupies him from the 23rd July to the 27th September, 1738, and beginning Israel in Egypt on the 1st October, and completing it on the 28th. During the same month of October he publishes his first collection of Concertos for the Organ and delivers to the publishers the collection of Seven Trios or Sonatas with Two parts and Accompaniments, op. 5.Once more, the example that I have chosen is that of the two years when Händel was most seriously ill, indeed sick almost unto death; and I defy the reader to find the least trace of his illness in these compositions.
- ↑ The poet Rossi states, in his preface to Rinaldo, that Händel barely gave him time to write the poem, and that the whole work, words and music, was composed in a fortnight (1711).—
