Whatever his faith, he was religious at heart. He had a lofty conception of the moral obligations of art. After the first performance in London of the Messiah he said to a noble amateur: "I should be sorry, my lord, if I gave pleasure to men; my aim is to make them better."[1]
During his lifetime "his moral character was publicly acknowledged," as Beethoven[2] arrogantly wrote of himself. Even at the period when he was most discussed discerning admirers had realised the moral and social value of his art. Some verses which were published in the English newspapers in 1745 praised the miraculous power which the music of Saul possessed of alleviating suffering by exalting it. A letter in the London Daily Post for the 13th April, 1739, says that "a people which appreciates the music of Israel in Egypt should have nothing to fear on whatever occasion, though all the might of an invasion were gathered against it."[3]
No music in the world gives forth so mighty a faith. It is the faith that removes mountains, and, like the rod of Moses, makes the eternal waters gush forth from the rock of hardened souls. Certain passages from his oratorios, certain cries of resurrection are living miracles, as of Lazarus rising from the tomb. Thus, in the second act of Theodora,[4]
- ↑ Schoelcher.
- ↑ Letter to the Municipality of Vienna, 1st February, 1819.
- ↑ The literal text is: "Though all the might of papistry were gathered against us."—It seems that Händel himself was struck by these words. Seven years later, when England was invaded by Papist troops, and the army of the Pretender Charles Edward was advancing to the gates of London, Händel, writing the Occasional Oratorio, that grand epic hymn to the menaced mother-country, and the God who defended her, reproduced, in the third part of this composition, the finest pages of Israel.
- ↑ "He beheld the young man who was sleeping."
