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HIS LIFE
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of the City of London,[1] and he wrote two oratorios, which were, so to speak, immense national hymns: the Occasional Oratorio,[2] where Handel called the English to rise up against invasion, and Judas Maccabæus[3] (July 9 to August 11, 1746), the Hymn of Victory, written after the rout of the rebels at Culloden Moor, and for the fête on the return of the conqueror, the ferocious Duke of Cumberland, to whom the poem was dedicated.
These two patriotic oratorios, where Handel's heart beat with that of England, and of which the second, Judas Maccabæus, has retained even to our own day its great popularity, thanks to its broad style and the spirit which animates it,[4] brought
- ↑ Two examples of the song appear in the Schoelcher Collection at the Paris Conservatoire. Handel also wrote in July, 1746, for the return of the Duke of Cumberland, a song on the victory over the rebels by His Royal Highness the Duke of Cumberland, which was given at Vauxhall (a copy of this song also appears in the Schoelcher Collection).
- ↑ Finished in the early days of December, 1745, and given in February, 1746. The text was founded partly on the Psalms of Milton and partly on the Bible. Handel inserted in the third part several of the finest pages from Israel in Egypt. In one of the solos the principal theme of Rule Britannia which was later to be composed by Arne appears.
- ↑ The poem, very mediocre, was by the Rev. Dr. Thomas Morell, who was the librettist for the last oratorios of Handel.
- ↑ It was not one of Handel's oratorios, of which the style was in the popular vein, and where one finds further grand ensembles and solos closely connected with the Chorus.
Gluck journeyed to London at the end of 1745. He was then thirty-one years old. He gave two operas in London, La Caduta de' Giganti and Artamene. (Certain solos from them are to be found in the very rare collection of Delizie dell opere, Vol.11, London, Walsh, possessed by the library of the Paris Conservatoire.) This journey of Gluck in England has no importance in the story of Handel, who showed himself somewhat scornful in his regard for Gluck's music. But it was not so for Gluck, who all his life professed the most profound respect for Handel. He regarded him as his master; he even imagined that he imitated him (see Michael Kelly: Reminiscences, I, 255), and certainly one is struck by the analogies between certain pages in Handel's oratorios written from 1744 to 1746 (notably Hercules and Judas Maccabæus) and the grand operas of Gluck. We find in the two funeral scenes from the first and second acts of Judas Maccabæus the pathetic accents and harmonies of Gluck's Orpheus.
