is strongly developed and it is by this above all that Handel's genius so struck the English public. Camille Saint-Saens wrote in an interesting letter to C. Bellaigue,[1] "I have come to the conclusion that it is the picturesque and descriptive side, until then novel and unreached, whereby Handel achieved the astonishing favour which he enjoyed. This masterly way of writing choruses, of treating the fugue, had been done by others. What really counts with him is the colour—that modern element which we no longer hear in him. . . . He knew nothing of exotism. But look at Alexander's Feast, Israel in Egypt, and especially L'Allegro ed Penseroso, and try to forget all that has been done since. You find at every turn a striving for the picturesque, for an effect of imitation. It is real and very intense for the medium in which it is produced, and it seems to have been unknown hitherto."
Perhaps Saint-Saens lays too much weight on the "masterly way of writing his choruses," which was not so common in England, even with Purcell. Perhaps he accentuates too much also the real influence of the French in matters of picturesque and descriptive music and the influence which it exerted on Handel.[2] Finally, it is not necessary to represent these descriptive tendencies of Handel as exceptional in his time. A great breath of nature
- ↑ Quoted by M. Bellaigue in Les Époques de la Musique, Vol. I, page 109.
- ↑ In the time of Lully and his school, the French were the leaders in musical painting, especially for the storms. Addison made fun of it, and the parodies of the Théâtre de la Foire often amused people by reproducing in caricature the storms of the Opéra.
