wrote his two Roman oratorios, The Resurrection and The Triumph of Time and Truth,[1] which were really but disguised operas. One finds traces of the Arcadia coterie in the compositions which are perhaps the most characteristic of this period in the life of Handel: the Italian cantatas,[2] of which the reputation spread itself very wide, for J. S. Bach made a copy of one of them before 1715.[3] Handel passed three or four months at Rome. He was friendly with Corelli, and with the two Scarlattis, especially with the son, Domenico, who made many trials of virtuosity with him.[4] Perhaps he also played with Bernardo Pasquini, whom he doubtless heard more than once on his organ at Great St. Mary's. He was interested in the life of the Vatican, and they tried to convert him to Catholicism, but he refused. Such was the friendly tolerance which prevailed then at the Court of Rome that, notwithstanding the war between the Pope and Emperor, this refusal did not alter the friendly relationships between the young German Lutheran
- ↑ The manuscript of The Resurrection bears this superscription: April 11, 1708, La Festa de Pasque dal Marche Ruspoli (The Easter Festival at the Marquis Ruspoli's).
- ↑ They occupy four volumes in the great Breitkopf edition—two volumes of cantatas, of solo cantatas, with single bass for clavier, and two volumes of cantatas Con stromenti, of which certain are serenatas for two or three parts.
- ↑ The Armida abbandonata. The copy, very carefully penned in the writing of Bach, is now lodged in the house of Breitkopf.
- ↑ It is related that at one of the Ottoboni evenings there was a contest on the clavier and on the organ between Domenico Scarlatti and Handel. The result was undecided on the clavier, but for the organ Scarlatti himself was the first to declare Handel the victor. After that, whenever Scarlatti spoke of him he always made the sign of the Cross.
