are easily to be counted. They are to be found
in the song of Love, in the first act, in the too
long-drawn duet of husband and wife, which
precedes the terrible explosion of sorrow in the
last scene. Not one of the least singular features
of this unique opera is the adoption by Gluck,
both for Italy and France, severe in speech as he
was in denouncing singers and their varieties, of
the bravura by Bertoni, from his "Orfeo," an
opera which had its little day of success, which
Italian master wrote for the exhibition of
Guadagni's execution. But in spite of all Gluck's
confessions of rigid doctrine (why will people
write prefaces to their plays, laying down laws
they are themselves the first to break?), no one
can have been much more neglectful and
disorderly in regard to works, produced not
without painful thought, than this mighty man. The
state of his scores, as M. Berlioz (an authority
on the subject) assures us, is deplorable. He
allowed the intercalation of the part of Hercules,
in " Alceste," with Gossec's music— an
excrescence suppressed the other day when that
opera was revived in Paris. The great men of
his time, however— Handel being another more
signal example of licence— were too great to be
scrupulous. But Haydn and Beethoven are
perhaps the only voluminous musical composers
who did not owe large obligations to the wares
of other men.

Handel's name must have come next to
Gluck's on the list as the greatest of musicians
who has taken Music as his theme, even had it
not been accidentally introduced by way of
illustration. He might have been born into the
world of art to disprove an assertion which,
however specious, is a random one (at least as
concerns music), that no production written
with a temporary, otherwise an immediate
purpose, can have permanent value. His
"Coronation" and Funeral Anthems (the latter thrown
off in a few hours, but which set the pattern
to Mozart's " Requiem"), his Dettingen and
Utrecht Te Deums, belie this assumption; and
yet more, his " Judas Maccabeus"— which, like
Gluck's forgotten opera, " La Caduta dei
Giganti," was written in hot haste, to turn to
account the advantage of the Duke of Cumberland's
victory over the Pretender;— and yet most,
his " Alexander's Feast," produced for one of
those Cecilian celebrations of the Saint's Day,
which during a protracted series of years figured
among the entertainments of the City companies
of London. So rich now as these guilds are, it
may be fairly asked, why has the good old tradition
of the accommodation they extended on
moderate line to poets and musicians in former
days, when they were poorer, and England was
narrower in its sympathies for imaginative
display and creation than now, been allowed so
completely to sink into the ground?— to be
merged in the commission of costly overgrown
dinners, good only for gormandisers and cooks,
and of gold and silver dishes, in the device of
which the expenditure of money is as great as
the expenditure of taste is small?
But " let that pass" (as Beau Tibbs hath it),
the matter in hand being Handel's music on the
subject of Music. Nothing in all the list of orchestral
compositions, devoted to the glorification of
our Art, approaches in completeness, splendour,
and dramatic variety his re-setting of Dryden's
"Alexander's Feast," originally written for
Clark. But what words were those he set!
Dryden's felicity, clearness, variety of rhythm
and sonority as a writer for music (some touches
of the false taste of his time allowed for) cannot
be better appreciated than by comparing
this lyric with the opera contrived by a greater
dramatist than he, on which also Handel
exercised his genius— Congreve's " Semele."
The pathos, vigour, brilliancy of the musician's
share in the work are amazing, the date
of its birth considered. The specification of
four numbers— "He sang Darius," "The
many rend the skies" (with its masterly use
of a ground bass), " Revenge," and " Thais
led the way"— is hardly needed. A more
incomparable union, of melody, dramatic fire, and
deep expression than they display could not be
cited. It is obvious that Handel was carried
out of himself further than usual by " glorious
John's" poem. In hardly any other of his
works that could he named, is there so much
audacity in point of key and compass as in this.
Yet the audacity nowhere amounts to that
strain on the powers of the executants, which,
if permissible, is unwise, as substituting in the
interpreter anxiety to get through his task for
that freedom without which there can be no real
individual (withal reverential) interpretation.

Compared with " Alexander's Feast," Handel's
" Ode for St. Cecilia's Day" wants strength
and spontaneity— keeping in this matter a
strict ratio with the merit of the poem. In this
Dryden too largely got over his ground by the
aid of technical conceits,— as in lines like
these:

           The diapason closing full in man, . . .
           Sharp violins proclaim
           Their jealous pangs and desperation, &c.

The best number is the elaborate air, with
violoncello obligato—

           What passion cannot music raise and quell?

The March is vigorous, even among Handel's
marches (a group of tunes well worth studying
by those who care for pomp and motion in
music). The final chorus, "As from the power
of sacred lays," is interesting as a proof of what
has been elsewhere asserted, that the great
master almost always produced his great effects
twice.- The antiphony of single unsupported
voice and chorus, however, is nobler, because
less forced, in Miriam's incomparable Chant of
Triumph, with which " Israel in Egypt" closes.
The winding up of the Cecilian chorus, however,
contains one of its maker's most gigantic effects
of climax.

Concerning Cecilian odes, for a long time a
yearly good custom in London, the reader may
be referred to the interesting monograph on the
subject, some years ago, published by Mr. Husk,
librarian to the Sacred Harmonic Society.