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NEWSLETTER of the American Handel Society NEWSLETTER of The American Handel Society Volume XXXIII, Number 2 Summer 2018 HANDEL’S BLINDNESS AND ITS REPORT FROM HALLE 2018 EFFECT ON HIS COMPOSING Graydon Beeks Kenneth Nott On December 31, 1757 the Earl of Shaftesbury wrote to James Harris: “I saw Mr. Handel the other day, who is pretty well and has just finished the composing of several new songs for Frederica [Cassandra Frederick] his new singer, from whom he has great expectations.”1 This oft cited letter touches directly on an issue that remains unresolved in Handel studies, namely, to what extent were the late (that is, post-1752) additions to the oratorios actually composed by Handel? A definitive answer does not come easily, if at all. The “new songs” that Shaftesbury referred to are: “Sorrow darkens ev’ry feature,” “Happy Beauty,” “No more complaining,” “Pleasure’s gentle zephyrs playing,” and “Charming Beauty.” They survive as inserts to the performing score of The Triumph of Time and Truth, are not in the composer’s hand and are, in some cases, re-arrangements of movements from earlier works. In an influential essay published over three decades ago, Anthony This year’s Handel Festival in his birthplace of Halle, Hicks found these and other late additions musically inferior, Germany was built around the theme of “Fremde Welten” claiming that they “often display un-Handelian features,” including “through-composed structures, sometimes awkwardly balanced (“Foreign Worlds”) and took place from May 25 to June 10, with a shortened, not to say perfunctory, reprise.”2 Hicks argues 2018. The festival featured first performances of works utilizing that the newly composed parts of the late additions are the work performing material derived from five newly published or soon-to- of “a composer a generation younger than Handel,” most likely be-published volumes of the Hallische Händel-Ausgabe (HHA), John Christopher Smith the younger.3 Hicks’s position has gained which surely must be a record. Because of the length of the festival wide acceptance. Donald Burrows in his authoritative biography of and the scheduling of meetings and conference sessions, your Handel echoes Hicks when he concludes that, “at best, the additions reviewer was only able to attend a select number of events near exhibit varying degrees of ‘Handel-ness’....”4 Yet in an essay written the beginning. Nevertheless, I will attempt to give an overview of in 2011, Hans Dieter Clausen has countered that Handel’s creative the entire proceedings. involvement in these additions was likely significant and that there Following the traditional opening ceremony at the is a need to re-examine this whole issue.5 In this article, I would Handel Memorial in the late afternoon of Friday, May 25, the like to address the question of the effect of Handel’s blindness on Festival continued with the first performance of Berenice, Regina his “composing” by concentrating on the assumptions that have d’Egitto—the only one of Handel’s operas that had not previously guided the discourse thus far, and propose a new, possibly more been staged in Halle—at the Opera House. The musical text was fruitful avenue of inquiry. I wish to emphasize that the scope of that of Wolfgang Hirschmann’s forthcoming HHA volume, and this article will not allow for analysis of individual movements it was well played by the Händelfestspielorchester Halle under (something I plan to present at a later date). Rather, I would like the direction of Jörg Halubek, making his first appearance in the to focus on the philosophical and methodological issues that have house. Fortunately, the cartage company had failed to deliver an thus far informed the debate. organ to the pit, but they had again provided a load of percussion 1 Donald Burrows and Rosemary Dunhill, Music and Theatre in Handel’s instruments instead. The singers were led by soprano Romelia World: The Family Papers of James Harris, 1732–1780 (New York: Oxford Lichtenstein, who gave a commanding performance in the title University Press, 2002), 327. 2 Anthony Hicks, “The Late Additions to Handel’s Oratorios and the Role role, although she tired a bit toward the end of taxing sing. It of the Younger Smith,” in Music in Eighteenth-Century England: Essays in continued on p. 3 Memory of Charles Cudworth, ed. Christopher Hogwood and Richard Luckett (New York: Caambridge University Press, 1983), 169. 3 Ibid. 4 Donald Burrows, Handel, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, IN THIS ISSUE 2012), 486. Handel’s Blindness and its Effect on his Composing – Kenneth Nott 5 Hans Dieter Clausen, “Händel oder Smith? Neue Aspekte zur Autorschaft Report from Halle – Graydon Beeks der neu komponierten oder bearbeiteten Arien und Chorsätze in den From the President’s Desk – Graydon Beeks Oratorienaufführungen zwischen 1752 und 1759,” Aria: eine Festschrift für Wolfgang Ruf (Zurich: Hildesheim, 2011), 317–30. See also John H. Call for applications: International Research Prize 2019 Roberts, “‘Blooms of Youth’: A Solomonic Addendum,” Händel Jahrbuch American Handel Society Festival & Conference 61 (2015): 413–24, esp. 419–22. Handel Aria Competition announcement continued on p. 2 1 Handel’s Blindness... continued from p. 1 a god-like position in the literary canon and many clearly wanted to include the blind composer in their company. Thus, Burney writes: In recent years, scholars have developed a new field of “Handel, late in life, like the great poets, Homer and Milton, was inquiry called Disability Studies.6 Joseph Straus’s Extraordinary afflicted with blindness...”13 and in a letter to James Harris written Measures: Disability in Music is an important introduction to the in 1753, John Upton hoped “to steal to town to hear our blind subject, where the author emphasizes that “disability is both a bard....”14 material reality and a cultural creation.”7 That is, in addition to Other commentary on Handel’s blindness falls under the being an objective, medical fact, a person’s disability needs to be heading of Straus’s third type, namely blindness as an obstacle to understood in relation to that person’s cultural and social context. be overcome through individual effort. Contemporaries of Handel Straus continues: repeatedly refer to this malady and emphasize Handel’s triumph Over the past 300 years, people in the West have thought over it. William Hayes writes that Handel, “to the Astonishment about disability in four ways: 1) disability as an affliction, of all Mankind...performed Wonders on the Organ, both set permanent and indelible; 2) disability as afflatus (defined Pieces and extempore....”15 In a letter to James Harris, the Earl as divine inspiration), a mark of transcendent vision; 3) of Shaftesbury declares: “Handel’s playing is beyond what even disability as a medical defect, a bodily pathology to be he ever did.”16 There are also reports that Handel continued to overcome through individual effort; and 4) disability as a compose. In addition to the quote given at the beginning of this personal, cultural, and social identity, to be affirmatively article, Shaftesbury reported to Harris in 1757 that, “Handel is acclaimed.8 better than he has been for some years: and finds he can compose chorus’s, as well as other music, to his own (and consequently to Let’s consider how these four perspectives have guided discussions his hearers) satisfaction. His memory is strengthened of late to an of Handel and his blindness. astonishing degree.”17 In elaborating on the first perspective (disability as an Before addressing Straus’s fourth perspective, affirmatively affliction), Straus refers to disability as “a sign of divine disfavor, a acclaiming Handel’s disability, let’s return to the divided opinions punishment by God....”9 Though no commentator has designated on the question of the authenticity of the late additions. The issues Handel’s blindness as the result of divine disfavor, at least one has raised in this disagreement resemble the case of a later composer viewed it as a type of punishment, or price paid by the composer for who, like Handel, went blind during the last few years of his life, years of unrelieved labor on his manuscripts. In 1753, the Countess yet continued to compose with the aid of an assistant. The late of Shaftesbury wrote to James Harris: compositions of Frederick Delius (1862–1934) written with the It was such a melancholy pleasure as drew tears of sorrow help of Eric Fenby (1906–1997) have elicited from critics a range to see the great th[ough] unhappy Handel, dejected, wan, of responses. Some argue that these late works are signs of a more and dark, sitting by, not playing on the harpsichord, and spiritual, other-worldly Delius, while others hear these pieces as decidedly inferior to the composer’s earlier work. In short, they to think how his light had been spent by being overply’d 18 in musicks cause;10 are deemed un-Delian. After surveying the reception of Delius’s late music, Straus suggests that: The same connection between the intensive labor of musical notation and blindness has also been made in the case An additional possibility, that the late music is informed of J. S. Bach. I can still remember, as a boy, reading a children’s by the disability, but in ways that are distinguishing and biography of Bach which attributed the onset of blindness in his last even desirable, has yet to be explored by Delius’s critics. years to the young composer’s surreptitious copying by candlelight Such an approach might place Delius in relation to other from his older brother’s music manuscript. Indeed, Bach’s obituary blind composers and musicians, hearing in his music some (1750, pub.
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