London: Macmillan, 2018
Reviewed by David Vickers
In only the second biographical study of Handel’s life and works to have been written in English by a professional conductor, Jane Glover goes into deeper detail on some of the works than the cannier scholarly prose of Christopher Hogwood (whose credentials as a pioneering performer of Handel’s works were second to none). Glover’s conducting career has included half a dozen of the most famous Handel operas, plus productions of Acis and Galatea, L’Allegro, Theodora and Jephtha; there is also the small matter of over a hundred performances of Messiah, and doubtless she has acquired extensive experience of directing a smattering of other choral works and favourite lollipops. Moreover, her PhD dissertation (Oxford) and subsequent publications on the 17th-century opera composer Cavalli demonstrate that in principle she is no stranger to proper scholarship: the bibliography of Handel in London contains plenty of suitable research material – although, curiously, not any of the new CUP series of Handel’s collected documents, and she ignores the abundance of useful materials in academic journals and periodicals. Donald Burrows’s fastidious and impeccably balanced Master Musicians tome is unlikely to be challenged as my first port of call for referential Handel biography, whereas Glover has produced a cuddlier introduction for curious music-lovers who might never before have read anything on the composer’s life and works.
The author praises Jonathan Keates’s ‘magisterial’ biography as her touchstone, and perhaps the spirit and style of his writing is the closest counterpart in the Handelian literature to this new contribution. The prose tends to be friendly, effusive and endearing. Glover is an assured story-teller and often conjures an unabashedly sentimental tone when relating personal crisis points in Handel’s life. The descriptions of his sporadic illnesses are related with sensitivity, and the accounts of his eventual blindness and death are touchingly emotive. This biography does not aim to achieve a nuanced portrait of the composer’s flaws; he is affixed securely on a pedestal for the entire duration of a narrative that presents the artist as an irreproachable hero. Evidence of his temper, stubbornness, gluttony and bouts of laziness (as alluded to in several of Charles Jennens’s letters) are glossed over; there is no hint of why his erstwhile colleague Joseph Goupy created the vicious caricature ‘The Charming Brute’ (not an illustration reprinted here).
Explanations of complex historical events involving the last years of Queen Anne, the Hanoverian succession, the machinations of Walpole, the Jacobite rebellions of 1715 and 1745, various pan-European wars and the incessant squabbling of the royal family in London are dealt with engagingly if not impeccably. At its best, Handel in London is an entertaining albeit imperfect tale that is told with flair.
Glover’s passionate advocacy of certain works is highly welcome: it is good to read such enthusiastic overviews of Israel in Egypt, Judas Maccabaeus and Joshua – oratorios that have not always been admired fairly by musicologists and yet are popular with choral singers. Likewise, the author’s enthusiasm for Handel’s under-appreciated settings of Metastasio librettos in Poro and Ezio is well-placed. Nobody will be surprised that praise is lavished on Giulio Cesare, Tamerlano, Rodelinda, Orlando, Ariodante and Alcina (all of which Glover has conducted), and there are similar exaltations of Saul, Messiah, Samson, Semele, Hercules, Belshazzar, Solomon, Theodora and Jephtha. In other words, almost all works generally accepted as Handel’s greatest masterpieces are given their approximate due.
Nevertheless, the author commits sins of commission and omission. Glover’s perfunctory dispatching of Flavio, Admeto, Atalanta and even Serse (all excellent works) suggests an uneven grasp of Handel’s output. The section on Partenope is typical of errant judgments: Rosmira’s hunting aria ‘Io seguo sol fiero’ is described as ‘dramatically somewhat irrelevant’ (not true), and the author is misguided when she writes that the arias composed for Arsace are ‘unremarkable … The awful truth, which Handel understood all too well, was that [the castrato] Bernacchi was no good.’ Another misperception is that ‘Per le porte del tormento’ (Sosarme) is ‘one of Handel’s most exquisite duets of misfortune and longing’; in fact, it is an exquisite duet of blissful reunion and hope (something that the words and music convey clearly). There are too many flimsy assertions. The final two operas, Imeneo and Deidamia, are dismissed unfairly in short shrift; much more attention is accorded to the patchier Floridante and Siroe. Something closer to consistent equity in the treatment of all the operas was needed.
Lopsided imbalance also afflicts the appraisal of oratorios: Deborah and Joseph and his Brethren are condemned cursorily with barely any credible engagement (Glover seems content to recycle Winton Dean’s negative verdicts on both); there is barely any insight on Susanna. Whilst it is laudably brave to offer critical judgments, the author’s commentaries are reliant on name-checking a few famous arias along with generalisations about Handel’s genius for dramatic characterisation: she seldom says exactly how or why. There is, for example, little explanation of what makes Samson an unparalleled dramatic oratorio.
Secular English-language works receive deserved praise. Glover writes insightfully on Acis and Galatea, but brief summaries of a few nice airs and choruses in Alexander’s Feast and L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato are superficial, and lack any proper consideration of why Handel’s imaginative responses to the literary subtleties of Dryden and Milton are special (the author claims that ‘Handel had certainly dropped a level of creative energy’ in 1736, yet Alexander’s Feast and Atalanta both show the composer at the top of his game). The nature of the allegorical dispute and conciliation between quarrelling opponents in L’Allegro is neglected – curiously, the same crucial element was lamentably obfuscated in Mark Morris’s choreographed production that Glover has conducted frequently. The author states wrongly that L’Allegro was first performed in 1740 as a double-bill with Acis and Galatea; perhaps it has been confused with some contemporary performances of the Song for St Cecilia’s Day.
Unreliability and imbalance also extend to the treatment of Handel’s orchestral music: it is misguided to spend so many pages discussing the Music for the Royal Fireworks (hardly his most inventive and sophisticated orchestral work) and yet the miraculous Twelve Grand Concertos (Op. 6) are only referred to in passing. None of the organ concertos are singled out for assessment, and the Op. 3 concertos are never mentioned. If the reader wishes to learn what makes Handel’s chamber sonatas or keyboard music special, they will not find guidance here.
The focus of the book on Handel’s years in London apparently prohibits anything more than a perfunctory summary of his youthful grand tour around Italy, dispatched by the author in only two and a half pages that are packed with errors. It is stated wrongly that Handel’s first oratorio was La Resurrezione (it was Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno), and Glover asserts that whilst in Italy ‘Handel made contact with influential musicians, including … Stradella’ (who was stabbed to death on a Genoese street three years before Handel was born). Any consideration of ‘The Making of a Genius’ (the book’s subtitle) ought to give proper attention to how the composer’s abilities were forged in his manifold works for Rome, Florence, Naples and Venice (Agrippina merits as much attention as any of the most celebrated London masterpieces). Likewise, it is surprising that there is no mention anywhere in the book about Handel’s lifelong method of borrowing ideas from other composers, and no credible engagement with his compositional processes.
Handel in London is the fruition of a sincere love for the composer’s music and a close personal engagement with some of it. Its vexing deficiencies and unevenness are a pertinent reminder of the impossible task that any single author has in condensing such a vast, rich and fascinating subject into a single book that aims to be simultaneously entertaining, fluent, reliable, academically informed and accessible. In those terms, Glover comes almost as close as anyone else ever has.