Tag: Author: Thelma Lovell

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Too Much Blood? Music and Mysticism in Handel’s Brockes Passion

Thelma Lovell

‘… the experience of the Holy: terror, bliss, and recognition of an absolute authority … the most thrilling and impressive combination of these elements occurs in sacrificial ritual: the shock of the deadly blow and flowing blood, the bodily and spiritual rapture of festive eating’ (Walter Burkert: Homo Necans)

Baroque is something of a catch-all term but if, as Willi Apel puts it, ecstasy and exuberance are two of its defining characteristics, then the Brockes Passion is a paradigm example of that cultural era. Yet while Handelians feast on the music (as they did during the Academy of Ancient Music’s recent superlative performance at the Barbican on Good Friday 2019) can the text be considered equally palatable to a modern sensibility? Does its undisguised fervour veer into melodrama, too crudely graphic to conform to our ideas of the spiritual?

We are so much more familiar with the deep ocean swell of Bach’s great structures in the St Matthew Passion as the ne plus ultra of sacred music. The comparison, however, is not between better or worse, but of which route to take to the heart of the religious mystery. Roughly speaking, Bach awes us from within to make us receptive to the Passion story. For Handel it is a more empirical process, from the concrete to the abstract; it is through insight into human agency and motivation that the deeper meaning filters through. Hence the Brockes re-telling was the ideal vehicle for such a natural dramatist – and it is worth remembering, as Ruth Smith observed in her fine article ‘Handel’s Brockes Passion: a Unique Composition’ in Handel News No.74 (January 2019), that the composer adhered closely to the instructions of his librettist.

If we flinch at parts of the Brockes Passion, then that is as it should be. Like it or not, we are willing voyeurs of, and thus in a sense participants in, a primeval sacrificial ritual that strengthens social bonds. An anthropologist – Durkheim comes to mind – would instantly recognise the choreographed interplay of tensions whose release can only come with the shedding of blood. This is the essence of the sacred, the mystery of mysteries that ensures divine protection for the community. The opening reference to disease that can only be cured by such means is a familiar theological trope, as for instance in Bach’s cantata 25 (Es ist nicht Gesundes an meinem Leibe), with its catalogue of suppurating horrors (at least Brockes is content with a boil or two). And then we are plunged straight into the Eucharist: the symbolic (or, for a Catholic, the actual) consuming of the victim’s flesh and blood.

This, in a nutshell, comprises the entire programme of the work. But its necessary expansion gives writer and composer much to do. For instance, there is the interplay of three layers of audience; we are watching the Daughter of Zion and the Believing Soul as they themselves watch and comment on the central events. The complex story is propelled onward with Baroque energy in a succession of distinct scenes and, most importantly, through Handel’s variety of mood and characterisation. Conflict, the motor of all drama, is everywhere. Peter’s battles with himself are a case in point: how better could we understand repentance and shame than through his three highly personal arias with their transition from militant bravado to vocal nakedness as he stands unarmed, and that final howl at the admission of defeat? There are powers beyond his control: the force majeure of the angry mob and, most painfully, his own inner limitations as he accepts that his courage has failed.

The panoply of arias for the Daughter of Zion and the Believing Soul – not especially long, but all full of concentrated emotional expression – present an ideal vehicle for Handel as painter of feeling. They embody the Christian collective torn by its own conflicted vision of the Passion: anger, disgust, pity and anguish are on display, but also a kind of horrified desire. The rite has to be fulfilled; in spite of the animal barbarity, the ending of the whole work is one of joy and relief. In the final aria all tears can – indeed must – be wiped away, for this one death brings salvation to all.

But what about the victim himself? He too is drawn into the irresistible nexus of sacrifice, though as a man he wishes desperately to avoid the physical agony. Here, Brockes and Handel jointly stage a scene thick with apprehension. We hear Christ’s juddering heartbeat as he begs his Father to spare him the fated ordeal. There is a particularly eloquent harmonic colouring (the deadness of the flattened supertonic) as he at last yields to the divine will; only thus will he too accede to divinity. The Daughter of Zion then interposes a commentary identifying the source of pollution that corrupts the community and can only be expunged by the death of Christ: it is the monster (Scheusal) of human sin.

Fast forward to the most psychologically difficult part of the Brockes Passion: the prolonged allusion to torture in music of sublime beauty – notably Dem Himmel gleicht and Die Rosen krönen. As Brockes emphasises the physical vulnerability of Christ, the mangling of the flesh, the blood, sweat and tears that brutality exacts, we may well wonder what all this has to do with spirituality. But that is precisely the point: the mystery of the sacred is heightened, not lessened, by the contrast between flesh and spirit. Belief in their reconciliation demands a correspondingly enormous investment of faith which, having once been made, is all the securer for the effort involved. But how is this to be achieved? The answer here is surely music as surrogate and enabler of the synaptic leap between logic and faith – a glimpse of aural heaven amidst the gore. In true Baroque fashion, Affekt is all-conquering, subjecting the evidence of reason to a different sort of power. Perhaps it is music itself that is sacred – benign or dangerous, depending on its uses, but undeniably a mystery.

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The Bubble Reputation: Virtue, Reason and Sexual Politics in Rodelinda

Thelma Lovell

Handel’s Rodelinda can be read on several levels: as a drama of conflicting passions; an advertisement for political stability; and a study in changing values from the warrior ideal of leadership to the heroism of devotion and self-sacrifice. Like all the best morality tales, it weaves its improving message into the texture of human interaction, in order to steer us towards the convergence of reason, power and virtue. The opera finds one form of closure in a triumphant vocal concerto (Mio caro bene) for the eponymous heroine who ends up with the winning hand in a game of high political stakes. But there is a further type of closure in the final chorus: a communal sigh of relief at the general rightness of things.

Haym’s libretto is based on Corneille’s Pertharite, which flopped spectacularly on its appearance in 1652. Pertharite is the uxorious hero who puts emotional attachment before worldly status; he is prepared to sacrifice his life so that his wife may marry the usurper Grimoald and hence keep the crown for herself. Rodélinde, on the other hand, is driven by the imperatives of birth, breeding, and the absolute necessity of distancing herself from the upstart regime. Initially unimpressed by the husband who returns as a distinctly unregal fugitive, she eventually accepts him – helped by the fact that Grimoald acknowledges the courage of Pertharite and his authentic moral claim to the throne: 

But the man who believes me a tyrant and nobly stands up to me,
However weak he may be does not have a slave’s heart; 
He displays a great soul that rises above calamity 
And makes up in courage what it lacks in fortune.

All suitably high-minded, not least on the part of Grimoald; Rodélinde apologises for misjudging him, and everything is restored to its proper place. Pertharite has the last word, proclaiming that ‘reputation (la gloire) is the sole prize of the noble virtues’ – yet the truism is evidently enlarged to include the integrity of the inner rather than solely the outer person. The mid-17th-century French public was perhaps not ready for this shift in conventional heroic values.

Let us consider the Handelian version, which again is far more interesting than the story of a long-suffering bereft female as the plaything of destiny. Two couples battle to maintain their own version of reality. Both of the men are kings yet (in different ways) not so. The usurper Grimoaldo fails to convince either himself or others of his new identity, while the deposed Bertarido is first imagined dead and then when he reappears simply fails to look or act with the expected dominance. His shabby demeanour attracts the scorn and disbelief of Grimoaldo, in whose scheme of things position must be signalled by outward show. The women are in a similar bind: Rodelinda was – and still feels herself to be – queen, though this is technically untrue; and Eduige is ambitious to step into Rodelinda’s shoes by marrying the actual, though inauthentic, ruler Grimoaldo. And though the female characters could not be overt political agents, they are able to operate the levers of power at one remove. Sexuality is part of the game for all four characters. 

Rodelinda’s opening cavatina strikes a pose of tragedy and rhetorical hauteur. It is a courtly lament for a queen conscious of her status, yet as she sings of her loneliness (e qui sola) the texture becomes closer and warmer; this is a suffering human being. Even so, reputation trumps all: the furious energy of her rejection of the crass Grimoaldo is fuelled by a mix of grief and an objection to becoming déclassée: gloria is not limited to chastity. Despite her iron will, Rodelinda exists in a context of other people and circumstances that she cannot entirely control but must try to read. Chief amongst these is of course Grimoaldo, whose weak point is his need to persuade himself and others of his newly-acquired authority. He begins badly, for what sort of hero is turned down by the woman he loves (or in this case, the trophy wife he thinks he deserves)? He does at least have the satisfaction of discarding his old love Eduige, who longs to share the throne with him. Staccato pomposity (Io già t’amai) proclaims that self-image is his driver. Similarly, he preens himself before Garibaldo in the jaunty Se per te: ‘I am king and with my protection you have nothing to fear, not even from my future wife’. 

It is a different story when he has been wrong-footed by Rodelinda’s terrifying condition of marriage, i.e. that he should murder her son. (In fact, Haym gives us a softer version than Corneille: in the original, Rodélinde offers to join in the murder of the boy.) Grimoaldo’s Prigionera ho l’alma in pena tells us through its repeated melodic phrases – as if rooted to the spot – that he is trapped. He cannot be the Darwinian lion who kills the cubs of his defeated rival, for (as Rodelinda points out) this would cause him to lose his gloria: a king’s standing rests on his moral reputation – his soft power – as much as compulsion. The contrary argument is made by Garibaldo, ostensibly henchman but actually Grimoaldo’s dark alter ego. Unlike the other characters, Grimoaldo never diverges from one version of reality: a crude realpolitik represented musically by great strides and uncompromising bare textures.

The game-changer in the drama is the resurrected presence of Bertarido: he pauses at his supposed funeral monument to rail at its untruthfulness. He is very much alive, and through stately dotted rhythms Handel lets us know that he is genuine royalty. The musical shock is the transition to E major in Dove sei as if, like Bertarido, we are entering a strange new world with its centre of gravity altered from the C major of the overture. From this point onwards, Bertarido and Rodelinda seem to share a private tonal domain, full of pain and confusion – as for instance  in the B minor of Ombre, piante, the E major of Morrai, sì, and perhaps especially the F sharp minor of Io t’abbraccio. Furthermore, the lyrical simplicity of Dove sei tells us that this king is full of sensibility, without the pretension of Grimoaldo. His strength is that of the inner rather than the outer man. 

As the drama progresses, the musical and psychological trajectories of the rival kings intersect. Beginning as the would-be confident reigning monarch, Grimoaldo finds himself more and more out of his depth, ending in the weary defeat of Pastorello d’un povero armento – its E minor a wistful echo of Bertarido’s E major Dove sei. Bertarido himself, on the other hand, follows a tonal path that fluctuates with his personal fortunes but at last, with the restoration of his sword, brings him back to where he truly belongs. The triumphant C major of Se fiera belva is the bright light of power and the world that so far has existed only (as he ruefully declares to his sister Eduige) in his rimembranza.  

The irony is that Bertarido’s privileging of the private over the public was not in itself enough to restore his family or his kingdom. It was rather Eduige’s thwarted passion for Grimoaldo and the desire for vengeance that led her to help Bertarido gain his freedom; it was not virtue pure and simple that caused the virtuous outcome. Eduige’s emotions and actions are crucial to the plot; in her shifts of loyalties she is a foil to the intractable Rodelinda and all too believable. She too has her pride, which caused her to spurn Grimoaldo in his previous merely ducal rank. The weak point for this pair is the craving for a royal status they have never had. In this respect, Rodelinda is always in a stronger position. Her sense of self is rooted in knowing herself to be queen. Yet without Eduige’s help, she would never have emerged triumphant.

A further irony is that Bertarido must in the end use the very force that he has rejected in favour of love. It is the warrior’s joy that he expresses when he is given the means to fight; and it is the warrior’s virtue – the virtue of the sword – that enables the more inward virtues to flourish. His principles oblige him to kill Garibaldo, even though this act potentially places Bertarido’s own life in jeopardy. By this gesture he is taking a comparable risk to Rodelinda’s, when she put her son’s life in the balance. There could be no certainty that Grimoaldo would decide that ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’ rather than take the opportunity to remove his competitor. 

This is where drama becomes moral fable, and where we turn to the sixth character: Unulfo. He occupies a half-way house between the stereotypical portrayal of Garibaldo and the psychological complexity of the two couples. He is both participant and commentator – the bridge between stage and audience – and the sort of person upon whom all power structures rest: stability, continuity and prudence are his guiding principles. Here he confronts a dilemma, for he serves the current regime (namely Grimoaldo) yet his sympathies are with Bertarido, both personally and because Bertarido represents the legitimate order. For this reason, when Bertarido makes a physical gesture of affection, Unulfo draws back: kingship is a token of something beyond the human and particular. At the same time, the philosopher/counsellor acts as guide and mentor to his emotionally impulsive chief.

All three of Unulfo’s arias are situated musically close to the ambit of C major, i.e. the ‘real’ world from which the opera is launched and to which it eventually returns. In the first of these (Sono i colpi della sorte) Unulfo urges Bertarido to cultivate inner strength even as he is reeling from the thought that Rodelinda is giving way. A king must temper feeling with self-control. (He gives similar advice to Grimoaldo after the shock of Rodelinda’s bargain: deh richiama, Signor, la tua virtude. In this case, significantly, it falls on deaf ears: Non più. Le voci di virtù non cara amante cor, o pur non sente.) It is Unulfo who leads Garibaldo to expound his ruthless code, as if turning to the audience to ask: ‘Surely you can’t approve of this?’ Yet the circumspect Unulfo needs a nudge to translate his true loyalty from thought to deed. Trusted by Grimoaldo to keep Bertarido under lock and key, he requires impetus from the strong female character of Eduige to understand that principles too are subject to practicalities and hierarchies. His subsequent relief and joy (Un zeffiro spirò) is a musical parallel to Grimoaldo’s earlier confidence in Se per te giungo a godere. There is, too, symbolic meaning in Bertarido’s inadvertent wounding of Unulfo: prudent virtue sometimes has to be sacrificed for a higher good. There is a time for caution, and a time for action.

In the end, Rodelinda seems to fulfil the Enlightenment dream that virtue is also rational self-interest: good in itself, it also leads to the best outcome for all concerned. Neither Rodelinda nor Bertarido had any doubts about this (though they suffered along the way), while Grimoaldo and Eduige eventually came to the same conclusion. The only dissenter – Garibaldo – lay dead and unlamented. But there is realism as well as idealism in Handel: human agency can to some extent escape destiny’s shackles, but not without a little help from chance. 

Thelma Lovell is author of A Mirror to the Human Condition: Music, Language and Meaning in the Sacred Cantatas of J.S. Bach. She lives in Cambridge.