Handel Blog 1*
From Katherine: As we have all been ordered to “shelter in place,” Forella has asked me to resurrect the Handel Seminar—only this time as a blog. I no longer have Benfey here to help with the technology, so you will have to be patient with my poor skills in getting this blog going. Angela had suggested we simply meet electronically through an app called Zoom, but Forella said, with her vision nearly gone, she would rather have the option of pondering written texts that Angela could read to her. We all have time on our hands, so the reading and writing shouldn’t be a burden. I assume our posts will be short in any case.
So, let me start with what I consider one of the most relevant or timely lines in The Handel Letters—a reference to the Plague in one of Ross’s introductory comments. Ross warned us that he was “likely to ruminate on Handel’s views on death and suffering.” This gloomy theme, Ross claimed, was important in our consideration of Handel because Handel’s German hometown, Halle, “had lost half of its population to the plague just a few years before Handel was born. His father was a surgeon. Handel must have encountered death and misery even before losing his father at age twelve.” (p. 122). So Handel was like what some are now calling Generation C in our own time—children born just as the coronavirus sweeps across the globe. Handel’s childhood was no doubt effected by the devastation caused by those last years of the Great Plague in Europe.
From Ross: Well, yes, I remember that I was curious about why much of Handel’s music was so deep and heartfelt. I think he must have internalized some of the heartache people felt as they lost friends and family members—probably some of the heartache he himself came to feel as he heard stories of the many losses in his hometown and throughout the rest of Europe. They always say misery makes a good artist. Personally, I’m hoping we don’t have to face anything as horrible as the plague. Science must be giving us better answers now. I’m sorry they had to suffer from the plague in Handel’s time, and I’m sorry we have to suffer from this virus today. I don’t really think we need dark times to produce great artists.
From Katherine: We can only hope. Time will tell, I suppose. Actually some of the music we associate with times of pestilence is not heavy but instead light or humorous, even children’s songs. Do you all remember “Ach, du lieber Augustine?” It was a song about a musician who supposedly died during the Great Plague but played music from his grave and was saved. The song was created in Austria, based on the legend, right about the time Handel was born. Here is a modern performance of it. Enjoy here Or, for a children’s version, Augustine for children
We’ll take up some more thoughts on this and other themes next time.
*All posts listed as “Handel blog” are texts that use the fictional characters in my book The Handel Letters: A Biographical Conversation. As in that book, the posts will often reference things from Handel’s life or time period as starting points. And the post will cite a page or paragraph in the book when it seems relevant. Find The Handel Letters.
