To sum up, it was an art less intimate than expansive, an art newly born; not devoid of emotion though,[1] but above all, restful, strong, and happy—an optimistic music like that of Handel.
Truly Handel in miniature, with much less breadth, less richness of invention, and particularly a smaller power of development. There is nothing of the attractiveness of Handel's colossal movements, like an army which marches and sings; and more solid strength is necessary to carry the weight right to the end without bending. Zachau flinches on his way; he has not the vital force of Handel, but in compensation he has more naïveté, more tender candour, more of the childlike chasteness and evangelic grace.[2] Certainly there we have the master really necessary to Handel, a master more than one great man had the good fortune to find (it is Giovanni Santi for Raphael; it is Neefe for Beethoven): good, simple, straightforward, a little dull, but giving a steady and gentle light where the youth may dream in peace and abandon himself with confidence to a guide almost fraternal, who does not seek to dominate him, but rather strives to fan the little flame into a greater fire; to turn the little rivulet of music into the mighty river of genius.
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- ↑ See his beautiful air for bass in the Cantata Lobe den Herrn, p. 164
- ↑ Certain very simple phrases as in the Cantata for the Visitation, "Meine Seel erhebt den Herren", the recitative for Soprano "Denn er hat seine elende Magd angesehen", (p. 112) have an exquisite flavour of virginal humility which we never find in Handel.
