adapted whole passages from other composers to his own uses, just as he transferred sections from one to another of his original works. But it was an age in which pasticcios or medleys abounded, strict creativeness being subordinated to concertistic success. We may doubt whether Handel's intent was deceptive, and surely there is no doubt about his capacity for origination. Many of the cases are merely those of 'borrowed subjects,' which was and is an established artistic practice.
131. The English Ballad-Opera.—Incidentally connected with
the general course of musical events, though in itself insignificant,
was the appearance in Handel's time of a kind of English
singspiel, called the 'ballad-opera.' This was an amusing,
often satirical, play in which well-known popular songs or similar
numbers were strung together by a spoken dialogue into a loosely
connected story. Essentially it was an inferior sort of comic
opera, and its popularity from 1728 interfered with the success
of more serious music. Most of the writers in this style, however,
contributed also to others.
In all, about 45 ballad-operas were produced in a little over 15 years.
Around the mention of their arrangers may be grouped some notes of other
dramatic music in Handel's period:—
John Christopher Pepusch (d. 1752), born at Berlin, came from the Royal Chapel there to London in 1700 as cembalist and compiler of Italian music at the Drury Lane Theatre. In 1710 he founded a society for the study of the older composers, and from 1712 preceded Handel in the service of the Duke of Chandos. From 1715 he brought out several masques and later 3 ballad-operas, of which The Beggar's Opera (1728, words by Gay) was the first of the style. From 1737 he was organist at the Charterhouse. His musicianship was excellent, as his Harmony (1730) shows, but his invention was slight.
Johann Ernst Galliard (d. 1749), another German, pupil of Steffani at Hanover, was teacher in the royal family under Queen Anne and succeeded G.B. Draghi as court-organist. Besides some church music and many instrumental pieces, he produced the opera Calypso (1712), from 1717 a number of masques or pantomimes (somewhat akin to the ballad-operas), and left an Italian opera in MS. In 1742 he translated Tosi's work on Figured Song.
Henry Carey (d. 1743), often called the author of "God Save the King," a music-teacher in London, was from 1715 both librettist and composer of many successful ballad-operas and similar works. He was one of several able satirists of the bombastic style current in the Italian opera.
John Christopher Smith (d. 1795), the son of a German who came to England in 1716 to be Handel's assistant, was Handel's pupil, later his organist, copyist and conductor, the legatee of his MSS., and the author of Anecdotes about him (1799). From 1732 he wrote several operas in Italian or English (as The Tempest, 1756), and also oratorios (as Paradise Lost, 1758), besides clavier-pieces.
