between him and them there was a whole world.[1] Under the classic ideal with which he covered himself burned a romantic genius, precursor of the Sturm und Drang period; and sometimes this hidden demon broke out in brusque fits of passion—perhaps despite himself.
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Handel's instrumental music deserves very close notice: for it is nearly always wrongly assessed by historians, and badly understood by artists, who treat it for the most part as a merely formal art.
Its chief characteristic is that of a perpetual improvisation. If it was published, it was more in spite of Handel than at his instigation.[2] It was not made to be played and judged coldly, but to be produced at white heat to the public. They were free sketches, in which the form was never completely tightened up, but remained always moving
- ↑ "…You refuse to submit to rules; you refuse to let your genius be hampered by them.…O thou Goth and Vandal! …You also allow nightingales and canaries on the stage and let them execute their untrained natural operas, in order that you may be considered a composer. A carpenter with his rule and square can go as far in composition as you, O perfect irregularity!" (Harmony in Revolt: a letter to Frederic Handel esquire,…by Hurlothrumbo-Johnson, February, 1734).
- ↑ Soon Handel was obliged to publish these works, because fraudulent and faulty copies were being sold. It was so with the first volume of Suites de pièces pour le clavecin, published in 1720, and the first volume of Organ Concertos published in 1738. Some of these publications had been made in a bare-faced manner without Handel's permission by publishers who had pilfered them. So it was with the second volume of Suites de pièces pour le clavecin, which Walsh had appropriated and published in 1733 without giving Handel an opportunity of correcting the proofs. It is very remarkable that, notwithstanding the great European success achieved by the first volume for the Clavecin, Handel did not trouble to publish the others.
