Gorgeous and alluring though the best of these operas are, I don’t think anybody would dispute that the oratorios Handel composed between 1739 and 1752 represent the pinnacle of his achievement. Keates goes further, refusing to rank them below the comparable work of J. S. Bach, and he writes about their massive virtues nobly: Saul, for example, ‘unmatched by any other dramatic work in the European music of the period’, or Israel in Egypt, where ‘choral writing … has rarely reached such a peak of dramatic intensity’, or the indestructible Messiah, ‘a work whose powerful architecture gives its utterances indestructible authority’.
As well as having such magisterial critical judgments, this is a book rich in dry humour and telling anecdote. My favourite moment must be the description of how one Dr Delany rose to his feet after hearing the enchanting Susanna Cibber sing ‘He was despised’ from Messiah and cried out, ‘Woman, for this be all thy sins forgiven thee!’ That directness of emotional appeal through melody is surely at the heart of Handel’s genius.
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