Gluck, Handel & the German sentence - Christoph Gluck, George Frideric Handel

National Review, May 28, 1990 by Ralph De Toledano

BEAUMARCHAIS, forgetting his Sevillian barber, once remarked that "Il y a trop de musique dans la musique de theatre." Christoph Gluck, forgetting his success in Paris at "revolutionizing opera," remarked that the French product "reeks with music." Gabriel Faure, who to many would epitomize the French school, rhapsodized that in abandoning Italianate artistry-"that titillator of the ear"-gluck had "penetrated the spirit to move the heart" in his "powerful and expressive art." Virgil Thomson, dismissing Gluck as a musical confectioner, heard in the same operas "troupes of angels tripping down the major scale" and "gentlemen attempting from love's sickness to fly-y-y-y-y in vain." And he summed up, in wry admiration, Handel's oratorios as derived from "the German literary sentence, of which the outcome remains in suspense till the very end when the verb appears."

Is this confusing.? Berlioz held Gluck in high esteem as composer and orchestral manipulator. Probably with alarming obtuseness, I react to Handel's Messiah and other of the oratorios in their annual reruns much as Bernard Shaw did to the Brahms German Requiem-one hearing is enough penance for a lifetime. But it is not that easy. Gluck may have subordinated music to libretto-drama comes first, the composer's contribution second-and lacked adequate training. But he did away with the recitativo secco-the dry gargling which with harpsichord accompaniment had filled the time between arias-and gave us a lilting orchestral background in amelioration of musical Original Sin.

Gluck bathed and breakfasted in controversy, so our confusions would have satisfied him only if we arrived at the conclusion that music had reached a permanent high point with him. But the test is elsewhere, namely in the music. And if it is true that both Gluck and Handel from time to time ascend and descend the same escalators of major and minor scales, we can judge for ourselves whether this is the alpha or the omega of their oeuvre. Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice, the classic opera to some, in a version furbished by Berlioz into Orphie et Eurydice, is given to us by the Monteverdi Choir and the Orchestre de l'Opera de Lyon, directed by the expert John Ehot Gardiner, with Anne Sofie von Otter, Barbara Hendricks, and Brigite Fournier as soloists (Angel/EMI CDCB 49834). And we also have Handel's Jephtha on original instruments, featuring the voices of Nigel Robson, Lynn Dawson, von Otter, the English Baroque Soloists, and the Monteverdi Choir, and again directed by Gardiner Philips CD 422 315-2).

"If the mountain tops that sing" do not bow themselves at this beautifully wrought Orphie, it is not because Berlioz did not try his best. There may be some moments, and more, when one pauses to scratch. But there are also orchestral and vocal passages of singular loveliness in the three acts, and one can rejoice that it is von Otter and not one of the castrati of the original performances who sings Orpheus. As for the Jephtha, I know it is beautifully performed and I bow to my musical superiors who attest to its virtues. But I must confess that it takes me back to the times when I was trapped into performances of the Messiah-as earnest students with scores on their laps nodded solemnly. The composer may be very great. But I ask, Why, in the musicological texts, is the linkage always Bach, Handel, and Haydn'?" Have I, have you, missed something.? Or is it another case of Eliot's "In the room the women come and go / Talking of Michelangelo"?