Chapter 8 - Nations and Stories

Summary

IN the previous chapter we were as close to Handel as current evidence will permit. Now we draw back, widening the perspective in order to see what has been made of Handel and the stories about him. Musicology, history, and biography are regarded as sufficiently distinct modes of enquiry that they reside in different departments within the academy. An unfortunate consequence of separation and specialization is that the big picture is sacrificed in the pursuit of minutiae, and that synecdoche stands in place of synthesis. Thus musicologists prefer the assessment of works and styles over the study of the persons who created, performed, and heard those works. Biographers of musicians take their cue from Mainwaring and, more often than not, divide life from works, and performance from audience. Our historians have been happy to cherry-pick striking pieces of music-related evidence assuming that the evidence has been subjected to the level of scrutiny that historians themselves would apply to vote tallies or population estimates, one example being the widely accepted figure for the number of people who attended the rehearsal of the Music for the Royal Fireworks, which, as we have seen, is grossly exaggerated. Though artists and their creations are usually considered by historians to bear only tangentially on the affairs of a nation and its public events, I hope to demonstrate how closely Handel was tied to the project of Anglo-Britain and its imperial aspirations, exploration, and military prowess during the period of the first (American) empire.

Writers on Handel, when expressing their understanding of Handel's place in British society, have composed variations on selected themes rather than go back to first principles. This cannot be attributed entirely to nationalist sentiments; two notable Handel biographers were French and another was born in Hungary, educated in Germany and France, and became an American citizen in 1934. Nor is it the case that such massive influences on human affairs as socialism or Freudian psychoanalysis have left Handel biography untouched. Nonetheless, the themes of independency, financial success in a free market, unbelievable strength, and an almost sin-free life, have predominated, and, I will argue, not necessarily because they are accurate. National sentiment and stories provide the focus of attention for this chapter, but we will not ignore Handel himself. Neither the claims of fame and genius nor the images in stone are elements of Handel's life from which he was detached.