HANDEL FOR HEALTH

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21690, 25 January 1936, Page 17

HANDEL FOR HEALTH

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[By PROFESSOR F. SINCLAIRE]

"Pianissimo be damned. I came to enjoy myself"—Old Play.

Thomas Hobbes, the seventeenth century philosopher who wrote "Leviathan" and lived to be $2 having in the last decade of his life produced several ingenious works, including a translation of Homer made at the age of 86, used to attribute his longevity to two things—first, that in the whole of his life he had not been drunk more than a hundred times, and secondly, that he sang daily for his health. Many of us in the twentieth century can equal or even possibly outdo the old philosopher in feats of sobriety; but we do not all live to be 92. Yet we give much thought nowadays to the problem of making and keeping ourselves, ag the saying is, fit. The hot gospellers of fitness have converted or cowed us all, and we have found out many devices for putting salt on the tail of the elusive bird we are all after. One man offers on the altar of the great goddess of Fitness his daily hecatomb of physical jerks, another pursues her with solemn stride up hills and across golf links. Some take to dumb bells, and others to Epsom salts. For my part, I rise to support the venerable Mr Hobbes. He has shown us, I believe, a more excellent way. One trifling amendment I would venture to make. "He had always books of prick-song lying on his table, such as Lawes's songs, and at night when he was in bed, and the doors made fast, so that he was-sure of being unheard, he would sing for his health's sake." Admirable and. enviable old man! He sang not to be heard of men, his motive was not vainglory but health, and he had his reward. But was it necessary that his singing should be done in bed?

Three centuries ago, Hobbes had found and followed the royal road. In one respect only I am sorry for him. There was one thing he deserved and did not get. He had on his table a book of Lawes's songs —enough to make any man healthy and happy—but he was born nearly a century too soon to inherit the music of Handel. For him who sings for health, Handel is the man. Not that in recommending Handel for health I would be understood as bating a jot of Handel's other claims to supremacy. I am one who cannot easily endure the vain talk of the lukewarm or imperfect Handelian. Such a person, in my experience, is never a singer but at best an instrumentalist and at worst a mere bookish theorick. Let no one speak of Handel who, has never sung in a Handel chorus. He not only does not know Handel: he scarcely knows what it- is to be alive. I do not deny the serious counts against Handel. He missed the advantage of. having us for his contemporaries. The learned say he is a mighty borrower. I know he can be as dull as Milton, as rhetorical as Dryden, as prolix in drawing out his linked sweetness as Spenser. His imperfect knowledge of , English and his defective literary taste delivered him at times into the hands of some preposterous librettists. Sometimes, luckily, they wrote in Italian, and bathos in a foreign tongue—especially in the most seductive of tongues—loses a little of its insipidity. Anyhow, as that good Handelian Samuel Butler says, the words don't spoil the music. However, I do not defend Handel any more than I shall defend Homer or Milton. We must take our giants as we find.them. My subject is Handel for health.

But then, why Handel? Why not as well any of the great composers for the voice? Why not Mozart or Schubert? As to the former, my reason for rejecting him is simple. Mozart is for the perfect technician,. and few of us can get the pure health-giving joy of singing his divine arias without the very serious abatement which comes from the sense of our own failure. Handel is tough of fibre, and as Hamlet is said to be actorproof, so Handel's songs are singerproof. Handel is for the most accomplished singer, but he is also for the good man I quoted at the head of my article, the man who comes to enjoy himself. And as to Schubert and the other great German song-writers, I hope that if I live to be as old as Hobbes I shall continue to have them as my constant companions. But I shall not sing them for health. My reason I can give only by introducing here a classification of musical composers and of artists generally, which, though* I do not pretend that it is new, I have arrived at independently as a matter of personal experience. There are two kinds of artists, the life-givers and the blood-suckers. And it is to the latter class that after many years of familiarity with his songs-1 am reluctantly constrained to assign Schubert. I add eagerly that among his songs there are not a few exceptions. BUt what is one to say of such masterpieces as "The Wanderer" and' "Der Doppelganger"? Some of these days we shall perhaps have an instrument for measuring the singer's vitality (physical and spiritual) before and after the singing of such songs, and then I am confident my judgment will be confirmed. "To be sung rarely or not at all" is the note which the singer for health will have to inscribe on songs like these. But the arch-blood-sucker is Schumann. If •anyone doubts it, let him place himself under observation while following the fortunes of the unhappy poet of the Dichterliebe cycle, or of Poor Peter. These are exquisite songs, which one cannot sing or hear for the thousandth time without a fresh sense of amazement at the skill with which the'composer has caught in his music the spirit of Heine's subtle and enchanting lyrics. But they are blood-suckers whose beauty makes them only the more deadly. They prey on the vitality. They are not for health. "Tell me about your faith," said Goethe, "I have doubts enough of my own." So I would say to Schumann and the romantics generally, "I can supply [myself with blue,devils."

, It is just here that Handel stands clone. It is not that he is wanting in pathos, for of the pathetic he is one of the greatest masters. We know from the story of his life that he had his full share of sorrows. But happily he lived in an age when artists had not yet begun to exploit their private sufferings, or to expose them in the raw* He talks to;us always about his faith. Therefbre though he may at times be dull, formal, repetitive, he never fails in vitality, or in the capacity to communicate health from his own superabundant store. He is

deed among all the great artists of the world I know of none who more consistently and unfalteringly says "Yes" to life. "Ad maiofem Dei gloriam"—perhaps with some special emphasis on the last word—id the inscription to be written on Handel's life-work. It is a perpetual celebration of the triumph of life, a perpetual unconscious- justification of God's ways to men. So that it is not at all for the sake of a cheap alliteration that I have coupled Handel with health in my, title. The good we get from Handel begins with the lungs, but by no means ends there. Therefore let those sing Handel who never sang before, and let those who sang before still sing him in the spirit of good old Mr Hobbes. But indeed the latter part of my counsel is superfluous. Once a Handelian always a Handelian, From that camp there are no deserters. As for the unhappy beings who cannot or-will not sing—la perduta gente-r-I am sorry for them. They must, I suppose, go on. pursuing their treasons, stratagems and spoils; and seeking what consolation wey [,fliHTiflnfiiiin>theifcgol£ J appVduinh, hells.