Muir.
TEE HANDEL COMMEMORATION.
The last day of the HANDEL FESTIVAL, yesterday week, was also the greatest. On Saturday June 18, the day of the general rehearsal, the visitors numbered 19,680; on the following Monday, 17,109; on Wed- nesday, 17,644; and on Friday, 26,826. On that day, including the tuneful host who filled the orchestra, nearly thirty thousand persons were congregated within the walls of the Crystal Palace, and within hearing of the sounds which burst from three thousand voices and in- struments.
The oratorio, Israel in Egpyt, performed on that day, was pre- eminently calculated for such an occasion. It consists of a series of choruses, in which the composer has exhausted all the resources of his art in painting, by vast combinations of sound, some of the most terrible phenomena of nature—the devastating bail, the fire from heaven run- ning along the ground, the thick darkness which covered the earth, and the host of Pharaoh swallowed up by the stormy billows of the Red Sea. Such being Handers design, he has allowed small scope for the pretti- nesses of individual singing. The airs are few, and form a compara- tively slight feature of the work. This defect, as it was long regarded, has been, even down to our own day, injurious to the success of Israel in Egypt. In the space of twenty years Handel could scarcely obtain for it half-a-dozen performances, ;which were given to empty houses, though the composer was fain to tempt the public by interlarding his own gigantic choruses with Italian opera songs ! Within our own me- mory, Israel in Egypt was never performed without the interpolation of many songs selected with more or less judgment from Handers other works; and it is only a few years since that the sacred Harmonic So- ciety ventured to perform it purely and simply as the author wrote it. The design of the work is now understood and appreciated ; no one feels the "heaviness" which our predecessors found it necessary to relieve ; and Israel in Egypt has gained a popularity second only to that of The Messiah.
The effect of the choruses on this occasion was sometimes stupendous, giving an impression of awful and resistless power. Such was the feel- ing._excited by the "Hailstone chorus," "He rebuked the Red Sea," "The waters overwhelmed their enemies," and "The horse and his rider hath he cast into the Sea." And the utterance of the words, "Sing ye unto the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously," first by the single voice of Miriam the Prophetess, and then by the chorus, was like the joyful acclaim of a whole people. In this passage Clara Novelle gained the greatest of all her triumphs. Her clear and brilliant notes, ringing through the vast expanse, and filling every heart with sympa- thetic emotion, were a marvellous effort of vocal power. Another great effect was produced by the duet, "The Lord is a Man of War," most energetically declaimed by Weiss and Belletti. With these exceptions, the solos were not remarkably striking, though they were sung by Mr. Sims Reeves and Miss Dolby.
In a pecuniary sense the success of this Festival has been complete. The receipts are stated to have been not less than 33,000/., and the ex- penses about 18,0001.; leaving a clear return of 15,000/. to be divided between the Crystal Palace Company and the Sacred Harmonic Society —two-thirds to the one, and one-third to the other. Thus the Crystal Palace Company will pocket 10,0001.,—a substantial benefit to the share- holders ; while the Sacred Harmonic Society, by the acquisition of 5,0001., will have their hands strengthened for their exertions in favour of the progress of art. In respect to public feeling, too, this great Commemoration has been fully successful. Some eighty thousand people have flocked from all quarters to be present at the various performances, and have shared in the enthusiasm which they have excited; and the fame of the Handel Festival of 1869 is flying on the wings of the press to the remotest parts of the world.
But, touching its beneficial influence on the progress of music, we confess we do not so clearly see our way. We have some doubts; and it is only as doubts, not as opinions, that we give expression to them.
We are inclined to think that the tendency of the age is too much to have recourse to physical means in order to produce impressions of great-
ness in art. On the stage a play of Shakespeare would not now please, if represented with the homely means and appliances which were deemed sufficient in the days of Garrick, Siddons, and liemble. We must have the gorgeous spectacle of the Princess's Theatre. The same thing is the case at the Opera-house. Beautiful singing and fine acting will no longer content us unless they are set off with all the splendour of the Parisian Tragedie Lyrique. Our oratorio performances, in like manner, are gradually swelling into such monstrous proportions that we are learn- ing to look back with contempt on what our forefathers deemed the height of grandeur. Now is this tendency to make bulk the measure of greatness altogether advantageous ? It is growing and growing—where is it to stop ? The first Handel Commemoration in Westminster Abbey, in 1784, was described by Burney, and regarded by all the world as the very acme of sublimity, not to be surpassed by human power; and yet those stupendous performances did not equal what we can now hear every week of the season in Exeter Hall. The Westminster Abbey per. formances were continued for several years on the same enormous scale as it was then deemed, till the public get tired of them; they no longer paid, and were given up. Now apply this to the present time.
Crystal Palace Company, having reaped a golden harvest, will assuredly reap it as often as they can. We shall have festivals and commemora- tions of a similar kind every two or three years; and the sated appetite of the public must be excited by further stimulants. Where, then, we repeat, is this growing magnitude to stop? By degrees the public will get so used to these monster performances that they will come to be re- garded as matter of course. As they become familiar they will lose their character of greatness while they will teach the public to despise anything smaller. When 'railway travelling began we were astonished and delighted to find ourselves flying over the country at forty miles an hour. Now-a-days we think nothing of this but cannot tolerate the slow locomotion of our own younger days. Now, if the public ear is thus spoiled for the enjoyment of an oratorio on a moderate scale at Exeter Hall or our provincial festivals, will not the loss be greater than the gain ? This is taking the most favourable view of the subject, and supposing that these Crystal Palace performances are all that their most en- thusiastic admirers represent them to be. But, though they are really superior to the experimental performances two years ago, they still la- bour under defects which it seems physically impossible to remove. The music cannot be made equally audible in every part of so vast an area, we ourselves tested this by many trials. We found that, in elevated situations in front of the orchestra, the choruses, and even the solo voices, were heard with satisfactory distinctness' that, on the floor of the transept the clearness of the sounds was muchimpaired ; and that, in the lateral seats stretching far to the right and left, and occupied by thousands and thousands of people, the choruses were a confused noise, and the solos not heard at all, except now and then, when Clara Novelle or Sims Reeves were exerting the whole strength of their lungs. Hence arose the diversity of impressions as to the effect of the music—you could hardly find two persons entirely agreed about it.
There ought, moreover, to be a proportion between an individual voice and the aggregate voices and instruments with which it is combined. If the voice of Madame Novelle or Mr. Reeves, exerted in its natural de- gree of strength, is in due proportion to a band and chorus of three hun- dred, it cannot be in due proportion to three thousand. If we are to multiply in this manner the chorus and the instruments, we ought to seek a race of giants and giantesses to sing the airs. It is, and always has been, our belief that the real power of choral performance does not depend on force of numbers—so much as on pre- cision, fire, and delicate gradations of sound. Strength is enhanced by contrast with softness; and thus immense effects may be realized at a small expense of means. In listening last autumn to the performances at the Birmingham and Leeds Festivals, and comparing the one with the other and both with Exeter Hall, we found that the Leeds chorus though the smallest, was the most powerful, and that both the provincial choruses surpassed our London one in power notwithstanding its great numerical superiority to either. We made these comparisons at the time when the impressions were fresh on our mind; and our musical readers may remember that we ascribed the result to the unrivalled ex- cellence of the Yorkshire chorus-singing—that district, in respect to vocal harmony, being often called the Germany of England. In short, after all we have heard, we are inclined to believe that, though astound- ing effects may be occasionally produced by enormous masses of sound, yet a whole oratorio may be performed with greater real power—because with greater clearness, delicacy, and variety of expression, by a compa- ratively small number of voices and instruments. These are the grounds of our doubts on this subject—doubts which we merely throw out for the consideration of musicians. We have been (with all the world) greatly struck and interested by tribute paid to the immortal memory of Handel ; but we hope that musical performances on so vast a scale will be reserved for great and rare occasions.
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