, there is nothing: sometimes in his impatience he
seemed to mix his colours in buckets and hurl them with the surest
artistic aim at his gigantic canvases. A comparison of the angels'
chorus "Glory to God in the highest" in Bach's "Christmas Oratorio"
with the same thing as set in the "Messiah" will show not only how
widely different were the aims of the two men, but also throws the
minute cunning of the Leipzig schoolmaster into startling contrast
with the daring recklessness of the tremendous London impresario. Of
course both men possessed wonderful contrapuntal skill; but in Bach's
case there is time and patience as well as skill, and in Handel's only
consummate audacity and intellectual grip. Handel was by far a greater
man than Bach--he appears to me, indeed, the greatest man who has yet
lived; but though he achieves miracles as a musician, his music was to
him only one of many modes of using the irresistible creative instinct
and energy within him. Any one who looks in Handel for the
characteristic complicated music of the typical German masters will be
disappointed even as the Germans are disappointed; but those who are
prepared to let Handel say what he has to say in his own chosen way
will find in his music the most admirable style ever attained to by
any musician, the most perfect fusion of manner and matter. It is a
grand, large, and broad style, because Handel had a large and grand
matter to express; and if it errs at all it errs on the right side--it
has too few rather than too many notes.

On the whole, the "Messiah" is as vigorous, rich, picturesque and
tender as the best of Handel's oratorios--even "Belshazzar" does not
beat it. There is scarcely any padding; there are many of Handel's
most perfect songs and most gorgeous choruses; and the architecture of
the work is planned with a magnificence, and executed with a lucky
completeness, attained only perhaps elsewhere in "Israel in
Egypt"--for which achievement Handel borrowed much of the bricks and
mortar from other edifices. Theological though the subject is, the
oratorio is as much a hymn to joy as the Ninth symphony; and there is
in it far more of genuine joy, of sheer delight in living. Of the
sense of sin--the most cowardly illusion ever invented by a degenerate
people--there is no sign; where Bach would have been abased in the
dust, Handel is bright, shining, confident, cocksure that all is right
with the world. Mingled with the marvellous tenderne