ome time the old parson, turning to his companion, said, 'It
is not worth listening to; it's very poor stuff.' 'You are right, Mr.
Fountagne,' said Handel, 'it is very poor stuff; I thought so myself
when I had finished it.' The old gentleman, being taken by surprise, was
beginning to apologize; but Handel assured him there was no necessity,
that the music was really bad, having been composed hastily, and his
time for the production limited; and that the opinion given was as
correct as it was honest."

VI.

The period of Handel's highest development had now arrived. For seven
years his genius had been slowly but surely maturing, in obedience
to the inner law of his being. He had struggled long in the bonds of
operatic composition, but even here his innovations showed conclusively
how he was reaching out toward the form with which his name was to
be associated through all time. The year 1739 was one of prodigious
activity. The oratorio of "Saul" was produced, of which the "Dead March"
is still recognized as one of the great musical compositions of all
time, being one of the few intensely solemn symphonies written in a
major key. Several works now forgotten were composed, and the great
"Israel in Egypt" was written in the incredibly short space of
twenty-seven days. Of this work a distinguished writer on music says:
Handel was now fifty-five years old, and had entered, after many a
long and weary contest, upon his last and greatest creative period.
His genius culminates in the 'Israel.' Elsewhere he has produced longer
recitatives and more pathetic arias; nowhere has he written finer tenor
songs than 'The enemy said,' or finer duets than 'The Lord is a man of
war;' and there is not in the history of music an example of choruses
piled up like so many Ossas on Pelions in such majestic strength, and
hurled in open defiance at a public whose ears were itching for Italian
love-lays and English ballads. In these twenty-eight colossal choruses
we perceive at once a reaction against and a triumph over the tastes of
the age. The wonder is, not that the 'Israel' was unpopular, but that
it should have been tolerated; but Handel, while he appears to have been
for years driven by the public, had been, in reality, driving them. His
earliest oratorio, 'Il Trionfo del Tempo' (composed in Italy), had
but two choruses; into his operas more and more were introduced, with
disastrous consequences; but when, at the zenith of his strength, h