national taste." In the pages which deal with the character of Handel as a
composer, he says that he united "the depth and elaborate contrivance of
his own country with Italian elegance and facility." Handel's music, he
holds, was from the first congenial to the English temperament, but he
never regards it as being at all English in style, though in other writings
he naturally recognises the occasional indebtedness of Handel to the
influence of Purcell. It was only in the nineteenth century that Handel
came to be regarded as a national institution. His own country for the most
part neglected his works; his operas were thought impossible to revive, and
the oratorios were considered by most Germans as being "too English"--an
opinion which the writer of this book frequently heard expressed in Germany
some fifty years ago. Since 1920 there has been an astonishing revival
of Handel in Germany, beginning with the restoration to the stage of his
operas--the last works of his which most people would have thought suitable
for presentation to modern audiences--and much energy has been expended
by German critics on an attempt to demonstrate the essentially Germanic
character both of Handel's music and of his personality.

The more closely we study Handel in relation to his own times, and in
relation to the general history of music, the clearer it becomes that Goupy
the caricaturist was only right when he put into Handel's mouth the words,
"I am myself alone."

The foundation of Handel's musical style was Italian, and it was only
natural that this should be the case, for, in his days, Italy dominated
European music as she did European architecture. All music in the grand
manner, except in France, was Italian in its tradition, and if ever there
was a composer who illustrated the grand manner throughout his life, it was
Handel. France had produced a grand manner of her own, though not without
an initial impulse from Italy; in all other countries north of the Alps