J. S. BACH Jonathan Berkahn - Victoria University - Victoria ...

was waiting to happen.’ 11
Significant too was the curious shape Handel’s musical career took toward the
end of his life. With the progressive loss of his sight whilst writing Jephtha in 1750-
51, he seemed also to lose the capacity to plan and create new large-scale works, and
this would be the last of his oratorios. His skill as a performer remained unimpaired,
however, and he continued to lead performances until less than a week before his
death. With the assistance of his amanuensis John Christopher Smith, he revised and
reworked his existing works for each performance according to the needs of the
moment. 12 While on the one hand this immensely complicated the source-history of
his oratorios (who can say what the ‘real’ Messiah is?), it also created a clear
Handelian canon—a substantial body of works capable of receiving repeated
performances. If there was some doubt as to the precise form of each work, there was
none as to their identity: Messiah, Samson, and Judas Maccabaeus were becoming
permanent fixtures in British musical life. When Handel died in 1759, J. C. Smith and
John Stanley were on hand to continue the process without interruption. By the time
of the ‘centenary’ celebrations in 1784 (Handel must have been one of the very first
composers accorded such anniversary commemoration) his position was secure. The
vast performances at Westminster Abbey monumentalised his oeuvre just as
Roubiliac’s magnificent statue did his person.
This is not to say of course that Handel was the only important influence on
English music during the second half of the century. For British musicians his oeuvre
contained a clear hierarchy of relevance. For oratorio-composers (of whom there were
many) the example of Handel was definitive. Organ music—concertos and voluntaries
11 Smith, Handel’s oratorios, p.170.
12 It is interesting to compare the revisions of J. S. Bach, also undertaken late in life, of collections such
as ‘the Eighteen’ chorale preludes. Bach seems to have consciously intended to leave a definitive
corpus for posterity. Handel probably had no such intention; but his—and J. C. Smith’s—revisions
ultimately had a similar effect. See A. Hicks, ‘The late additions to Handel’s oratorios and the role
of the younger Smith’, in Music in eighteenth-century England: essays in memory of Charles
Cudworth, ed. C. Hogwood and R. Luckett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp.147-
169.
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