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Updated: June 16, 2025
Charles Jennens, of Great Ormond Street, who wrote many of Handel's librettos, and arranged the words for the "Messiah."
In the spring of 1883 he began to compose music, and in 1885 we published together an album of minuets, gavottes, and fugues. This led to our writing Narcissus, which is an Oratorio Buffo in the Handelian manner that is as nearly so as we could make it. It is a mistake to suppose that all Handel's oratorios are upon sacred subjects; some of them are secular.
He agreed with Hawkins in not caring very much for it himself, but added, "you will live to see it a greater favourite with the people than my other fine things." Joshua contains two "borrowings," one from Handel's own opera Riccardo, and another from Gottlieb Muffat.
That was the last either knew until, almost two hours later, Penny Durkin began an ambitious attempt on Handel's largo in the next room. They managed to get to dining hall without being penalised for tardiness and ate like wood-choppers.
Shortly after Easter, Keiser began the composition of a new opera, Almira, on a libretto by the local poet Feustking, but for some reason or other he found it necessary to call in Handel's assistance, and eventually left the whole work to Handel to compose. It was to be produced in the autumn.
We admit the beauty of many of the beginnings of the airs, but this beauty is not maintained, in every case the air tails off into something that is much too near being tiresome. The plot, of course, is stupid to a degree, but plot has very little to do with it; what can be more uninteresting than the plot of many of Handel's oratorios?
Handel's librettist, whoever he was, did his work downright badly.
Novello's music-shop in Wardour Street. Charles Jennens, writing to his cousin Lord Guernsey on September 19, 1738, remarks that "Mr. Handel's head is more full of maggots than ever." Towards the end of July he had begun the composition of Saul, for which Jennens had provided the libretto three years before. It is evident that Handel intended to startle his audiences with his new oratorio scheme.
The condition of Handel's eyes, and of his hand as well, may be clearly observed in the autograph of Jephtha, and it may be noted that here he again reverted to the process of "borrowing" this time from five Masses by Habermann, a composer twenty years his junior, published in 1747.
Handel himself, like Wagner, was steadily developing his own dramatic powers, and it is important to bear in mind that it was only those marvellous singers of Handel's day, such as Senesino, Cuzzoni, Faustina, and Boschi, who could inspire him to the creation of such music as they only were competent to interpret.
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