Handel's "Saul" and the Divine Right of Kings

Many of Handel’s oratorios were written with the political situation of the time in mind.  Saul is one of them.  In 1685, King James II came to power, but he was a Catholic, and the English were afraid he would force the country into Catholicism.  They urged William of Orange to take the throne instead, and James was forced to flee.  The debate still raged on three decades later, over whether it was right to usurp the throne of a king, as kings were supposedly appointed by God.

 

Handel's "Saul"

The concept of the divine right of kings comes from the Old Testament.  Not content with the judges who led them, the Israelites pestered God for an earthly king.  God chose Saul, and the prophet Samuel anointed him with oil to signify that he had been given authority by God to reign as His representative.

But the power conferred on Saul did not really belong to him.  He was merely God’s agent, so to speak; he couldn’t just do what he wanted.  Just as the Israelites were subject to him, so he was subject to God.  His position was a responsibility far more than a privilege.

If he didn’t fulfil his responsibilities, he could be replaced as king.  And that’s exactly what happened.  When the Israelites went to war against the Amalekites, God commanded Saul to destroy every person and animal.  But Saul disobeyed and kept some of the best livestock, and also spared the life of their king Agag.  God removed the kingship from Saul’s line and named David as the next king.  Saul did stay on as king, but he no longer had any divine authority.

The Christians of the 18^th century believed that a monarch was untouchable; that to act against him was to act against God.  They had forgotten – or chosen to ignore – that a king is not the ultimate authority; that he is accountable to God; that he is never infallible.  But they put him in the place of God – and that’s idolatry.

This is still a failing in Christanity today – often we place leaders of churches on pedestals, and claim that to criticize them amounts to speaking against God.  For example, the recent events in America – last year it came to light that Bill Gothard, a famous American minister, had been molesting teenage girls who worked for him.  He was placed on indefinite leave and ended up resigning.  But it had been going on for years, and people had been ignoring their suspicions – because Gothard was God’s anointed, and he wouldn’t do anything like that!

But most of this is irrelevant in a modern-day context.  Kings (or politicians) are no longer divinely appointed.  God gives spiritual authority to all Christians – some as pastors, others as prophets or Sunday School teachers – and all of us as messengers of His Word.  There is no need any more for an intermediary between us and God.

This is made pretty clear in the New Testament, leading to the question of why the people of Handel’s time were so hung up on this idea.  One reason is power, of course.  It’s much easier to keep your subjects from rebelling if they think you’ve been put there by God Himself.  Throughout history, churches and governments have twisted Scripture to back up unbiblical ideas.  But I don’t think that is the only reason.

One of the reasons that the Israelites wanted a king is that they believed it would make them a stronger nation.  But they were already a force to be reckoned with; they had conquered much of the Promised Land, and God would lead them to further victories.  The problem was that they didn’t have enough faith in God; they wanted a human king to lead them.  Likewise, the 18^th-century Christians put their faith first and foremost in the king.

My last reason is about the Church of England itself.  Christianity in England had always been different from Roman Catholicism, due to their relative isolation from the continent, and the influence of Celtic tradition.  They were united with Rome, though, until Henry VIII threw a tantrum over not being allowed to divorce his wife, and separated entirely from Rome.  Until then, the Church had still been under the Pope’s jurisdiction.  Now, though, Henry styled himself, and all subsequent monarchs, head of the church.

It’s obvious from even a cursory reading of the related texts that the divine right of kings was NOT absolute; moreover, that it was in fact an Old Testament custom and had no place in the Christian era.

A Tale of Two Te Deums

There was a dancing king and an Italian composer in the court of Versailles; and a foreign king and a German composer in the city of London.  In both cities it was clearer than crystal to the patrons of the arts, that the music they heard was the greatest in Europe...

Handel, like many Baroque composers, wrote several settings of the Te Deum, his first in 1717.  Lully wrote his much earlier, in 1664.  Both works caused significant changes to the careers of their composers – Handel’s got him fired from the German court, and Lully’s earned him the dubious honour of being the only person to have suffered “death by conducting” during a performance two decades later.

                                                                     Lully's Te Deum, composed 1664

 

                                                                     Handel's Te Deum, composed 1717

Lully’s Te Deum is composed in sections divided by “symphonies”, i.e. orchestral interludes.  The sections aren’t markedly different from one another, and there’s no break between them, so the effect is of one long, overarching movement.

Lully achieves variety within his work by contrasting different combinations of voices.  Often the petit choeur will sing a phrase, and then the grand choeur joins in for several more, and they continue on like this for a while.  At other times, the two choirs alternate in a call-and-response pattern, or a combination of solo voices alternates with the main choir.  It’s an effective way of sustaining interest, but it has its limitations – there are only so many different combinations you can use, and the work ends up sounding a bit same-y by the time you get to the end.

 

Handel’s, on the other hand, is divided clearly into ten movements, and the longer ones are divided further into separate choruses and solos, each with a different section of the text.  In comparison to Lully, each section has its own character.  Listen to the sixth movement (at 14:36), which builds up from solo bass voice to full choir, with the orchestra keeping up a detached quaver-rhythm accompaniment.  The next movement uses the opening two-bar motif as the basis for the whole chorus, and the sprightly rhythms accentuate the text “Day by day, we magnify thee”.  You can skip forward ten minutes in Lully’s setting and not notice much of a change, but not here.

The two works differ in the use of harmony as well.  Lully’s harmony is very basic – the first section, for instance, moves between C major and G major, passing briefly through a few other closely related keys.  The harmonic rhythm is slow, too, usually changing only once per bar.  In fact, there are many places where the choir is just singing block chords.  There is more harmonic interest in the solo and orchestral parts; even so, it’s remarkably unadventurous, and the work sits solidly in C major overall.

Handel’s setting modulates frequently, seldom hanging around in one key for too long.  Where Lully will move back frequently to the original key, Handel will go on a journey and end up in a key unrelated to the first one.  He also uses dissonance, such as in the second movement, which builds up a lot of tension throughout, both in the orchestra and the choir.  The impression you get from his use of harmony is constant movement – it’s never staying still, but always changing.

In fact, constant movement is a key part of Handel’s Te Deum.  The orchestral accompaniment is rhythmic and continuously drives the music forward, even in most of the slower movements.  The use of polyphony is also a factor.  Handel doesn't use much homophony; when he does, it’s for specific effect, such as in the third movement at 5:03, with the strong proclamation of “Holy!  Holy!”  The slower rhythm and homophonic block chords reinforce the majesty of the text.

Lully’s Te Deum is mostly homophonic, and lacks that driving force that Handel’s has.  When polyphony is used, it’s quite simple, with no more than three parts at once, and they usually start and end together.  On the other hand, Handel has as many as five parts singing different lines, entering at different times, and tossing the melody back and forth between them.

There is also far more rhythmic and melodic variation in Handel’s setting.  Lully uses very simple rhythms, mostly minims, crotchets and quavers, and basic dotted rhythms.  There is very little syncopation, whereas Handel uses it widely, often obscuring the strong beat.  In Lully's work, though, the regular beat is very strong.  I found this strange, as French Baroque music is normally fluid with regards to metre.  There are a few recitative-like sections, such as at 13:28, but they are for solo voice.  I suppose it would be very difficult to write like that for full choir, not to mention keeping time.

Lully’s melodies are nothing to write home about; in fact, I’m not sure if I would call them melodies at all.  Taken out of context, they look like my first harmony exercises, with scalic quaver passages for a bit of variety.  Well, I’m overgeneralizing – there are some interesting ones – but on the whole, they’re quite forgettable.  Handel’s melodies have contour and variety, they’re developed as the movement progresses; they use different kinds of non-chord tones, and don’t just follow the scale up and down.  You could leave the concert hall humming them.

Reading this back, it’s looks like a whole lot of Lully-bashing.  I did enjoy his work though – there’s a lot of good stuff in it, but it just goes on...and on...I definitely prefer Handel’s setting, and would love to sing it some day.

Lully and Shostakovich - A Comparison

Ever since I picked up The Gulag Archipelago in 7^th form, I’ve had a strong interest in communism and people’s lives under communist regimes.  When I learned about Louis XIV’s extensive use of music as propaganda, and his dictation of the French national style, I immediately thought “Well, that sounds famliar…”

On the surface, things seem very similar.  Both Louis XIV and Stalin used music to glorify themselves and had an unnatural level of control over the arts.  Louis created academies to regulate the various arts, and Stalin had the Union of Soviet Composers, which musicians had to join.  Both were determined to create a national style which could represent their country at home and abroad, and laid down a number of rules to make sure of it.  Potential opera plots had to be run past Louis XIV, and neither ruler allowed anything subversive to be performed.  But claiming that Lully’s career mirrored Shostakovich’s is laughable.  Why?

The first reason is that Louis XIV and Stalin used music for different purposes.  To understand these reasons, we have to first look at the political situations in the two countries.

After the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, life was supposed to improve for Russia’s lower classes.  And to a certain extent, it did, with Lenin introducing new reforms such as the NEP, which stabilized the economy and allowed Russia to recover from the post-war famine.  Education was made accessible to everyone, and immunization eradicated many diseases.  But when Stalin took control after Lenin’s death, life took a downward turn.  The collectivization of farms caused widespread starvation, corruption was rife, and brutal campaigns were carried out against anyone Stalin didn’t like.

                                

The Party’s policies had failed.  But they refused to see it, and projected an idealized image of Russia and its satellites as a sort of happy workers’ paradise, where everyone was equal and wanted for nothing.  They saw themselves as liberators and saviours, ignoring the fact that they had become the new oppressors.

The fantasy

The reality

Music, under communist rule, was meant to represent the supposed life and struggles of the common people.  The only struggles allowed, though, were state-approved ones – against capitalism, the decadent West, former landlords, and so on – nothing that criticized the Communist Party.  So, again, it was a depiction of a false reality.

The situation in France was rather different.  While many of the French lived in poverty, they didn’t have to pretend they didn’t, for one thing.  And they had a great deal more freedom to criticize the king.  Louis XIV, like most monarchs, didn’t really care much about the lower classes, and didn’t act as if he did.

But my focus in France is on Versailles, where most of the music we call “French Baroque” was written and performed.  Music served to glorify Louis XIV, both at home and abroad.  Composers wrote songs flattering him, prologues about the king were tacked onto the beginning of operas, and praise of the monarchy was the metaphor of the day.  But most of the music was not directly about Louis – as he was patron of the arts, any good, French music written under his centralized system was still propaganda.

Music was also one of the ways in which Louis kept his nobles entertained and out of trouble.  Most of it was written just to be heard and enjoyed, not for any underlying political purpose.  Lambert’s Par mes chants tristes et touchants wasn’t scrutinised for dissatisfaction with Louis XIV’s reign – it was listened to simply as an expression of human sadness.

Stalin had far more control over the arts than Louis XIV did (literally everything in the Soviet Union was micromanaged by the Party), and the Soviet composers had more to lose by stepping out of line.  After his second denunciation, Shostakovich was thrown out of the Leningrad Conservatory, and most of his works were banned.  At times he feared for his life, and the constant threat of Stalin’s infamous gulags hung over his head.  Any perceived “Western” influence would send Stalin into a rage. 

Compare this with France – when Charpentier’s opera Médée was performed, there was a terrible fuss about the Italian elements in it.  Yet nothing happened to Charpentier.  Although Louis XIV took a very firm stance against anything Italian, he never put it into law or made threats.  He didn’t even do anything about the small group of musicians in Paris that met to play the latest Italian pieces.  And as for music that openly mocked him – when the Comédie-Italienne went too far, did he execute the actors?  Send their families to prison?  Oh, he closed down the theatre and threw the Italians out of court.  How dreadful.

 

The acceptable Soviet style of composition included simple melodies, preferably based on folk tunes, and traditional harmonies.  Nothing that was progressive, or avant-garde, or “bourgeois”, ie, complicated.  This stifled creativity and prevented anyone from developing new styles.  Shostakovich waited until after Stalin’s death to publish a good number of pieces, such as From Jewish Folk Poetry.

The French had limitations, too.  An abundance of ornamentation, rhythmic fluidity, flexible metre, and vocal writing based on spoken French rather than strict rhythms were the main ones.  Yet the French composers were not limited to the same extent as the Soviets, for two important reasons.

The first is that the French Baroque style was developed by a composer, not a politician who only wanted to shore up his government.  Under Lully, a lot of excellent music was composed.  Yes, other French composers were expected to conform to his approach, and that lack of freedom meant that a lot of wonderful music was never written.  Or maybe they would have just conformed to the Italian style instead.  Prior to the Romantic era, individualism wasn’t as important, and a uniformity of style particular to time and place often prevailed (the Italians had as many "rules" as the French, even if they were unspoken).  At any rate, the French composers could write within the rules and still produce good music.

                                                                                                                            

The second reason is that the Soviets had it very carefully spelled out for them what was allowed, whereas for the French, the restrictions were on what they COULDN’T do – that is, write in the Italian manner.  So the French could still experiment or try new things, although generally it was only Lully who did so.  Even sticking to Lully’s style, there was a lot of room for creativity.

A final point – Shostakovich, living and mixing with the “common people”, saw first-hand their oppression and trials living under Stalin’s rule.  One of his goals as an artist was to give voice to their plight.  He said about his Eleventh Symphony, written just after the Hungarian Revolution, “It’s about the people, who have stopped believing because the cup of evil has run over.”  Lully, on the other hand, lived a life of luxury and wasn’t interested in those who didn’t.  If he had written operas about the persecution of the Protestants, or the expoitation of the peasants, he would have quickly fallen from favour and been sacked, at the very least.

The number of differences I’ve listed aren’t that many, really.  Louis XIV and Stalin were very alike.  Yet I think the differences are greater than the similarities, and it’s usually the reasons behind those similarities that are different – and it’s the whys rather than the whats that are most important.