The Sun.
London, England, 1865-06-30 00:00:00

THIRD EDITION.

SUN OFFICE, 7 o'CLocx.

THE HANDEL FESTIVAL.

Israel in Egypt—(This Day).

Our notice of this day's performances, we write
not without profound emotion. It would be no
exaggeration whatever if we were to assert that we
do so after having been moved to our very soul by
the divine strains of the most colossal of all Handers
sublime Oratorios. And added to the exquisite
sense of the admiration produced by. the wondrous
choral effects of this most marvellous among the
chef d'ceuvres of the grandest of the world's great
musical composers, there comes to us, while writing,
the poignant reflection that, for another interval of
three years' duration, it will be impossible now to
dream of listening to a performance of Handel in
any way comparable. Those who have never at-
tended upon any one of these occasions—upon any
one of the Four Grand Full Rehearsals—
upon any one of the Three Days into which
each of these Four Triennial Festivals (that
have now been holden in the Crystal Palace
at Sydenham) have been apportioned or
subdivided—may perchance be disposed to regard
as extravagant the terms in which we are thus con-
! strained to comment upon these wholly unparalleled
' and purely exceptional .performances. Even to
their imaginations, however, we might with some
degree of confidence appeal for a justification of
our enthusiasm—namely, by a simple reference to
the statistics of the orchestral arrangements, by the
merest casual allusion to the gigantic scale upon
which the entire enterprise is carried out triennially.
A grand organ that might almost vie with the
world-wonder at Haarlem —an arched platform
that, in the span of it, is exactly double the dia-
meter of the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral—as many
as four hundred performers on stringed instruments
alone, violins, violincellos, harps, double-basses, as
many as five hundred instrumentalistsi in all armed
with every conceivable conformation (for musical
purposes) of metal, wood, leather, and parchment
—choristers gathered together by hundreds upon
hundreds, from all parts of the United Kingdom,
from great cities scattered over all parts of the
European Continent—and, to crown all—confront-
ing this magnificent aggregate of Four Thousand
Interpreters of the Mighty Genius of Handel—tens
of thousands of listeners (during these few days set
apart for the Triennial Festival), assembled together
in a Palace of Crystal that might, both by its own
intrinsic beauty and by its exquisite garden-setting,
have reflected credit upon the architect of Aladdin,
or upon a landscape-gardener fresh from Fairyland.
One additional decoration alone there is that we
would venture to suggest to the organisers
of those stupendous Festivals, a decoration that
we cannot but think, they might, with advantage
in the hereafter, take into their serious considera-
tion as really worthy, to our fancy, of being no
longer overlooked ! The omission of it, indeed, ap-
pears to us to have been a distinct oversight ! The
thought of it occurs to us purely from our sense of
gratitude to the memory of that wonderful genius
to whose imaginings we are—under the God who
inspired them—so immediately indebted for those
incomparable oratorios. The one crowning adorn-
ment that we would, therefore, here suggest as not
unworthy of enhancing still further the majestic
appearance of The Great Handel Orchestra upon
future Triennial Festivals, is simply, let us now
add, some fitting effigy of Handel himself. If
only it were a white marble bust, conspicuously
placed above the Grand Organ in the centre of the
.giant Orchestra ! A full-length statue would be
preferable, no doubt, but merely a white marble
bust would be sufficient. It would, at any rate, be
far better than no effigy whatever ! The rain
I clouds, threatening overhead during the last three or
four days, at length discharged some portion of
their contents to a burst of thunder and a flash or
two of the most vivid lightning early in the after-
noon. As if by way of fitting prelude to those
choral celebrations of the descending darkness and
the torrent of hailstones experienced by the Israelites
in Egypt immediately prior to their exodus into the
wilderness. The only results, however, of what at
one time augured an effectual damper to the day's
enjoyment were an agreeable cooling of the atmo-
sphere within the Crystal Palace, and an appreci-
able freshening of the thirsty ground and drooping
flowers in the garden and rosaries outside. Re-
membering that this was the last day of the Festival
—not alone, according to a prevalent rumour,
a merely nominal last day, but iii only too
serious truth, and, beyond all possible doubt of it,
the Last Day of this the Fourth of these Triennial
Handel Festivals, the number of visitors surpassed
that of the preceding days of the 1865 celebration—
surpassed that of " The Messiah,' and that even of
the Selections. Nevertheless, the wonder with us was,
in very defiance of the fact of the immense assem-
blage brought together, that it was not even greater
yet. For—added to the consideration, that day was
the last opportunity afforded for the chance of an
attendance—the Oratorio selected for performance
upon it was of all the masterpieces of Handel the
grandest, the sublimest, the most colossal in the
majority of its choral effects. Eight and twenty
choruses in all there are in this marvellous compo-
sition. With three Duets—five Solos—and four
Recitatives. Among the soloists, still as chief so-
prano Madlle. Adelina Patti, as chief contralto
Madame Sainton-Dolby, as chief tenor Mr. Sims
Reeves, as chief baritone Mr. Santley. Together
with whom were other artistes as eminent as
Madame Lemmens-Sherrington, Madame Ruders-
dorff, and Herr Schmid. Before commenting
in any way in detail upon this the last day's
performance of the Handel Festival, we would
here venture to express with all loyal re-
spect our profound astonishment and our exceeding
regret at the same time that these most wonderful
musical celebrations do not as a matter of course
receive triennially, we will not say the patronage of
the Crown, but the countenance and personal recog-
nition of the Sovereign and of the Royal Family !
The custom, the regular habitude, has now come to
be that the Royal Box immediately fronting the
Grand Orchestra remains from first to last
untenanted. A custom this assuredly that, we might
presume to remark, would be more honoured in the
breach than in the observance. To us the non-
attendance of Her Most Gracious Majesty and of
the Heir Apparent is utterly incomprehensible.
H.R.H. the Prince of Wales evidences his taste for
art by a sedulous attendance, seam after season, at
the theatres and picture galleries—but to this, the
grandest manifestation of all, in honour of the most
subtly beautiful among all the Fine Arts—H.R.H.
appears to our intense surprise to be wholly indiffe-
rent. Apart from the glory of the music itself, apart
from the marvel of its unrivalled and unapproached
performance by this mammoth orchestra, or rather
by its four thousand occupants—it could not but
have yielded to the Queen, or to any one among
her Majesty's royal kith and kindred, a powerful
and a very exquisite sense of enjoyment merely to
have witnessed the magical effect produced by the
National Anthem on the First Day, namely, on
Monday, and the equally magical effect produced
on the Second Day, namely, on Wednesday, by the
Coronation Anthem on that the twenty-eighth
Anniversary of her Majesty's own happy Corona-
tion. Lost opportunities they were, as affording
exceptional evidences, even in this loyal and pros-
perous land of ours, of the enthusiasm that sweet
sounds of a significantly typical character can
awaken among great masses of our population.
Not until a quarter past the appointed hour of
three did the inaugurative notes of the Oratorio,
those cull-Ai tuting the Recitative (of Mr. Cummings)
" Now, there arose a New King," signalize the be-
ginning of the end of the grandest day of the
grandest of all the Four Great Handel Festivals
that have now been held. This passage, however,
was chiefly noticeable as being the briefest prelude
to what is really the opening chorus of the master-
piece--the Great Double Chorus, " And the children
of Israel." Another and a more radiant Recitative
alloted to the same artiste was succeeded by that
wondrous indication of choral abhorrence, " They
loathed to drink of the river—he turned their waters
into blood !" Madame Sainton Dolby then took up