G. F. Handel, Opus 6

Monumentality and bidding: words

neither yours nor mine, but like his music.

Stalwart and tender by turns, the fugues

and larghettos, staid, bürgerlich,

up to the wide gaunt leaps of invention.

Repetition of theme a reaffirming,

like figures in harmony with their right consorts,

with the world also, broadly understood;

each of itself a treatise of civil power,

every phrase instinct with deliberation

both upon power and towards civility.

At the rehearsing always I think of you

and fancy: with what concordance I

would thus steadily regret and regard her,

though to speak truth you are ever in my mind;

such is eros, such philia, their composure

these arias, predetermined, of our choice.

GEOFFREY HILL

Writing Rinaldo

‘Yes, Mr Hill. An opera in two weeks.’

He is twenty. The librettists hate the haste.

He chops cantatas, scours Venetian scores.

How Handel would have worshipped cut and paste.

Yet it is there, as water trickles through

small fingers in the troughs of a great sea.

Sorrow for all he lost, or never found.

The piled-up plates. The icy bed, still empty.

No, you must live with these, the music says,

although the groves of wandering flutes give joy

to girls, the passing ‘prentice and the Prince.

Work! Leave your money to the coachman's boy.

‘Yes, Mr Hill. I scored for fireworks.’

Lit faces cheer, although his critics rage

at painted waves. They mourn – as I do, too –

that promised horses never reached the stage.

Magician! Living sparrows twitter trees

beside castrati. No, I do not know.

His trumpets flare.The Saracens take flight.

The Siren rises from the undertow.

Already a young whale in music's sea,

he will return, with his own company,

huge dinners. His accounts are never wrong.

Breathless, he hums the slim girl's misery.

Lashed to himself, he scrawls the Siren's song.

ALISON BRACKENBURY

Epigram on the Feuds between Handel and Bononcini

Some say, compar’d to Bononcini

That Mynheer Handel's but a ninny;

Others aver, that he to Handel

Is scarcely fit to hold a candle.

Strange all this difference should be

’Twixt Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee!

JOHN BYROM