VIII Handel and Music

Handel and Beethoven

As a boy, from 12 years old or so, I always worshipped Handel.  Beethoven was a terra incognita to me till I went up to Cambridge; I knew and liked a few of his waltzes but did not so much as know that he had written any sonatas or symphonies.  At Cambridge Sykes tried to teach me Beethoven but I disliked his music and would go away as soon as Sykes began with any of his sonatas.  After a long while I began to like some of the slow movements and then some entire sonatas, several of which I could play once fairly well without notes.  I used also to play Bach and Mendelssohn’s Songs without Words and thought them lovely, but I always liked Handel best.  Little by little, however, I was talked over into placing Bach and Beethoven on a par as the greatest and I said I did not know which was the best man.  I cannot tell now whether I really liked Beethoven or found myself carried away by the strength of the Beethoven current which surrounded me; at any rate I spent a great deal of time on him, for some ten or a dozen years.

One night, when I was about 30, I was at an evening party at Mrs. Longden’s and met an old West End clergyman of the name of Smalley (Rector, I think, of Bayswater).  I said I did not know which was greatest Handel, Bach or Beethoven.

He said: “I am surprised at that; I should have thought you would have known.”

“Which,” said I, “is the greatest?”

“Handel.”

I knew he was right and have never wavered since.  I suppose I was really of this opinion already, but it was not till I got a little touch from outside that I knew it.  From that moment Beethoven began to go back, and now I feel towards him much as I did when I first heard his work, except, of course, that I see a gnosis in him of which as a young man I knew nothing.  But I do not greatly care about gnosis, I want agape; and Beethoven’s agape is not the healthy robust tenderness of Handel, it is a sickly maudlin thing in comparison.  Anyhow I do not like him.  I like Mozart and Haydn better, but not so much better as I should like to like them.