. . .al ideal that guided him was spontaneous and original, it must be acknowledged that in the setting of his brilliants is to be found an extraneous aggrandizement, resulting, not from eclecticism, but from plagiarism. Thus unvarnished phrases of Corelli and Alessandro Scarlatti were boldly transfused into the works of Händel when his own Muse failed him. This Italian influence betrays itself in the comparative simplicity of his modulations, and in his but moderate use of striking dissonances. The skeleton of his harmonic structures was reared on a simpler basis than Bach's; on the other hand, the massed effects of his choral polyphony have never been surpassed.

His instrumental forms were likewise Italian, and his orchestration, though masterly, was not so conspicuously original as that of his immediate great successors. Strings as the nuclei were supported by a large number of reeds. In orchestras which included twenty-five strings, frequently no less than fiv. . . Read More