It is necessary to turn back. Handel was never a church musician, and he hardly ever wrote for the church. Apart from his _Psalms_ and his _Te Deum_, composed for the private chapels, and for exceptional events, he only wrote instrumental music for concerts and for open-air _fêtes_, for operas, and for those so-called oratorios, which were really written for the theatre. The first oratorios he composed were really acted: _Acis and Galatea_ in May, 1732, at the Haymarket Theatre, with scenery, decoration, and costumes, under the title of _English Pastoral Opera--Esther_, in February, 1732, at the Academy of Ancient Music after the manner of the Grecian tragedy, the chorus being placed behind the stage and the orchestra. And if Handel resolutely abstained from theatrical representation[296]--which alone gives the full value to certain scenes, such as the orgie and the dream of Belshazzar, expressly conceived for acting--on the other hand he stood out firmly for having his oratorios at the theatre and not in the church. There were not wanting churches any less than dissenting chapels in which he could give his works, and by not doing so he turned against him the opinion of religious people who considered it sacrilegious to carry pious subjects on to the stage,[297] but he continued to affirm that he did not write compositions for the church, but worked for the theatre--a free theatre.[298] This briefly dramatic character of Handel's works has been well comprehended by the German historians who have studied him during recent times. Chrysander compares him to Shakespeare,[299] Kretzschmar calls him the reformer of musical drama, Volbach and A. Heuss see in him a dramatic musician, and claim for the performance of his oratorios dramatic singers. Richard Strauss, in his introduction to Berlioz's _Treatise of Orchestration_, opposes the great polyphonic and symphonic stream issuing from J. S. Bach with that homophonic and dramatic one which comes from Handel. We hope that the readers of this little book have found here in nearly all these pages a confirmation of these ideas. * * * * * It remains for us, after having attempted to indicate the general characteristics of Handel's art, to sketch the technique of the different styles in which he worked. To speak truly, it is difficult to speak of the opera or of the oratorio of Handel. It is necessary to say: _of the operas or of the oratorios_, for we do not find that they point back to any single type. We can verify here what we said at the commencement of this chapter, about the magnificent vitality of Handel in choosing amongst his art forms the different directions of the music of his times.