It takes as great a composer as Handel—or rather it would take as great a composer if he could be found—to be able to be as easily and triumphantly commonplace as Handel often is, just as it takes—or rather would take—as great a composer as Handel to write another _Hallelujah_ chorus. It is only the man who can do the latter who can do the former as Handel has done it. Handel is so great and so simple that no one but a professional musician is unable to understand him. Handel and Dr. Morell After all, Dr. Morell suited Handel exactly well—far better than Tennyson would have done. I don’t believe even Handel could have set Tennyson to music comfortably. What a mercy it is that he did not live in Handel’s time! Even though Handel had set him ever so well he would have spoiled the music, and this Dr. Morell does not in the least do. Wordsworth And I have been as far as Hull to see What clothes he left or other property. I am told that these lines occur in a poem by Wordsworth. (Think of the expense!) How thankful we ought to be that Wordsworth was only a poet and not a musician. Fancy a symphony by Wordsworth! Fancy having to sit it out! And fancy what it would have been if he had written fugues! Sleeping Beauties There are plenty of them. Take Handel; look at such an air as “Loathsome urns, disclose your treasure” or “Come, O Time, and thy broad wings displaying,” both in _The Triumph of Time and Truth_, or at “Convey me to some peaceful shore,” in _Alexander Balus_, especially when he comes to “Forgetting and forgot the will of fate.” Who know these? And yet, can human genius do more? “And the Glory of the Lord” It would be hard to find a more satisfactory chorus even in the _Messiah_, but I do not think the music was originally intended for these words: [Picture: Music score: And the glory, the glory of the Lord] If Handel had approached these words without having in his head a subject the spirit of which would do, and which he thought the words with a little management might be made to fit, he would not, I think, have repeated “the glory” at all, or at any rate not here. If these words had been measured, as it were, for a new suit instead of being, as I suppose, furnished with a good second-hand one, the word “the” would not have been tacked on to the “glory” which precedes it and made to belong to it rather than to the “glory” which follows. It does not matter one straw, and if Handel had asked me whether I minded his forcing the words a little, I should have said, “Certainly not, nor more than a little, if you like.” Nevertheless I think as a matter of fact that there is a little forcing. I remember that as a boy this always struck me as a strange arrangement of the words, but it was not until I came to write a chorus myself that I saw how it came about. I do not suspect any forcing when it comes to “And all flesh shall see it together.” Handel and the Speaking Voice