They are not disparaged because they contain little that is unusual in harmony or design , for Handel's best work is fully evident when the general style of a movement looks conventional to the score-reading eye .sx The few movements in Op .sx 3 which strike us as uniquely Handelian are not those in the grand manner but the best dances .sx We are glad to have Op .sx 3 for the charming movements rather than those which the first audiences probably found impressive .sx Particularly attractive are the sarabande which forms the middle movement of No .sx 1 ( the only movement with flute ) , the gavotte and variations ( not so labelled ) at the end of No .sx 2 , and the minuets of No .sx 4 .sx The manuscripts of these works are lost , but not that of a fine C major concerto called by Arnold 'Concertante' .sx It bears the date 25th January 1736 and was known as 'The Concerto in Alexander's Feast' after the first occasion when London heard it .sx It was the first item in Walsh's fourth collection of Select Harmony , which is thought to have been issued in 1741 .sx The ripieno includes two oboes but the concertino is the Corellian string trio .sx Walsh also published two other Handel concertos which need not detain us here .sx The student can find them all , as well as those of Op .sx 3 , in a handy volume of Lea Pocket Scores ( New York) .sx Before doing homage to the most wonderful of all 6concerti grossi we may take as a point of departure Chrysander's remark that the Op .sx 3 concertos show 'a bewildering variety of form' .sx If 'design' and 'form' are regarded as synonymous , then any work that is not epigonic should bewilder us , and Handel's Op .sx 6 should serve a feast of bewilderment .sx Because words will no more describe the form than the expression of music , for the form is the music , we measure the parts of a musical design instead of learning a piece by heart in order to judge its form .sx One artist does not excel another because he has used a more complex design , but because his form is more organic , which means that the ideas and their growth are of the right quality and quantity for the expression .sx When equally sensitive and intelligent judges of music have different opinions concerning the quality of ideas and the forms into which they grow , their argument often settles upon design- how many themes are used , how many are germs for motivic growth , where and how contrast is made , where and how it is avoided , whether the themes are curved or angular , rightly or wrongly lacking in colour- and behind the description is the implication that one design is superior to another , a fugue with stretto superior or inferior to one that is as effective through well-timed entries between non-derived episodes .sx Thus too often we think of form as a relation of A to B , of a movement being fine if C , instead of D , follows B at a certain point ; sometimes this pseudo-explanation may in fact support truth , but we grasp the symbols of the truth instead of the truth itself .sx Beethoven had neither the education nor the natural ability to use words explicitly .sx On his deathbed , having no further need to regret his limitation or to cure it , he pointed to the Arnold volumes of Handel which had just arrived and said 'There is the truth' .sx On a previous occasion Beethoven had said of Handel :sx 'He was the greatest composer who ever lived .sx I would uncover my head , and kneel before his tomb .sx ' Among Beethoven's eccentricities we cannot number that of seeking to impress company by aesthetic and musical judgements .sx Men with the greatest insight into music use one life in its pursuit and lack another in which to command words in a way that effectively communicates their musical judgement .sx Beethoven's words are often incoherent , but when we grasp their purport we find them true .sx 'Ah , my dear Ries , he was the master of us all in this art'- Beethoven was speaking of Mozart and the art of the piano concerto .sx He did not flatter .sx Mozart was and still is the master in that particular art .sx Beethoven did not say that Handel was the greatest " nstler but the greatest Komponist that had lived , and he would have been right if the only existing proofs of the fact were the Op .sx 6 concertos .sx In each of these superb works the four , five or six movements seem like facets of one personality ; so we have twelve essays of an integrity comparable with that of the best classical symphonies .sx These concertos embrace most of the musical expression that belonged to the concert room of their time and much that belonged to the theatre , and they exclude only the morbid , bizarre , extremely tragic , directly programmatic and religious- in short what was then reserved to illustrate words or drama and to dignify worship .sx This marvellously comprehensive expression would not make us willing to doff and kneel with Beethoven unless it were conveyed in sublime examples of almost perfect form , none bewildering unless we try to explain it by the vocabulary of what should be called design .sx 'The opening movement is a French overture fertilized in its slow introduction by the Handelian sarabande-like sacred aria , and in its fugato movement by the Italian sonata-allegro .sx ' This tells no intelligent musician anything about Handel's success or failure to achieve form , yet a sympathetic listener who does not know the design of a French overture may perceive Handel's achievement .sx The empty grandiosity of certain items in Joshua or Judas Maccabeus fulfils designs which , according to text books called 'Applied Forms' and 'Applied Strict Counterpoint' , ensure safety for any composer who can invent or borrow ideas to suit the designs .sx The opposite of 'applied' is 'organic' , and because they are all organic the Twelve 6Concerti Grossi are one of the greatest feats of musical composition .sx It has been well said that some of Handel's best movements defy analysis because they are improvisatory- a word which can be pejorative .sx We are not intended to listen more than once to an improvisation .sx It satisfies us if we are pleased with the music as it passes , and if it is congruous .sx Improvisation , however , is the first stage in written composition , and if mechanical reproduction of an improvisation forces us to listen a second and a third time we are like the composer who scrutinizes his first draft and decides what should be pruned and what extended .sx Sometimes we are dissatisfied not with the unchecked fancy of the improviser but with our recognition of pre-fabrications , 'applied forms' , modulations and developments introduced exactly as in other extemporizations .sx To extemporize from a preconceived design or upon ideas given by an auditor is splendid exercise , but at best only portions of the exercise can be significant artistic expression- in short , form .sx When , however , a whole written piece seems to have grown by impulse , and when both the ideas and their growth are of superb quality , we can hardly praise it more highly than to say that it sounds spontaneous throughout , and still sounds so when we hear it for the hundredth time .sx Comparatively late in his career Handel impressed shrewd judges by his organ extemporizations , and though it is unthinkable that the ideas and developments had the breadth of those in his published work , Handel had more ability and experience than most musicians to extemporize whole sections which , at one hearing , seemed organic within a well-proportioned whole .sx How often in composing the Twelve 6Concerti Grossi he proceeded by deliberation and how often the music welled forth without his conscious control we shall never know , and that is one tribute to their greatness .sx They are said to have been written in a few weeks of 1739 , yet they contain no sign of careless or hasty work .sx The borrowing of one opening from Cleopatra's Piangero@3 la sorte mia and another from Semele's Myself I shall adore does not negate the last assertion .sx Most of the movements are an exception to the general criticism that few of the greatest works of music are well composed throughout .sx Conscientiousness cannot make them so ; otherwise the form of Brahms's long movements would be as wonderful as those of Handel's or Beethoven's .sx Fortunately we do not measure greatness entirely by achievement of form , but we rank the imperfect fulfilment of a noble ambition above the perfect management of trivialities and musical platitudes .sx Not a single movement in Handel's Op .sx 6 is pedestrian ; no concerto fails to suggest verve and joy in the process of composition .sx Even if the Op .sx 6 concertos lacked their distinguishing breadth of conception and their splendid musical ideas they would still differ from Corelli's for two main reasons :sx ( a ) some of them are dramatic in the strict sense of the term- they are the work of a theatre composer ; ( b ) a great number of them come from the German-French suite .sx It has been admitted that Geminiani , who was almost entirely Corellian , occasionally achieved Handel's breadth of musical thought ; but he did this only when composing contrapuntally or by the Corellian continuation technique without motive development .sx Handel achieves a huge breadth of musical thought when composing almost mechanistically in the least weighty of styles .sx ( Ex .sx 83 .sx ) This quotation illustrates a second point , as would almost any extract of similar length from Op .sx 6 .sx Into the light figuration of the violins erupts a contrasting idea by the bass instruments .sx It may have been introduced to give a touch of humour or purely for the sake of the interruption- to prevent the development from being too simple and mechanical ; yet it is surely not accidental that , when the whole flight reaches its conclusion in four bars of plain ripieno harmony , the paragraph is clinched by the solid rhythm of this interruption .sx Whether Handel planned it as he began the movement or whether it occurred to him as when [SIC] improvising , this way of integrating the movement was exactly right in this place , and sensible people may call it a symphonic way .sx The last phrase seems discourteous , but it seems justified while critics spoil enthusiasm by asking us to value old music if its methods anticipate later ones .sx Thus we are told that some passages by Bach are almost atonal , and that they prefigure " nberg .sx Misinterpreted by ears and minds which inherit the work of both composers , passages by Bach wherein 'horizontal' thinking temporarily dominates the 'vertical' thinking of continuo harmony remind us of atonal polyphony .sx We are delighted by the unusual ascendance and stimulus of discord , the pleasure of which would have been lost to Bach ( and would seem incongruous to us ) unless it brought with it the pleasure of restored tonal bearings and ultimate concord .sx The mere fact that we call it discord shows that there is little in common between Bach and " nberg except recourse to the devices of counterpoint .sx Similarly we should be careful not to pretend that Handel's movements are Beethovenian because they are often dramatic , often include passages of motivic development and often show energy and urgency that is rarely found before Beethoven .sx 'Handel points to Beethoven' is a meaningless comment .sx Tubal Cain points to Sibelius .sx It is also accidental that Beethoven the man , beneath the eccentricities which may have been caused by misfortune , had some of the known characteristics of Handel , and that like Handel he was in no way a wild or revolutionary artist .sx His music and Handel's changed gradually from early acceptance of inherited designs and styles .sx Without alteration they could not serve their expanding ideas , and when we set their first forms beside their last we observe a much larger change than between the first and last work of most revolutionary composers .sx The important parallel between Handel and Beethoven lies in their recognition of comparable , not similar means of maintaining movements on a large scale , especially when their materials suggested energy and urgency .sx These qualities in Beethoven would not have their peculiar effect if Beethoven had not been primarily a musical architect with an innate sense of symmetry and poise .sx