Haendel et la Bible : mise en mots, mise en musique, mise en scène. L’oratorio anglais entre expansion et concentration, substitution et addition

Abstract

This paper analyses the different modes, literary, musical and dramatic, at work in Haendel’s composition of his English oratorios. Using the Bible as a really flexible narrative material, Haendel’s librettists and Haendel himself achieved complex adaptations whose basic components -the Bible, the libretto, music and finally the stage -interact in a variety of ways. Using specific examples with studies of the literary rewriting at work and musical illustrations, this paper tries to establish the specificities of three such relational modes. Expansion, both in words and music, will be studied in Israel in Egypt (1739) -where Haendel’s «depiction » of the plagues, while interestingly anticipating Burke’s theory of the sublime, gave full vent to the seemingly endless possibilities of musical dilatation. A second example of such mode will be taken from Solomon (1749) with the arrival of the Queen of Sheba. Concentration is most visibly at work in Samson (1743) whose libretto itself resulted from the dramatic compression of Milton’s «sizeable » poem (itself, as everyone knows, the result of a spectacular, if not quite theatrical, expansion of only a few lines from the biblical source text, the final scene in chapter 16 of the Book of Judges). The new dramatic impact of this -only apparently -static oratorio will be studied here, as well as the musical «economy » (concentration here again) at work when it comes to make Samson ’s fall be heard. Addition is the third mode to be defined. The creation of new «characters, » such as new nations, will be dealt with in terms of ideological construct, dramatic efficiency and musical invention. Belshazzar (1745) and its musically impressive «dialogue of the nations » will serve as an emblematic case. These various examples will all be used to define some of the central stakes in the tense relationships between words, music and performance, be it truly dramatic or not, which Haendel and his oratorio librettists experimented upon for twenty years.