Katherine’s Wish for Handel’s Audacity
In the blog entries, Those Handel Friends, I am bringing some of the characters from my book The Handel Letters to life again, along with some newer characters, in a continuing endeavor to see what our thinking about Handel and his times might inspire in us today.
From Katherine: Our present cohort (assuming most of us resume this discussion) are what the internet dubs Baby Boomers, with the possible exceptions of Clara, who might squeak by as a Gen X person, and of course Angela and Benfey and maybe any of our young friends or offspring if they care to join us. It might be good for us to think about Handel’s age when he, say, wrote Messiah, his most famous piece. He was a late-stage Gen X in today’s terms but pretty much moving into the Baby Boomer category. And he was really starting to have a number of health issues, a hallmark of so many Baby Boomers even today.
During Handel’s last fifteen years, he continued composing the oratorios that were his new genre in London—Samson, Semele, Joseph and His Brothers, Belshazzar, Judas Maccabeus, Joshua, Solomon, even the Music for the Royal Fireworks, a work still so often heard today. But ten years in from the debut of Messiah, he started losing his eyesight, and he died in 1759 at age 74. I find it humbling to see what Handel accomplished in his supposed retirement years, especially when I compare his output with my own.
So, Handel, in his retirement years, continued doing what he had done most of his life—composing music, playing keyboards in public venues, and for as long as he could, managing his financial and personal affairs (of course, he did have servants and business associates). When I say that I am humbled by what I am doing now when I compare what I am doing with what Handel accomplished in his later years, I am not berating myself but rather recognizing a few things that might be at play in these differences.
One important difference is that Handel was male while I am female. I suppose people tire of hearing how this gender difference plays a role in so many things, but of course I am pretty much aware of many times this has been a factor in my own life. And I expect there are many more instances of which I am unaware. Men have their own burdens to bear as a consequence of being born male of course, but women have certainly had more issues to deal with simply because they are female. I chose to become and teacher, a professor, in an academic world mostly built and maintained as an enterprise for male participants, not for women who would like to be a part of the venture. Those who evaluated my performance as a professor did so generally using hallmarks associated with performances associated with my male colleagues—number of publications primarily, but also ability to win funding or assignments in positions of authority. I managed to do enough of this kind of contribution to be promoted to Full Professor, but truthfully, it did not come naturally.
So, I have that feminist complaint out of the way. Let me mention another difference between myself and Handel that I think is of some importance, maybe of most importance. Handel was audacious. He was enterprising, often rude, and rigorously independent. I would say I do try to be independent, but I am not particularly enterprising and almost never rude, at least not intentionally. To return obliquely to the previous distinction, men are usually seen as bold when moving forward with their plans and enlisting others in their program. Women are often seen as “bossy” under similar circumstances. People (male or female) who are audacious will allow criticisms to roll off their backs. Those of us who are not audacious are too often inclined to hold back and refrain from asserting ourselves, our ideas, even our talents. Handel was never like that.
The question now is: Have I managed to become more bold, more audacious, now that I am old enough to no longer worry over how the outside world sees me? I imagine that every person who retires feels some of that relief from meeting the demands of the workplace. But for women in a male-dominant career, perhaps it is more pronounced. In any case, this has been my resolve for these years since retiring. It has been slow going, but I am determined to imbibe some of Handel’s audacity as I choose how to act and what to share now. This revival of the Handel Seminar discussion group is part of that choice. I feel good about it, and I hope some of that audacity rubs off on you.