Not much of a handle on Handel

I've not had much musical conversation on here in a while, and an expanded version of a recent book review is a good way to fix that.

Every Valley: The Desperate Lives and Troubled Times That Made Handel's Messiah by Charles King
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I said this book was 2.5 stars rounded down, rounded down in part because this book shouldn't be at 4 stars. We're going to focus more than I did at Goodreads on musical-related issues as well as my thoughts on Handel.

Tis true that the subhed makes at least halfway clear that this is not just a "biography" of the Messiah, and it's certainly not a bio of Handel. That said, it's too much a pastiche even within latitudinarian allowances.

First, a side note, that ties to that. I usually look at blurbers on the back of a book. Not one of them for "Every Valley" is a musicologist, music historian, or music director of an orchestra. I'm familiar with four of the five actual blurbers, having read one or more of their works; none has written about music. So, I wasn't holding tremendous expectations. Stacy Schiff did write about a similar historical period with her Samuel Adams bio. Henry Louis Gates is not much further away. Simon Sebag Montefiore is yet further away historically. And, Elaine Pagels? Really? Amanda Foreman, biographer of the Dutchess of Devonshire, makes absolute sense on the historical angle, but of the other four, one makes less than zero sense, and none of the other three are really good for more than 50 cents on the dollar, if that.

Second, the pastiche? Did we need to know as much about Charles Jennens, writer of "the book" for Messiah, as actually presented? Probably not. Certainly, his non-juror stance was not relevant. Given that the '45 and the Young Pretender did not influence Handel, their semi-extensive discussion was not at all relevant. Ditto on not needing to know as much as was presented about Thomas Coram. A few Black Ghanian leaders inadvertently enslaved then freed was nice, but also irrelevant. In addition, one of them was or became a slave trader himself. Yes, at least some of Handel's salary from the Crown was at least indirectly related to the slave trade. And? Paul says there is "neither slave nor free," ergo theoretically giving Christians license to ignore slave trading. Most the Holdsworth material, irrelevant.

Third? There were a couple of historical errors early on. The Holy Roman Empire had eight not nine electors at this time. Queen Anne succeeded Queen Mary, not King William, who had predeceased her by a few years. Later on, descriptions of a couple of continental wars were a bit sketchy, and also not really relevant.

Whack what you could, and you'd be down to 150 pages; not much of a book.

Flip side? And, this is where the rubber hits the road for the expanded review.

First, Handel's childhood is thin here. We read little other than his allegedly sneaking him home harpsichord practice, about his childhood musical training.

Second, what about early adulthood? Actual interactions with musicians in Italy, name-dropped by King about Handel's time there? All we get is the name-dropping, nothing more. Not discussed, nor is whether or not he met Vivaldi. Did he interact with English composers of the era? Not told.

Third? What about Messiah? From the intro, it's clear that this is an authorial love letter as much as a history. As a former Lutheran now a secularist, but one who has more than a dozen Requiems? Messiah IS kind of bombastic, more, and to its detriment, than the author portrays. It's OK music. It's rousing music. But, great music, it generally is not. Compare it to Bach's B minor Mass or St. John's Passion.

King will talk about Handel's weird meter, and blames it all on allegedly still having a relatively poor understanding of English. (He writes alleged quotes from Handel in a mock German-influenced bad accent that comes off as stupid — stupid by King, not Handel.)

The reality is that Handel had been in England more than 30 years by the time he wrote Messiah. His accented English was likely no worse than that of Arnold Schwarzenegger. If that.

Rather, per King mentioning how much Handel recycled old music, it appears that forcing of meter and accent to old tunes was as much if not more a problem.

So, why didn't he steal from others? Bach regularly did so from Vivaldi, for example. Stravinsky is known for saying many of the best of his ideas he stole from others. Or, if he was stealing from himself, why didn't he edit himself better?

But no. Instead, Handel gives us something forced, padded and bombastic. From this era, I'll take Bach's B minor Mass or St. Matthew's Passion as greater religious music.

And, as a secularist of originally Lutheran background, I'm in a place of detached observance.

And so, to the bigger picture yet. Yes, this is a love letter by King. But, is Messiah in particular, or Handel in general, worth it? Not in my book.

Years ago, I divided classical musicians into groups of seven. I thought of that after finishing this book, and thought groups of five would be better.

Top five: Bach, Vivaldi, Beethoven, Stravinsky, Shostakovich.

Second five: Rachmaninoff, Mahler, Brahms, Schubert, maybe Mozart if you force me.

Third five: Schittke (whom I might shove past Mozart), Hindemith, Prokofiev, maybe Verdi, maybe Penderecki.

Fourth five: Not sure who all would be here, but there's a low likelihood of Handel being here even. Water Music? Good. Fireworks? Almost as good, but also tending toward the bombastic. And, that's a word you can use for a lot of other works of his. 

Beyond that is one other issue. While neither Jennens nor Handel created Anglo-Israelism, both, definitely as a team, contributed to its rise. While it became big in Victorian Britain, its first mentions are in the 1600s. And bombast such as "Zadok the Priest" (text pre-Jennens) becoming a coronation hymn added to that.

This ex-Lutheran hasn't sat through the Messiah either in person or at a PBS type TV broadcast for maybe a full 20 years now, and I don't expect that to change.

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Alan Kirk vs David Litwa on searching for the historic Jesus

 I have vague familiarity with Litwa, and per a not bad question about him and actually good response on this post at r/AcademicBiblical, I have some thoughts on Alan Kirk's review of Litwa's "How the Gospels Became History."

I do NOT think Kirk has the better of Litwa, but that's not the only thing involved.

First, my familiarity with Litwa is not so much directly with him, but with the "bios" school of New Testament, and specifically, gospels, exegesis. As No-Moremon notes in his response, this includes Robyn Faith Walsh and others.

First, contra Kirk, the "bios" idea can be used as a scaffolding around which to construct social memory ideas. That, of course, from my point of view, though, means the scaffolding came first.

Second, on the idea that this discounts conflict between Judaism and Hellenism? While Kirk may be right that at times, Litwa strains on finding specific Hellenistic parallels rather than mining the Hebrew Bible, Kirk in turn oversells this. Mark portrays a Jesus in conflict with "Herodians" and "Pharisees" and "Sadducees," but not, contra Matthew's Passion-crowd bloodlust, let alone John's "The Jews," is Jesus shown in conflict with the Jews in general.

So this? 

“Hellenistic,” however, describes not so much a cultural homogenization as the fraught cultural encounter of rich national traditions with Greek culture, on a spectrum of assimilation, adaptation, and resistance.

Not so totally so, especially if Kirk thinks Litwa is describing homogenization.

Besides, per Lee Levine's great "Judaism and Hellenism in Antiquity: Conflict or Confluence?", the idea that Judaism wouldn't incorporate Hellenistic mythos is simply not true. 

Beyond that, as early as Justin Martyr, Christian leaders acknowledged that the tales about Jesus' virgin birth were like those in the Greek world — only true. Otherwise, Adam Gopnik notes that Elaine Pagels' new book compares early Christians' evolving views about Jesus' post-death to Lubavichers' about Rebbe Menachem Schneerson. Gopnik notes that believe in a Lubavicher Moshiach redivivus would have surged had anything like the Jewish Revolt hit the Lubavicher community. 

But? This is NOT a nod toward Litwa's "bios." Rather, it's Pagels' way of explaining how "rips" in the fabric of memory were restitched. Indeed, from there, Gopnik first pivots to Richard C. Miller, with whom I am unfamiliar, and then Walsh.

And so, why wouldn't the Gospelers use, and adapt, specific bits of Greek legend and myth? There, Pagels at least gets the overhead right. As for any Eastern myth Litwa might say backs the gospels, well, Levine notes that Judaism had been extensively Persianized before this. Emphasis on extensively, in my eyes. Idan Dershowitz, per what he says was originally The Great Famine, not Flood, has tackled this issue in detail.

Third, that said, is Litwa really that new? To riff on D.F. Straus, mentioned by Kirk, is this really that much different than a repackaged θεῖος ἀνήρ theory with a broader background?

And, per personages like Metatron in some of the Jewish apocalyptic literature from Qumran, that idea was not totally alien to Judaism before the gospels, either. Nor, however its theological interpretation is skinned, was the מַלְאַךְ יְהוָה or "angel of the Lord." And, Kirk knows this as well. 

The search for the historical Jesus

Fourth, but not spoken in detail, I think is Kirk's real plaint. And that's that, as noted, Litwa is shutting the door on new searches for the historical Jesus.

And, really, it should be shut.

On the gospels, stand or die on Markan priority or not, whether you're pushing the communal social memory idea of the gospels' writing or not. As I see it, this is in some ways, with the Synoptics, an attempt to work around, or dodge, traditional theories of transmission, as was the push for oral transmission in the 1970s-90s, riffing off the Balkan bards of Parry and Lord. And, in part because social memory can be just as malleable as individual memory, I see it as being not much more likely than oral transmission theory to say anything significantly new about composition of any of the canonical gospels, let along the Synoptics. Oh, and yes, social memory can be that malleable; it starts with the sociology of crowds.

Perhaps Litwa could use more of the traditional 20th-century exegetical forms and methods. Perhaps use new ones, like the social memory idea, without over-leaning on it.

But, accept that you'll never get back further than an author's, or an author and his community's, ideas about the historic Jesus.

Period.

That's for you, and others of like mind, Alan Kirk.

To riff on Bultmann? The Christ of faith is all you can find.

Robyn Faith Walsh: "I'm part of the Bart Ehrman team"

Via The Amateur Exegete, newly added to the blogroll here based on something I saw at the Nazi-mods biblical subreddit, I saw the following video from Walsh about dating the gospels:

And yes, she makes that statement in quotes in the header at the start of the video. 

First, ugh on multiple accounts.

Regular readers here know I have less and less regard for Ehrman each new book he writes, so that's one ugh.

Second, if you're an academic with a solid background yourself, why would you place yourself on some other academic's "team"?

Third and biggest ugh? 

Is Bart Ehrman now a "brand"? Just shoot me. 

Per her comments, where she begins with what she claims is the current consensus in the scholarship.

First, with Mark, she doesn't allow for a "Cross Gospel" or other written material.

On Matthew, is it really a "consensus" that he wrote at 80 CE? Not from what I've read.

Luke at 90? Again not what I've heard.

John? Early second. And, sorry, the "scraps of papyrus" aren't guaranteed to be from the current John. Could be from an earlier edition, the Egerton Gospel, or something else.

Then, her dating.

First, she claims Mark is post-Jewish War entirely. Her "no-temple Judaism" claim doesn't float me, and it ignores the truncated version of the "apocalypse" in Mark vs other synoptics. 

But, in her snippet, she offers nothing more detailed on her dating vs "the consensus" on the other two synoptics or John.

==

Back to that Bart Ehrman brand. Yes, she stans for his Biblical Studies Academy. Flaks for it at the end of the video. Has Bart's mugshot icon in the top left of the video.

Barf me.