My Heart is What?

"My heart is inditing of a good matter; I speak of the things which I have made unto the King. Kings' daughters were among the honourable women. Upon thy right hand did stand the Queen in vesture of gold, and the King shall have pleasure in thy beauty. Kings shall be thy nursing fathers and Queens thy nursing mothers."

Certainly the text of Handel's Third Coronation Anthem is as offensive to some people as Andres Serrano's Piss Christ, (a photograph of a plastic crucifix submerged in urine) is to many committed Catholics, and yet the piece is trotted out and performed by venerable early and late music ensembles around the country without a protest banner in sight.

George II

Handel wrote four large choral/orchestral anthems for performance at the coronation of George II and his wife Caroline in 1727. The first, Zadok the Priest, has been performed at every coronation in England since then. All four are often performed in concert, which is an interesting anthropological study in cognitive dissonance.

It is shocking that a 21st century American audience should be interested in four pieces of music celebrating the handing over of power to an unelected foreigner, unless that interest be to ridicule them as hopelessly out of touch. Grandeur and pomp is one thing; we have plenty of that of our own, but when the text of the third announces "Upon thy right hand did stand the Queen in vesture of gold, and the King shall have pleasure in thy beauty" all but the religious right wing must surely recoil at the antiquated sentiment of male dominance/female servility; one might go so far as to accuse Handel of being in bed with the cosmetics industry. This is a historical artifact that is interesting to peruse, to examine for its successful elements and then to discard.

What exactly is the meaning of performing this piece? Is it an equal question to ask what is the meaning of regarding a painting of the same coronation, or reading an account of the occasion? I would answer no, because a modern performance is only tangentially mindful of the original circumstances; the historical details are probably listed in the program notes for the bored or the lonely to peruse at their leisure. The focus is not on a historical reenactment, and in fact I would argue that the audience's ignorance of the original context is at least in part key to the performance's success.

Do we treat this Coronation Anthem the same way that we treat literature or pictorial art from the same period? Gulliver's Travels was first published in 1726, the year before the coronation, and is more likely to have been experienced by anyone alive today not as a book but as a live-action TV drama, radio show or animated cartoon. The original is more likely to be compulsory reading on courses covering the early history of the novel, along with Moll Flanders, Pamela and Clarissa.

Cpt Thomas Coram by Hogarth

William Hogarth (1697 - 1764) is an artist who stands apart from his contemporaries because of the moralizing tone of his output. His work as a portrait painter is overshadowed by the groups of paintings, etchings and engravings that ridicule the mores of his day. For example, the series of engravings called The Rake's Progress and the print series called Industry and Idleness and The Four Stages of Cruelty are examples of witty commentary to which modern cartoonists aspire. What we remember most about his output is the daring critique of society that he took on beyond his day job.

So what element of the Handel are we celebrating? While Swift is satirizing human nature by remonstrating against the extent of human gullibility, and Hogarth is warning of society's moral decay, what is Handel doing besides providing lubricant Muzak for the aristocracy? If so, what is the meaning of the piece to a 21st century American audience?