« Divinest transports mingle with the sense » : Haendel et le débat sur l’imitation et l’expression

Résumé En

The purpose of this paper is to place the assessments of Handel’s music made by his contemporaries and by music historians of the later XVIIIth century in the context of the decisive shift that affected the way the relationship between word and music was then perceived. Some contemporary testimonies about the adequacy and potency of Handel ’s word painting will be quoted and set against the later writings of music theorists, who came to blame the composer for his occasionally naive and superficial word setting, in spite of the admiration they had for him. This change must be explained in terms of the replacement of the aesthetic ideal of imitation by the new canon of expression ; according to the former, music was supposed to transform words into sound, whereas according to the latter, notes tended to be emancipated from texts and to become autonomous. To a certain extent, it might be said that Handel ’s typically baroque vocal music fell victim to this aesthetic shift, but his status as a towering national, and potentially mythical, figure guaranteed his privileged position in the British musical pantheon.