Reflections on George Frideric Handel's Solomon

Part I

This morning's worship service is a presentation of portions of one of George Frideric Handel's most magnificent oratorios. Solomon is based on the Jewish story of the life of King Solomon. We have already heard a small part of this music in the call to worship as our choir sang "Swell the full chorus to Solomon's praise."

Handel was born in 1685, in what is now Germany. He was part of the late Baroque era in Europe. The Baroque era began as an effort by the Roman Catholic Church to counter the inroads made by the Reformation. After the Council of Trent, which ended in 1563, the Roman Catholic Church adopted the position that art was to serve to extend and stimulate the public's faith in the church. To this end the church adopted a conscious artistic program whose art products would make an emotional and sensory appeal to the faithful. The Baroque musical style that evolved from this was sensuous, while also describing the splendor of God. This sensuality made the music more popular among average churchgoers.

Following the lead of the Catholic Church, monarchies used the Baroque style to display to the people, particularly the new middle class, the power and grandeur of the centralized state. The Baroque period saw the invention of the opera, the oratorio, and the cantata.

After studying music in Germany and Italy, Handel settled in England where he composed forty operas. However, in the 1730s the popularity of opera declined in England, and after his opera house went bankrupt in 1737, Handel switched to writing oratorios, lengthy choral works usually of a religious nature without the action or scenery of an opera. In the year 1741 he composed his most famous oratorio, Messiah.

Because of the power of works like Messiah Handel made the oratorio the most popular musical form in England. He created a new audience among the rising English middle classes. They turned away in moral indignation from the Italian opera but were happy to hear a moral tale from the Bible, set to suitably dignified music. Solomon is one of these oratorios. Its plot can be told in three sentences:

• In Part I the recently built Temple is consecrated, the King, the priests, and his people offer songs of thanksgiving, after which the King retires with his young Queen.
• Part II presents the famous story of Solomon's judgment over the infant claimed by two women.
• Part III is devoted to the entertainment of the Queen of Sheba on a state visit.

The middle class English audiences for whom Handel wrote his Old Testament oratorios were thoroughly familiar with these Biblical stories. Today, of course, some of us are less familiar with the Bible, so I want to do a quick review.

Solomon became King of the Jewish people when his father King David died, around 970 years before the birth of Jesus. After decades of war under King David's leadership, Solomon wanted to lead a nation at peace. Therefore, when he rose to the throne, he consolidated his position by liquidating his opponents, including one of his own brothers. Once rid of his foes, he established his friends in the key posts of the military, governmental, and religious institutions.

Solomon also strengthened his position through marital alliances. Although the poet who wrote the text for Handel's Solomon does not mention it, the Old Testament records that Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines. Some of these 700 marriages were a form of diplomacy. Solomon wed the sisters and daughters of kings, cementing alliances of arms and trade to help his establishment of a huge commercial empire. One of his brides was the daughter of an Egyptian pharaoh. The music that we are about to hear is Handel's celebration of King Solomon's marriage to the daughter of Egypt's Pharaoh. Handel's vocal music has a sensual and spiritual power that has never been surpassed although in glorifying the marriage, the unknown poet who wrote the text to Handel's music does not include the fact that the Pharaoh captured and burned down the Canaanite city of Gezer and gave it to Solomon as a wedding gift.

Choir:
Recitative	And see, my Queen
Air	With thee th'unsheltered moor
Chorus	May no rash intruder

Part II: The Wisdom of Solomon

Chapter Three of First Kings describes two women who came to King Solomon and stood before him:

One woman said, "Please, my lord, this woman and I live in the same house. I gave birth while she was in the house. Then on the third day after I gave birth, this woman also gave birth. We were together; no one else was with us in the house, only the two of us. Then this woman's son died in the night, because she lay on him. She got up in the middle of the night and took my son from beside me while I slept. She laid him at her breast, and laid her dead son at my breast. When I rose in the morning to nurse my son, I saw that he was dead. However, when I looked at him closely in the morning, clearly it was not the son I had borne."

The other woman said, "No, the living son is mine, and the dead son is yours."

The first said, "No, the dead son is yours, and the living son is mine." So they argued before the king.

Then the king said, "The one says, 'This is my son that is alive, and your son is dead;' while the other says, 'Not so! Your son is dead, and my son is the living one.' " So the king said, "Bring me a sword," and they brought a sword before the king. The king said, "Divide the living boy in two; then give half to the one, and half to the other."

However, the woman whose son was alive said to the king because compassion for her son burned within her, "Please, my lord, give her the living boy; do not kill him!"

The other said, "It will be neither mine nor yours; divide it."

Then the king responded: "Give the first woman the living boy; do not kill him. She is his mother."

All Israel heard of the judgment that the king had rendered. They stood in awe of the king, because they perceived that the wisdom of God was in him, to execute justice.

This was most likely a common Jewish folk tale three thousand years ago that was adapted by the Biblical writer as evidence of the wisdom of Solomon. It shows that Jewish morality is concerned with the practical business of living rather than with abstract notions of fairness. It also shows that the Jews valued an understanding of the strengths and the weakness in human character.

Personally when I heard the story as a child, I wondered to myself "what would Solomon have done, if both women had agreed to his plan? Would he have gone through with his decision to cut the baby in half?"

Air/Trio	Words Are Weak
Recitative	Israel, Attend
Chorus	From the east unto the west

Part III: The Visit of the Queen of Sheba

Sheba was Queen of a southern Arabian kingdom lay along the Red Sea route into the Indian Ocean. Her Kingdom was rich in gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Solomon needed her products and her trade routes for maintaining his commercial network. She needed Solomon's cooperation for marketing her goods in the Mediterranean through his Palestinian ports.

A story of the Queen of Sheba's visit to see Solomon appears in Arab literature. Solomon, having heard from one of his birds, that Sheba and her kingdom worshiped the Sun, sent a letter asking her to worship God. She replied by sending gifts, but, when Solomon proved unreceptive to them, she came to his court herself. The king's demons, meanwhile, fearing that Sheba might tempt him into marrying her, whispered to him that she had hairy legs. Solomon, being curious about such a peculiar phenomenon, had a glass floor built before his throne. Sheba, tricked into thinking it was water, raised her skirts to cross it, revealing that her legs were truly hairy. Solomon then ordered his demons to create an agent for removing hair for the Queen. Islamic tradition does not agree about whether Solomon himself married Sheba or gave her in marriage to someone else. She did, however, become a believer.

Of course none of this story appears in Handel's Solomon. He celebrates the visit of the Queen of Sheba as it is describe in the Old Testament:

When the Queen of Sheba heard of the fame of Solomon, she came to test him with hard questions. She came to Jerusalem with a very great entourage, with camels bearing spices, and very much gold, and precious stones. When she came to Solomon, she told him all that was on her mind. Solomon answered all her questions. Nothing was hidden from the king that he could not explain to her. When the Queen of Sheba had observed all the wisdom of Solomon, the house that he had built, the food of his table, the seating of his officials, and the attendance of his servants, their clothing, and his burnt offerings that he offered at the house of God, there was no more spirit in her. So she said to the king:

The report was true that I heard in my own land of your accomplishments and of your wisdom. However, I did not believe the reports until I came and my own eyes had seen it. Not even half had been told me; your wisdom and prosperity far surpass the report that I had heard. Happy are your wives! Happy are these your servants, who continually attend you and hear your wisdom! Blessed be your God, who has delighted in you and set you on the throne of Israel! Because God loved Israel forever, God has made you king to execute justice and righteousness.

Then she gave the king one hundred twenty talents of gold, a great quantity of spices, and precious stones; never again did spices come in such quantity as that which the Queen of Sheba gave to King Solomon. Meanwhile King Solomon gave to the Queen of Sheba every desire that she expressed. Then she returned to her own land, with her servants.

Many readers of this Old Testament passage interpret Solomon's granting the Queen "every desire that she expressed" to include a sexual relationship. According to Ethiopian tradition, Sheba bore Solomon a son, who founded the royal dynasty of Ethiopia.

Before we hear Handel's wonderful music, let us be together for a moment in meditation and prayer, first in words, then in silence.

O God
You are ultimately a mystery
I sense your presence in my life. I experience you in
the beauty of the changing seasons
the majesty of the star-filled sky
the music of Handel
Somehow you seem to underlie the richness and the
inexhaustible creativity of life.
Thank you for the gift of life.
Thank you for the wonder of it all.

(Adapted from a prayer by Rev. William Gardiner)

Recitative	From Arabia's Spicy Shores
Air	Every Sight These Eyes Behold
Recitative	Sweep the String
Chorus Music	Spread Thy Voice Around
Air/Chorus	Now a different measure/Shake the dome
Recitative	Next the Tortured Soul
Chorus	Thus Rolling Surges Rise

Part IV Handel and King George II

George II served as King of Great Britain from 1727 until his death in 1760. Originally from Germany himself, he felt a kinship with Handel. The king was a patron of Handel and loved his operas. Handel's Solomon is a glorification of King George II. It is an oratorio about a nation secure in its power and living the plentiful life of a golden age. Symbolized in Solomon is stability and its prosperity.

In 1748 England was emerging from a long intercontinental war and recovering from a rebellion at home. British officials were negotiating peace while Handel was writing Solomon. Solomon celebrates the benefits of peace. King Solomon's reign of forty years, an unusually peaceful period of Israelite history, was a metaphor for the age of security and affluence to which Britons looked forward. Since medieval times writers who wished to glorify their rulers had used King Solomon as an archetype. Handel's audiences would readily have associated Solomon with their own king. Indeed at George II's coronation the Bishop had taken the text for his sermon from the Queen of Sheba's admiring praise of Solomon.

The period of stability and prosperity did not last. In Solomon's case the wealth that his forty year rule created was used to build the Temple and line its walls with gold. Many of the common people were not happy. Also Solomon's treatment of the Jewish tribes showed favoritism to his own tribe of Judah. When Solomon's son became king the northern tribes seceded and formed their own Kingdom of Israel, leaving the descendants of Solomon with the southern Kingdom of Judah. Solomon's great empire was lost, and the homeland was split into two, often hostile, kingdoms.

In Great Britain, George the II was followed by King George the III. King George the III increasing taxes resulted in a revolt in the American Colonies and the British Empire suffered an enormous loss with the departure of what became the United States.

Empires come and go, but Handel's music survives. Two hundred and fifty years after its creation, his vocal music continues to have a power and eloquence that yet to be surpassed.

Chorus

From the Censer Curling Rise

Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church
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