Note 281 — HIS LIFE (continued 2)

Schumann wrote to Pohl in 1855, that Israel in Egypt was his “ideal of a choral work,” and, wishing to write a work called Luther, he defined this music thus, of which he found the ideal realized by Handel: “A popular oratorio that both country and town-people can understand.... A work of simple inspiration, in which the effect depends entirely on the melody and the rhythm, without contrapuntal artifice.”

Liszt, apropos of the Anthem Zadock the Priest, goes into ecstasies over “the genius of Handel, great as the world itself,” and very rightly perceives in the author of the Allegro and of Israel, a precursor of descriptive music.