Note 288 — HIS TECHNIQUE AND WORKS

These are not traits special to Handel alone. The double stream—encyclopædic and learned on the one hand, popular or pseudo-popular on the other—was found in an even greater degree in London amongst the musicians of Handel’s time. In the circle of the Academy of Antient Musick there was quite a mania of archaic eclectism. One of these members, the composer Roseingrave, even went to the length of having the walls of his rooms and all his furniture covered with bars of music, extracted from the works of Palestrina. At the same period there was felt all over Europe a reaction of popular taste against that of the savants. It was the day of the little lieder by Bononcini or by Keiser. Handel took sides with neither extravagances, but chose whatever was alive in both movements.