_Israel in Egypt_ is the most conspicuous example of a strange and almost
unaccountable habit which from about this period began to show itself in
Handel's methods of composition--the incorporation of large quantities
of music by other composers. Samuel Wesley was the first person to draw
attention to this practice of Handel's, though only in a private letter of
1808. In 1831 Dr. Crotch, in his professorial lectures at Oxford, named no
less than twenty-nine composers whom Handel had "quoted or copied." The
researches of Chrysander, Dr. Max Seiffert, Ebenezer Prout, and Sedley
Taylor eventually proved beyond dispute that not only _Israel_, but several
other works of Handel were largely made up from the music of other men.
Chrysander maintained that Handel began appropriating other men's ideas
as early as 1707, for not only _Rodrigo_ and _Agrippina_, but also _La
Resurrezione_ and the _Laudate pueri_ show obvious reminiscences of
Keiser's opera _Octavia_ (Hamburg, 1705). These were probably subconscious,
like Handel's reminiscences of Scarlatti and others at this period; they
need not be taken any more seriously than Schubert's frequent reminiscences
of Beethoven. But in _Atalanta_ (1736) and _Giustino_ (1737), Prout
discovered quotations and adaptations several bars long from a _Passion_ by
Graun, which is known to have been composed not many years before.
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