It seems only natural therefore to connect
them with Handel's mental collapse; it became acute in the spring of 1737,
but it may well have been approaching in the previous year.
There is no need to go so far as to suggest that Handel suffered from moral
insanity and was incapable of distinguishing between right and wrong; but
it is quite conceivable that his paralytic stroke affected his brain in
such a way that he may sometimes have had a difficulty in starting a
composition. Biographers of Handel have more than once drawn attention to
phases in which he seems to have suffered from the inability to make a
definite decision. Indecision is a common symptom of overstrained nerves,
and anyone who has attempted musical composition or taught it to students
will understand the hesitation and uncertainty which often attends the
first writing down of a musical theme, although, once the initial idea has
been settled, the continuation and development of it may proceed without
difficulty. Any musician who studies the examples printed by Sedley Taylor
will at once exclaim that for a man of Handel's experience, to say nothing
of his fertility or indeed of his genius, it would have been far less
trouble to compose an original setting of given words than to adapt them
so laboriously to music written by someone else for a totally different
purpose.
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