they are not disparaged because they contain little that is unusual in harmony or design , for Handel &apos;s best work is fully evident when the general style of a movement looks conventional to the score-reading eye . the few movements in Op 3 which strike us as uniquely Handelian are not those in the grand manner but the best dances . we are glad to have Op 3 for the charming movements rather than those which the first audiences probably found impressive . particularly attractive are the sarabande which forms the middle movement of no 1 ( the only movement with flute ) , the gavotte and variations ( not so labelled ) at the end of no 2 , and the minuets of no 4 . the manuscripts of these works are lost , but not that of a fine C major concerto called by Arnold concertante . it bears the date 25th January 1736 and was known as the concerto in Alexander &apos;s feast after the first occasion when London heard it . it was the first item in Walsh &apos;s fourth collection of select harmony , which is thought to have been issued in 1741 . the ripieno includes two oboes but the concertino is the Corellian string trio . Walsh also published two other Handel concertos which need not detain us here . the student can find them all , as well as those of Op 3 , in a handy volume of Lea pocket scores ( New York ) . before doing homage to the most wonderful of all concerti grossi we may take as a point of departure Chrysander &apos;s remark that the Op 3 concertos show a bewildering variety of form . if design and form are regarded as synonymous , then any work that is not epigonic should bewilder us , and Handel &apos;s Op 6 should serve a feast of bewilderment . because words will no more describe the form than the expression of music , for the form is the music , we measure the parts of a musical design instead of learning a piece by heart in order to judge its form . one artist does not excel another because he has used a more complex design , but because his form is more organic , which means that the ideas and their growth are of the right quality and quantity for the expression . when equally sensitive and intelligent judges of music have different opinions concerning the quality of ideas and the forms into which they grow , their argument often settles upon design - how many themes are used , how many are germs for motivic growth , where and how contrast is made , where and how it is avoided , whether the themes are curved or angular , rightly or wrongly lacking in colour - and behind the description is the implication that one design is superior to another , a fugue with stretto superior or inferior to one that is as effective through well-timed entries between non-derived episodes . thus too often we think of form as a relation of A to B , of a movement being fine if C , instead of D , follows B at a certain point ; sometimes this pseudo-explanation may in fact support truth , but we grasp the symbols of the truth instead of the truth itself . Beethoven had neither the education nor the natural ability to use words explicitly . on his deathbed , having no further need to regret his limitation or to cure it , he pointed to the Arnold volumes of Handel which had just arrived and said there is the truth . on a previous occasion Beethoven had said of Handel : he was the greatest composer who ever lived . I would uncover my head , and kneel before his tomb . among Beethoven &apos;s eccentricities we can not number that of seeking to impress company by aesthetic and musical judgements . men with the greatest insight into music use one life in its pursuit and lack another in which to command words in a way that effectively communicates their musical judgement . Beethoven &apos;s words are often incoherent , but when we grasp their purport we find them true . ah , my dear Ries , he was the master of us all in this art - Beethoven was speaking of Mozart and the art of the piano concerto . he did not flatter . Mozart was and still is the master in that particular art . Beethoven did not say that Handel was the greatest Ku&quot;nstler but the greatest Komponist that had lived , and he would have been right if the only existing proofs of the fact were the Op 6 concertos . in each of these superb works the four , five or six movements seem like facets of one personality ; so we have twelve essays of an integrity comparable with that of the best classical symphonies . these concertos embrace most of the musical expression that belonged to the concert room of their time and much that belonged to the theatre , and they exclude only the morbid , bizarre , extremely tragic , directly programmatic and religious - in short what was then reserved to illustrate words or drama and to dignify worship . this marvellously comprehensive expression would not make us willing to doff and kneel with Beethoven unless it were conveyed in sublime examples of almost perfect form , none bewildering unless we try to explain it by the vocabulary of what should be called design . the opening movement is a French overture fertilized in its slow introduction by the Handelian sarabande-like sacred aria , and in its fugato movement by the Italian sonata-allegro . this tells no intelligent musician anything about Handel &apos;s success or failure to achieve form , yet a sympathetic listener who does not know the design of a French overture may perceive Handel &apos;s achievement . the empty grandiosity of certain items in Joshua or Judas Maccabeus fulfils designs which , according to text books called applied forms and applied strict counterpoint , ensure safety for any composer who can invent or borrow ideas to suit the designs . the opposite of applied is organic , and because they are all organic the twelve concerti grossi are one of the greatest feats of musical composition . it has been well said that some of Handel &apos;s best movements defy analysis because they are improvisatory - a word which can be pejorative . we are not intended to listen more than once to an improvisation . it satisfies us if we are pleased with the music as it passes , and if it is congruous . improvisation , however , is the first stage in written composition , and if mechanical reproduction of an improvisation forces us to listen a second and a third time we are like the composer who scrutinizes his first draft and decides what should be pruned and what extended . sometimes we are dissatisfied not with the unchecked fancy of the improviser but with our recognition of pre-fabrications , applied forms , modulations and developments introduced exactly as in other extemporizations . to extemporize from a preconceived design or upon ideas given by an auditor is splendid exercise , but at best only portions of the exercise can be significant artistic expression - in short , form . when , however , a whole written piece seems to have grown by impulse , and when both the ideas and their growth are of superb quality , we can hardly praise it more highly than to say that it sounds spontaneous throughout , and still sounds so when we hear it for the hundredth time . comparatively late in his career Handel impressed shrewd judges by his organ extemporizations , and though it is unthinkable that the ideas and developments had the breadth of those in his published work , Handel had more ability and experience than most musicians to extemporize whole sections which , at one hearing , seemed organic within a well-proportioned whole . how often in composing the twelve concerti grossi he proceeded by deliberation and how often the music welled forth without his conscious control we shall never know , and that is one tribute to their greatness . they are said to have been written in a few weeks of 1739 , yet they contain no sign of careless or hasty work . the borrowing of one opening from Cleopatra &apos;s Pianger&amp;ograve; la sorte mia and another from Semele &apos;s myself I shall adore does not negate the last assertion . most of the movements are an exception to the general criticism that few of the greatest works of music are well composed throughout . conscientiousness can not make them so ; otherwise the form of Brahms &apos;s long movements would be as wonderful as those of Handel &apos;s or Beethoven &apos;s . fortunately we do not measure greatness entirely by achievement of form , but we rank the imperfect fulfilment of a noble ambition above the perfect management of trivialities and musical platitudes . not a single movement in Handel &apos;s Op 6 is pedestrian ; no concerto fails to suggest verve and joy in the process of composition . even if the Op 6 concertos lacked their distinguishing breadth of conception and their splendid musical ideas they would still differ from Corelli &apos;s for two main reasons : ( a ) some of them are dramatic in the strict sense of the term - they are the work of a theatre composer ; ( b ) a great number of them come from the German-French suite . it has been admitted that Geminiani , who was almost entirely Corellian , occasionally achieved Handel &apos;s breadth of musical thought ; but he did this only when composing contrapuntally or by the Corellian continuation technique without motive development . Handel achieves a huge breadth of musical thought when composing almost mechanistically in the least weighty of styles . ( Ex 83 . ) this quotation illustrates a second point , as would almost any extract of similar length from Op 6 . into the light figuration of the violins erupts a contrasting idea by the bass instruments . it may have been introduced to give a touch of humour or purely for the sake of the interruption - to prevent the development from being too simple and mechanical ; yet it is surely not accidental that , when the whole flight reaches its conclusion in four bars of plain ripieno harmony , the paragraph is clinched by the solid rhythm of this interruption . whether Handel planned it as he began the movement or whether it occurred to him as when improvising , this way of integrating the movement was exactly right in this place , and sensible people may call it a symphonic way . the last phrase seems discourteous , but it seems justified while critics spoil enthusiasm by asking us to value old music if its methods anticipate later ones . thus we are told that some passages by Bach are almost atonal , and that they prefigure Scho&quot;nberg . misinterpreted by ears and minds which inherit the work of both composers , passages by Bach wherein horizontal thinking temporarily dominates the vertical thinking of continuo harmony remind us of atonal polyphony . we are delighted by the unusual ascendance and stimulus of discord , the pleasure of which would have been lost to Bach ( and would seem incongruous to us ) unless it brought with it the pleasure of restored tonal bearings and ultimate concord . the mere fact that we call it discord shows that there is little in common between Bach and Scho&quot;nberg except recourse to the devices of counterpoint . similarly we should be careful not to pretend that Handel &apos;s movements are Beethovenian because they are often dramatic , often include passages of motivic development and often show energy and urgency that is rarely found before Beethoven . Handel points to Beethoven is a meaningless comment . Tubal Cain points to Sibelius . it is also accidental that Beethoven the man , beneath the eccentricities which may have been caused by misfortune , had some of the known characteristics of Handel , and that like Handel he was in no way a wild or revolutionary artist . his music and Handel &apos;s changed gradually from early acceptance of inherited designs and styles . without alteration they could not serve their expanding ideas , and when we set their first forms beside their last we observe a much larger change than between the first and last work of most revolutionary composers . the important parallel between Handel and Beethoven lies in their recognition of comparable , not similar means of maintaining movements on a large scale , especially when their materials suggested energy and urgency . these qualities in Beethoven would not have their peculiar effect if Beethoven had not been primarily a musical architect with an innate sense of symmetry and poise . 