The story of Saul, King of the Israelites, and David, who eventually succeeded him, is told at length in the Old Testament (Samuel 1, chapters 17-31). A large part of the narrative is occupied by the story of David, from his victory over Goliath to his Coronation: the same King David that inspired countless depictions in music, painting and sculpture. Handel’s oratorio, however, focuses on the fall of Saul and his son Jonathan. Some of the audience at the first performance on 16th January1739 in London may have been reminded of Shakespeare’s plays, and they will have been as surprised in musical terms by the rich instrumentation as by the move away from the opera seria model that Handel had cultivated for years, and which was still present in his first oratorios. The libretto to “Saul” was written by Charles Jennens (1700-l770), a wealthy and well-educated amateur writer. Jennens was able to choose among some twenty different versions of the story in English literature as the basis for his own text. One John Henley, for instance, said in a lecture of 1733 that was published later that Saul should be considered “as the best Theme of that kind (oratorio) in Honour of St Cecilia`s Day” - in other words, he suggested the story as the subject of an “Ode to St Cecilia". He was in fact familiar with the tradition of the Saul story in English literature as well as with Henry Purcell’s dramatic scene “The Witch of Endor” (1693), which tells of Saul’s visit to the sorceress prior to his battle with the Philistines.
According to a letter dated 28th July 1735, the text was complete at least as a rough draft at about this time,but Handel did not begin composing the music until three years later. At the time, the traditional genres of drama (with musical interludes) and music theatre were beginning to merge gradually, and it may have been this that decided Handel in favour of the dramatic oratorio setting of the story. We know from entries in the autograph manuscript that the first act was composed from 23rd July to 1st August, the second between 2nd and 8th August, and the third was completed on 15th August 1738. Handel wrote out this exceptionally long score, which could hardly be described as a routine piece, in less than a month. He must have had the music in mind for some time before writing out the score, for additions and corrections are relatively few in number.
The oratorio opens with a large-scale, almost ceremonial scene in which David’s victories over Goliath and the Philistines are celebrated. The musical weight lies in the choral parts,which climax in a triumphant Hallelujah. These are broken up by reflections on David’s rise from a youth to a victorious military commander. Abner reveals himself as the commander of Saul’s armies, but Saul’s son Jonathan becomes friends with David. Thus the basis for conflict is created: Saul feels humiliated by David’s success and sees him as a rival, and Jonathan is torn between filial duty and loyalty to his friends. He intercedes with his father on David’s behalf on several occasions, but dies together with Saul in the end. Merab, the eldest daughter of Saul, finds it degrading that she is offered to David in marriage as a reward for his victory, but she is subsequently married to another man. Michal, Saul’s second daughter, becomes David’s wife. A sinfonia with carillons (Glockenspiel) leads into the great choral scene in which the Israelites pay homage to David. The provokes Saul’s wrath: his outburst of anger “With rage I shall burst his praises to hear” places him at the centre of the action.The shorter airs instead of large arias are one of the special features of the English oratorio that Handel uses here throughout. The attempt to pacify Saul with David’s harp-playing fails: the king is angrier than ever. After Saul’s first, unsuccessful endeavour to do away with David, the air “A serpent, in my bosom” surpasses his first outbreak of rage in intensity and power. Thus, after further efforts to appease Saul’s wrath, the final chorus of Act I demands protection for David. Act 2 opens with one of the mightiest choruses that Handel ever composed, once again with a commentatory function. With sweeping gestures that recall the spirit of the chorus in Classical drama, the choir has the role of a fateful, almost divine court of judgment. Jonathan informs David that Saul is planning to have him killed. Jonathan’s and David’s appeasement of Saul is of small importance, for Saul promised David his daughter Michal in marriage in the hope that David as his general would fall in battle, thus avenging the humiliation. Not even David’s beautiful air can change Saul’s resolve. The love duet of David and Michal comes at an important point dramatically: it represents a calm, soothing element full of grace, in the midst of the dense action. Handel’s feeling for dramatic effects is also evident in the concerto that follows the chorus on love and divides this from the Michal-David scene that comes next. Duets were in any case rare at this time, and Handel‘s arrangement of this scene shows his special talent for portraying people and situations. Michal hatches a plan to evade the attack of the darkly brooding Saul, who is determined on David’s destruction. Oriented around the recitative and aria in formal terms, it is the clear, moving melodics that makes the antiphony here particularly ex pressive in effect. David flees, and Saul’s henchman Doeg arrives to find a dummy in David’s bed.
Once again a sinfonia acts as an interlude before the next scene. Saul plans to do away with David at the feast of the new moon, but David has left - ostensibly to attend a sacrificial feast with his family in Bethlehem. The hnal choms of Act 2, in which Handel achieves a masterly reflection of Saul’s recklessness and blind rage, his violation of every law, is the dramatic climax ofa recitative of mounting tension.
With insight into human nature,and as something of a pendant to the duets of Act 2, at the beginning of Act 3 Handel portrays Saul as a tyrant who has brought about his own downfall. The king with his thirst for revenge and his eventual ruin is similar in some respects to Shakespeare’s Macbeth. The visit to the Witch of Endor (in the Bible a “Women with a familiar spirit”) with the appearance of the prophet Samuel recalls the appearance of the ghost of Hamlet’s father. The Saul tradition, then, has a number of connections with English literature, but also with music (e.g, the witches in Purcell`s opera “Dido and Aeneas”).
A dramatically effective interlude leads into the finale, which Jennens and Handel called “Elegy on the death of Saul and Jonathan”. An Amalekite, a survivor from the war with Egypt, reports the deaths of Saul,who was killed by a spear, and Jonathan to David. The Dead March soon became one of the best known pieces in the oratorio. David’s lament for Saul’s and Jonathan’s death and his concern for the posthumous fame of the king and his friend show once again the main characters of the story. The closing chorus praising David as the newly chosen king accords with the traditional concept of the continuity of rule: The King is dead, long live the King!
When Handel divided his oratorio up into acts, included occasional stage directions, and gave the work a dramatic structure by means of an unusual wealth of instrumental interludes, he did so with the experience of an opera composer. The addition of trombones, organ, glockenspiel and harp to the normal orchestra in certain numbers reveal him as a master of timbre and instrumental effects and attributes. Thus the harp stands for the Psalmist David, while the trombones in the instrumental sections of Act 3 symbolize the Last Judgment. The convergence of opera, oratorio and the concerto finds striking expression in “Saul”. In this work, a predecessor of “Belshazzar” and “Messiah”, Handel established his own oratorio style, which was to enjoy long continuity.