Act One begins as Zebul, Jephtha's half-brother, advises the Israelites to ask Jephtha to be their commander against the threatening Ammonites. Jephtha agrees to lead them in battle, on condition that they make him their leader afterwards. One of his warriors is Hamor, who is betrothed to Jephtha's daughter, Iphis, and she agrees to marry him if the battle ends in victory. Alone, Jephtha makes a vow — the central dramatic premise of the oratorio — that, should he be victorious, the first whom he sees on his return will be sacrificed to God. Storgè, Jephtha's wife, while not knowing of this, has forebodings of evil to come. Jephtha challenges the Ammonite king to end his oppression of Israel, and when the king refuses, advances to battle.

Act Two begins as Hamor returns with news of Jephtha's great victory. The joyful Iphis prepares with her maidens to meet her father in celebration. She is the first one Jephtha sees, and he is horrified. He tells the others of his vow. Iphis reconciles to die.

In Act Three Jephtha is preparing to carry through the sacrifice of his daughter. At the last moment, an angel appears, and declares that it was the Holy Spirit which inspired Jephtha's vow and explains that its intent can be met if Jephtha's daughter remains forever a virgin, dedicated to God. There is general jubilation.

A NOTE ON THE PROGRAM: THE PAIN OF ACCEPTANCE

"It must be so---," these are the first words of the oratorio, and they occur again in Jephtha's magnificent second-act accompagnato, "Deeper and deeper still", when he sings: "It must be so---'tis this that racks my brain." Afflictions of the body and spirit were compelling incentives to Handel as he embarked upon his final oratorio. If ever Handel drew a portrait of himself, it was in Jephtha. It is troubling to thumb through the pages of the first two acts of the autograph score of Jephtha — if you would like to see it for yourself, the New England Conservatory's Spaulding Library has the Chrysander reproduction of the complete original score manuscript. One recognizes the accustomed, confident hand of the master's lightning-quick composing style, but can't help noting the evidence — note heads missing their stems, an increasing clutter on the page — of visual disability as the second act reaches its climax and Jephtha falls into despair over the foolish bargain he has made with God. "Biss hier herkommen, den 13, Febr. 1751 verhindert worden wegen relaxation des Gesichts meines linken Auges" ("Got this far, February 13, 1751; had to quit because of the deterioration of sight in my left eye") is the scribbled notation after the first section of the starkly relevant chorus, "How dark, O Lord, are Thy decrees." Ten days later, on his 66th birthday, he took the score up again ("It is a little better, I will resume") and in a few days completed the chorus and the act.

The final line of this chorus was given to Handel by his librettist Morell as "What God ordains — is right." Handel, recalling Pope's "Essay on Man," as, of course, did Morell when he gave him the text, changed the line to read "Whatever is — is right." The change is significant. To this chorus, in four distinct sections, Handel contributed music that moves from breathless melancholy through regret, to philosophic reflection and finally to a profound but unquiet acceptance. This is no benign resignation; more like a roar against Fate: "I may have to enter the dark unknown," the chorus seems to say, "but I will not go meekly." After three painful and unsuccessful surgeries on his eyes, Handel returned to work on the oratorio, completing it by the end of August 1751.

There is no evidence that Handel was a disbeliever. On the contrary he made much of his faith; but he was not inclined either to curse God for his own failings or to credit Him for adventitious blessings. For these and other reasons he was often at odds with the prevailing pietism of the 18th century, and with some of his librettists. Handel took, one assumes, something approaching perverse pleasure in subverting the fashionable Christian platitudes Morell and others gave him. On four other occasions in Jephtha alone, Handel deleted God's name from Morell's libretto, substituting Heaven or some other alternative. And in the oratorios that provided him the opportunity, he always gave the pagans jolly fine tunes with which to proclaim their disbelief.

The Handel commentator Winton Dean remarks that "both of Handel's last two oratorios, Theodora and Jephtha, are remarkable for their preoccupation with great spiritual issues, a preoccupation that goes far beyond the content of the librettos. Their underlying ideas, the fragility of youth and life itself, the necessity of submission to destiny, are treated by the composer with an almost subjective intimacy. Ignoring the moral lessons drawn by the librettist, he ponders the issues anew and imposes his own interpretation on the story."

The story of Jephtha is drawn from the 11th chapter of Judges, although none of the characters' names in the oratorio save Jephtha himself can be found in the scriptural account. Jephtha's wife Storgè and Iphis's betrothed, the warrior Hamor, are entirely Morell's creations. Some have speculated that the name Iphis derives from Iphigenia — another daughter who suffered as a result of a parental vow. The Bible says that Jephtha was the son of a harlot, and that he was disinherited and sent by his father's legitimate sons into exile, where he earned a reputation as a valorous sort of scoundrel. It is from this exile that he was called to lead the Israelites against the Ammonite threat. Morell's handling of Jephtha's vow to offer up in sacrifice the first person he sees upon his return, in exchange for God's assistance in the battle, has been widely challenged. In the Bible there is no question that the sacrifice was carried out: The daughter asks for two months to roam in the mountains "bewailing her virginity," and then presumably returns, resigned to her execution.

Some claim that Morell's deus ex machina, in the form of an Angel representing the Holy Spirit, makes God an accessory to an unseemly contract. In the Bible Jephtha strikes a simple business deal with Jehovah and, after the victory and the daughter's untimely greeting, Jehovah is never mentioned again. Jephtha suffers the consequences of his attempt to bribe God, and there is no appeal of the verdict. There is a dramatic and haunting simplicity to that story, which is probably what attracted Handel to it in the first place; and to which he might have contributed perhaps even more memorable music.

In the late 20th century it is hard for us to see Morell's substitution of perpetual virginity for death as cause for general rejoicing. We might agree with the Old Testament writer that "bewailing" is the appropriate response to Iphis's redesignated fate. But one shouldn't be too quick to burden either Morell or Handel with this bow to convention. The theatrical customs of the 18th century were not receptive to sending the audience home despondent; and Handelian oratorio (Messiah, perhaps aside) was conceived and had grown to maturity as a theatrical medium — as a surrogate for opera, which was, after all, Handel's first love.

In baroque opera, far greater liberties were taken with classical tales, and far greater dramatic sabotage committed in the pursuit of "happy endings" than Morell took in the case of Jephtha. The idea that the innocent Iphis could be allowed to die as a result of her father's ill-advised bargain with Jehovah is something that would not have gone down well in Georgian London, for religious as much as for theatrical reasons. (The self-selected martyrdom of Theodora at the end of Handel's and Morell's immediately preceding collaboration is, of course, not really a parallel. Dean says in recognition of Theodora's special status, "convincing saints in dramatic literature, verbal or musical, are very rare.")

If we accept that Morell's handling of Iphis's pardon is ham-handed, we must also acknowledge that his treatment, blessed with Handel's music, of the great span from Act Two's triumphant return through Jephtha's inconsolable grieving in Act Three ranks among the most powerful sequences of pure genius in all dramatic music. And, of course, Handel's music, with or without Morell's cooperation, is sublime throughout the oratorio. Handel took up oratorio because his operatic world was collapsing. He found unexpected dramatic opportunities there. He also found propitious occasions to affirm his new British patriotism. And, finally, his acquired mastery pointed the way to Mozart and to the whole 19th century, even including Verdi. Winton Dean summarizes this evolution: "Thus the last state of the oratorio is very different from the first: Handel begins as an opportunist, continues as a dramatist, falls back on pot-boiling, and ends as a seer."

- Donald Teeters

The Boston Cecilia performed this work at New England Conservatory's Jordan Hall in Boston on March 12, 1995.

© 2004 Donald Teeters. All rights reserved.

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