In Handel’s oratorio Samson (1742), the aria “Total eclipse” compares Samson’s blindness, inflicted by the enemy’s gouging out of his eyes, to darkness during the total solar eclipse. The librettist Newburgh Hamilton drew the astronomical metaphor as well as the majority of his text for the oratorio from John Milton’s closet drama Samson Agonistes (1671). With respect to scientific knowledge on the eclipses, however, the two works are from very different eras. Examining changing perspectives on eclipses in Britain from the seventeenth to the eighteenth century provides a hitherto unexplored historical context for recognizing the difference in their metaphorical treatments of the phenomenon. It brings to the fore Hamilton’s portrayal of Samson’s sense of divine judgment in his blindness and presents a new textual basis for understanding Handel’s musical setting. The aria reveals the composer’s careful consideration in his choice of key and use of enharmonicism to convey Samson’s apprehension. Studying Handel’s musical language in the context of eighteenth-century music theory and in comparison to other movements in Samson and his earlier works offers deeper insight into his dramatic purpose. This article explores the history of eclipse science, the literary and biblical background to the libretto, and Handel’s compositional technique. It shows their deep interconnection in depicting Samson’s pathos, offering a new perspective not only on the aria and its impact on the rest of the oratorio but also on the contribution of Samson to mid-eighteenth-century musico-dramatic style.
In George Frideric Handel’s oratorio Samson (HWV 57), completed in 1742,1 the aria “Total eclipse” compares the main character’s blindness, inflicted by the enemy’s gouging out of his eyes, to a total solar eclipse, during which the moon comes between the sun and the earth, temporarily blocking the light and darkening the day.2 Contrary to the passing nature of eclipses, however, there is no hope of reemerging light after darkness in the aria, and the natural astronomical event is described with bewilderment and distress equal to the trauma of sight loss. The librettist Newburgh Hamilton (1691–1761) drew the astronomical metaphor along with most of the text for the oratorio from John Milton’s (1608–1674) closet drama Samson Agonistes (1671), itself based on the Old Testament story of Samson in the book of Judges (see the title page of the oratorio wordbook in fig. 1).3 With respect to scientific knowledge of eclipses, however, Milton’s drama and Hamilton’s libretto are from very different eras. One key change in the seventy years between the two works is the diminishing relevance of astrology, defined by David Pingree and Robert Gilbert as a “type of divination that involves the forecasting of earthly and human events through the observation and interpretation of the fixed stars, the Sun, the Moon, and the planets.”4 Although “astrology enjoyed its greatest influence in English culture in the latter half of the seventeenth century” and “still held considerable sway among the populace” in the early eighteenth century,5 particularly in the widely promulgated view of eclipses as supernatural phenomena that portended tragic consequences, Alice Walters has shown that the public understanding of eclipses was gradually reshaped in the early eighteenth century by the dissemination of scientific explanations in astronomical broadsides. Most influentially, Edmond Halley (1656–1742) published broadsides that applied Isaac Newton’s theory of gravity to predict the path of total eclipse across Great Britain on April 22, 1715, and again on May 11, 1724.6
Title page of Newburgh Hamilton, Samson. An Oratorio (London, 1743), RB 28347, The Huntington Library, San Marino, California.
Title page of Newburgh Hamilton, Samson. An Oratorio (London, 1743), RB 28347, The Huntington Library, San Marino, California.
An examination of the changes in how eclipses were perceived in Britain from the seventeenth to the eighteenth century provides a hitherto unexplored historical context for recognizing the difference between Milton’s and Hamilton’s treatments of the eclipse metaphor, and sheds a new light on Hamilton’s adaptation and Handel’s musical setting of the text. This article crosses disciplines to explore the history of eclipse science, the literary and biblical background to the libretto, and Handel’s musical language, thereby offering a new perspective on both their intersection in depicting Samson’s pathos in “Total eclipse” and the significance of this portrayal on the rest of the oratorio. I will consider Handel’s use of enharmonicism in Samson and in his earlier oratorios Israel in Egypt (1738) and Messiah (1741) to present a new basis for understanding his setting of “Total eclipse.” Enharmonicism is a topic that has not received much discussion in Handel scholarship thus far, but it is employed to great effect in Samson, which stands out for the number and variety of examples. Examining these examples in the context of eighteenth-century music theory and musical practice will provide important insights into Handel’s use of the technique in characterizing fear, pain, despair, and agony.
Solar Eclipses in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
Since, as John Westfall and William Sheehan note, “a total or annular eclipse of the Sun…is only visible within the direct path of the umbra, which is a tiny swath averaging about 200 km across,” and premodern astronomers were “unable to forecast, to any degree of accuracy, just where and when one could see a total solar eclipse,” observations of totality were largely accidental.7 Although “the lunar-shadow explanation of solar eclipses was accepted by such authorities as Aristotle, Hipparchus, and Ptolemaeus, as indeed by astronomers ever since,” Westfall and Sheehan observe that it was not until the seventeenth century that astronomers were able to forecast them with enough accuracy to map the path of totality.8 The earliest known eclipse map was published by the German astronomer Erhard Weigel (1625–99) one day before the total eclipse crossed Europe and Asia on August 12, 1654.9 The paths of subsequent solar eclipses on September 23, 1699, and May 12, 1706, were recorded in both predictive and retrospective maps published by other continental astronomers.10 In 1715 and 1724 English astronomers Edmond Halley and William Whiston (1667–1752) each contributed to the effort of mapping the path of darkness across England.11 The high degree of precision of Halley’s forecast led him to celebrate the accomplishment in 1715:
We have received from so many Places so good Accounts, that they fully answer all our Expectations, and are sufficient to establish several of the Elements of the Calculus of Eclipses, so as for the future we may more securely rely on our Predictions; though it must be granted, that in this our Astronomy has lost no Credit.12
Halley published his 1715 map in part to warn the public of “the suddain darkness, wherin the Starrs will be visible about the Sun,” so that it would not come as a surprise and people would not “be apt to look upon it as Ominous, and to Interpret it as portending evill to our Sovereign Lord King George and his Government.” He assured his readers that “there is nothing in it more than Natural, and nomore than the necessary result of the Motions of the Sun and Moon.”13 Halley’s ability to map the path of the eclipse prior to the event prompted widespread interest, and he effectively engaged the public with an invitation to report their observations back to him.14 This not only served to improve Halley’s calculations, contributing to his publication of the actual path “as it really happened,”15 but also to affirm the eclipse’s natural, predictable, and not supernatural appearance (see fig. 2).16
Edmond Halley, A Description of the Passage of the Shadow of the Moon over England, In the Total Eclipse of the SUN, on the 22d Day of April 1715 in the Morning (London, 1715); EB7 H1552 715d, Houghton Library, Harvard University.
Edmond Halley, A Description of the Passage of the Shadow of the Moon over England, In the Total Eclipse of the SUN, on the 22d Day of April 1715 in the Morning (London, 1715); EB7 H1552 715d, Houghton Library, Harvard University.
Halley’s concern that people might view the eclipse as a political portent stems from a long-standing association of solar eclipses with the death of kings.17 The prediction of a solar eclipse on August 11, 1645, by the prominent seventeenth-century astrologer William Lilly (1602–81) portended “the death of some of the most eminent persons of Europe…he a King, or not much lesse.…I know the Nativities [i.e., the horoscopes] of two Princes or great persons, to whom this Eclipse portends either Destruction or many fearfull Calamities.”18 The widely publicized solar eclipse forecasted for March 29, 1652, which caused great panic,19 likewise predicted “the fall of monarchie”20 and “great dammages to…men in authority, as Kings, Princes and Governours,”21 among other consequences: “Malice, Hatred, Uncharitablenesse, cruell Wars and Bloodshed, House-burnings, great Robberies, Thefts, Plundering and Pillaging, Rapes, Depopulation, violent and unexpected Deaths, Famine, Plague, &c.”22 Deemed “Black Monday,” the day was even considered a sign of “God’s wrath in the Day of Judgment.”23 However, since the predicted solar eclipse was not total but only partial, the astrologers were ridiculed for decades and their credibility was greatly undermined (possibly even contributing to the eventual disbanding of the Society of Astrologers by the mid-1680s).24 Nonetheless, the linking of the astronomical event with calamities clearly did not subside: the solar eclipse in 1699 was projected to be in “Effects, or Significations more Terrible, than that of Black Monday in the Year, 1652”;25 and before the 1715 total solar eclipse, the prominent mathematician Charles Leadbetter circulated a similar warning that the eclipse “signifies Loss of Friends, and Frustration of Hopes…; it foreshews the Destruction of the Fruits of the Earth…, and a Danger of a Raging Pestilence…, unwholesome Air, Banishment, Poverty, Misery, Death of great Cattle, and the Mortality of Old People.”26
It was this type of panic that Halley tried to minimize through his broadsides, but fear proved to be difficult to dispel as people continued to connect tragedies with the astronomical event. In 1726 an article in the Weekly Journal or British Gazetteer warned of the possible effects of eclipses that year by identifying misfortunes that followed the 1715 total eclipse:
First, The Death of the late King of France. 2dly. The dreadful Plague at Marseilles in France, which immediately swept away above 100,000 Persons, by which all Europe was alarm’d. And 3dly, The Rebellion in Scotland, and at Preston, with the Beheading of the Lord Derwentwater.27
Perspectives did not change much two decades later. On June 4, 1748, the Old England newspaper advertised ahead of “Black Thursday, July 14, 1748” the following:
An Article, Out of Dr. MEAD’s Treatise, Of the Influence of the SUN, & MOON, Upon Human Bodies. “During the Obscuration in the Great ECLIPSE of the SUN April 22, 1715. Many Sick People Found themselves much worse. The Air was so Uncommonly Cold, that it made Us SHIVER. And the Face of Nature, appeared so Extremely Gloomy, & Dismal.…” NOW, as the Very great ECLIPSE of the SUN, that will Happen This Year, On Thurs. July 14 Will have the Same Effect.28
Nevertheless, some signs of change emerged after Halley published his map in 1715. There were definite efforts to recognize and promote the knowledge of eclipses as natural events. The total solar eclipse of 1724 prompted many astronomical publications,29 and an advertisement for one of them in London’s Weekly Journal or Saturday’s Post (on April 25, 1724) conveyed its educational objective:
To lessen the Consternation that People ignorant of the Cause of Eclipses may be put into, at the Appearance of the great and total Eclipse of the Sun, which will happen on Monday the 11th of May in the Afternoon, when it will be so surprisingly dark, that the Stars will be seen. A curious Draught shewing, at one View, the whole gradual Passage of the Moon over the Sun’s Body…is GIVEN GRATIS.30
Eclipse mapping also flourished from 1715 onwards, and by 1764 there were apparently so many eclipse maps on the market that the competition was likened to a “horse race.”31 The printing of some of these maps as a broadside with a large illustration, a short explanation, and a relatively inexpensive pricing (at around six pence) made the information even more accessible.32 The re-publication of Halley’s 1715 map in the 1740 Memoirs of the Royal Society confirmed its merit as well as its continuing relevance,33 and the marked increase in publications of astronomical texts in the 1740s attests to the growing general interest in the subject.34
In seventeenth-century Britain then, although astrologers were prominent, they “did not exert uncontested cultural dominance” (as we saw with Black Monday),35 and in the eighteenth century, although the public was better informed about the natural cause of eclipses, astrological interpretations lingered in people’s perception of the prodigy. The presence of conflicting views on eclipses in both centuries thus forms the context for understanding the astronomical references in the works of Milton and Hamilton.
Total Eclipse in Samson Agonistes and Samson
Milton and Hamilton both lived through highly anticipated and publicized total solar eclipses in 1652 and 1715, respectively. Although the 1652 forecast turned out to be inaccurate, and Milton was completely blind by then,36 he likely still heard the commotion around the event (and perhaps about earlier eclipses). As for Hamilton, Mike Frost has assessed that “the 50 years from 1715 to 1764 marked possibly the best half-century in the last two millennia for observing solar eclipses from the British mainland.”37
Whether Milton himself subscribed to the common view of eclipses as a sign of doom or simply employed a traditional astrological interpretation and metaphoric language rich in meaning to his contemporary readers, he used the astronomical reference with compelling effects in his works. The poem “Lycidas” (1638), which Milton wrote in memory of his friend Edward King, who died in a shipwreck, blames an eclipse for the curse on the ship.38
In book one of Paradise Lost (1667), Milton relates the fall of the disgraced archangel (Satan) to a “dim eclips” which
Milton’s language is in line with the literary tradition he inherited, which regularly employed the eclipse as a bad omen. William Shakespeare’s works provide several examples. In King Lear the Earl of Gloucester declares,
This is followed by a list of “sequent effects”:
Antony in Antony and Cleopatra predicts his own demise, stating,
Moreover, the title character in Othello anticipates changes after killing his wife, saying,
Milton’s use of the total eclipse as a metaphor for blindness in Samson Agonistes is slightly different in that his comparison of darkness is both literal and symbolic.44 His own blindness has led commentators to conclude that he put “much of himself into Samson’s lamentations about blindness and captivity among enemies.”45 The poet evidently found in the description of the total eclipse a perfect metaphor for Samson’s blindness: “dark, amid the blaze of noon” (Samson Agonistes [hereafter SA], line 80).46 The latter phrase resembles the typical “Sun setting at noon” wording found in eclipse literature of his time,47 but Milton omits the appearance of stars that often follows (e.g., “so dark and terrible it will be, that the Stars will be seen at noon day”)48—the visibility of stars did not fit his metaphor for blindness. He illustrates the foreboding permanence of Samson’s loss of sight by attributing irreversible damage and utter hopelessness to the eclipse: “Irrecoverably dark, total Eclipse / Without all hope of day” (SA, lines 81–82). This aligns with his references to the astronomical event as a portent in his earlier works, which is confirmed by Samson’s anticipation of his death: “my thoughts portend, / That these dark orbs…shall…/ yield to double darkness” (SA, lines 590–93).49
Hamilton’s adaptation of this eclipse metaphor for his libretto notably removes Milton’s portentous description of calamitous darkness, which may be indicative of the greater recognition of eclipses as natural events by the 1740s. He replaces “irrecoverably dark” with “No Sun, No Moon,”50 which, although seemingly just as extreme, more accurately represents the phenomenon. He also alters the words “without all hope of day” to “No Chearing ray / To Glad my eyes with welcome day,” supressing the permanent ill-effect described in Milton’s text (see table 1). Still, the librettist retains the ominous tone by not offering any hope of a reemerging sun; scientific knowledge did not eradicate all fearful associations.
Textual comparison of Samson Agonistes, lines 80–89, and Samson’s aria “Total eclipse” (act 1, scene 2).
| Samson Agonistes | Samson (act 1, scene 2) |
|---|---|
| O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon, Irrecoverably dark, total Eclipse Without all hope of day! O first created Beam, and thou great Word, Let there be light, and light was over all; Why am I thus bereav’d thy prime decree? The Sun to me is dark And silent as the Moon, When she deserts the night Hid in her vacant interlunar cave. | Total Eclipse! No Sun, No Moon! All dark amidst the blaze of noon! O Glorious Light! No Chearing ray To Glad my eyes with welcome day: Why thus depriv’d thy prime Decree, Sun, Moon, and Stars are Dark to me. |
| Samson Agonistes | Samson (act 1, scene 2) |
|---|---|
| O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon, Irrecoverably dark, total Eclipse Without all hope of day! O first created Beam, and thou great Word, Let there be light, and light was over all; Why am I thus bereav’d thy prime decree? The Sun to me is dark And silent as the Moon, When she deserts the night Hid in her vacant interlunar cave. | Total Eclipse! No Sun, No Moon! All dark amidst the blaze of noon! O Glorious Light! No Chearing ray To Glad my eyes with welcome day: Why thus depriv’d thy prime Decree, Sun, Moon, and Stars are Dark to me. |
In forming the final line of the aria text, Hamilton alters Milton’s words “The Sun to me is dark / And silent as the Moon” (SA, lines 86–87) to “Sun, Moon, and Stars are Dark to me” (emphasis added). In the beginning of the aria, only the absence of the sun and moon is marked (“No Sun, No Moon”); therefore, his addition of “stars” at the end signals a change, all the more notable since, as just mentioned, the visibility of stars during a total eclipse was frequently highlighted.51 Hamilton’s inclusion of stars among the darkened celestial bodies thus indicates a move away from the eclipse language.
“Sun, Moon, and Stars are Dark to me” could be an allusion to Milton’s description of his own blindness in his sonnet, “To Mr. Cyriac Skinner: Upon his Blindness” (ca. 1655): “Nor to thir idle orbs doth sight appear / Of Sun or Moon or Starre throughout the year.”52 But the positive tone of this sonnet, wherein the poet accepts his blindness and expresses his motivation to carry on (lines 6–9), makes it inconsistent with Samson’s distressed state of mind. Milton presents a different image of darkened celestial bodies in book three of Paradise Lost. He describes the satanic realm (to which God cast Satan out) as being outside “the luminous inferior Orbs” (3.420; that is, the spheres of the sun, planets, and moons53) and “under the frown of Night / Starless expos’d” (3.424–25, emphasis added).54 I suggest that it is more in line with this condemning darkness that Hamilton heightens Samson’s disturbance by following the question “Why thus depriv’d thy prime Decree” with “Sun, Moon, and Stars are Dark to me.”
In the Bible, God created sun, moon, and stars to manifest light, the prime decree of creation, upon the earth,55 but there are also references to their concealment that are of great significance. The biblical darkness of sun, moon, and stars signals the fearful day of judgment, also known as “the day of the Lord,” which “shall come as a destruction from the Almighty…; the stars of heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their light: the sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the moon shall not cause her light to shine” (Isaiah 13:6, 10). Similar warning and signs of the day can be found in Ezekiel 32:7: “And when I shall put thee out, I will cover the heaven, and make the stars thereof dark; I will cover the sun with a cloud, and the moon shall not give her light.” This day is further prophesied in Joel 2:10 as a dreadful day in which “the sun and the moon shall be dark, and the stars shall withdraw their shining.”56
Instead of adopting Milton’s use of the eclipse itself as a sign of doom and continuing the eclipse metaphor after the question “Why am I thus bereav’d thy prime decree?” (SA, line 85), Hamilton alters the image of eclipse darkness to the biblical day of judgment to communicate Samson’s sense of God’s wrath toward him. In this way, he retains the supernatural and fearful elements of darkness while avoiding superstitious astrological attributions. The subtle allusion to God’s judgment conveys Samson’s concern not only that his blindness could be a punishment from God but also that divine disapproval may have further ramifications, leading to death or even eternal condemnation.
The reason for Samson’s apprehension is made clear by the backstory to the libretto in Judges 16. Prior to his capture by the Philistines, Samson had revealed to his lover, Delilah (his wife according to Milton and Hamilton), the secret of his God-given strength: his hair, which had not been cut since birth.57 Bribed by the Philistines, she betrays Samson, shaving off his hair and turning him over to the Philistine lords, who blind and imprison him. Without his hair, Samson has lost not only his strength but, more consequentially, God’s divine favor.58
The conclusion reached at the end of Samson Agonistes (“And which is best and happiest yet, all this / With God not parted from [Samson], as was fear’d / But favouring and assisting to the end,” lines 1718–20, emphasis added) succinctly captures this underlying concern about God’s removal of his favor from Samson throughout Milton’s narrative.59 Hamilton omits “as was fear’d” in his adaptation,60 but his effort to underscore the precariousness of Samson’s status before God in the libretto is noteworthy. In the aria and chorus “Return O God of hosts” (act 2), Micah and the Israelites plead for God to “return” and “redress” Samson’s griefs. Hamilton’s addition of this text, not in Samson Agonistes, emphasizes his main character’s hopeless situation without God.
Samson, in his first aria “Torments alas” (act 1), complains of intense pains “that rob the soul it self of rest.” This phrase, too, Hamilton added to Milton’s text (see table 2), which shows Samson’s insecurity without divine support. A soul that cannot find rest, in biblical terms, is spiritually lost without God—the inverse, finding rest, is described in Jeremiah 6:16 and Matthew 11:29 as walking closely with God.62
Textual comparison of Samson Agonistes, lines 606–16, and Samson’s aria “Torments alas” (act 1, scene 1).
| Samson Agonistes | Samson (act 1, scene 1) |
|---|---|
| O that torment should not be confin’d To the bodies wounds and sores With maladies innumerable In heart, head, brest, and reins; But must secret passage find To th’ inmost mind, There exercise all his fierce accidents, And on her purest spirits prey, As on entrails, joints, and limbs, With answerable pains, but more intense, Though void of corporal sense. | Torments alas! are not Confin’d To heart, or head, or breast; But will a secret passage find Into the very inmost mind With pains intense opprest, That rob the soul it self of rest. |
| Samson Agonistes | Samson (act 1, scene 1) |
|---|---|
| O that torment should not be confin’d To the bodies wounds and sores With maladies innumerable In heart, head, brest, and reins; But must secret passage find To th’ inmost mind, There exercise all his fierce accidents, And on her purest spirits prey, As on entrails, joints, and limbs, With answerable pains, but more intense, Though void of corporal sense. | Torments alas! are not Confin’d To heart, or head, or breast; But will a secret passage find Into the very inmost mind With pains intense opprest, That rob the soul it self of rest. |
Samson goes on to describe the “real darkness” in which his “very Soul…dwells” at the end of his recitative “O loss of sight” in act 1. This is derived from Milton’s phrase “thy Soul…/ In real darkness of the body dwells” (SA, lines 156–59), but the librettist’s removal of the reference to the body alters the meaning significantly (see table 3). Biblically, a soul in darkness refers to a state of affliction for having rebelled against God. Psalm 107:10–11, for instance, identifies the soul that “sit[s] in darkness and in the shadow of death, being bound in affliction and iron; Because they rebelled against the words of God.” The conclusion of Samson’s recitative adds heavy spiritual implication to darkness in the following aria, “Total eclipse,” particularly in the reference to divine judgment.
Textual comparison of Samson Agonistes, lines 67–69, 155–59, and Samson’s recitative “O loss of sight” (act 1, scene 2).
| Samson Agonistes | Samson (act 1, scene 2) |
|---|---|
| O loss of sight, of thee I most complain! Blind among enemies, O worse than chains, Dungeon, or beggery, or decrepit age! … [Chorus] Thou art become (O worst imprisonment!) The Dungeon of thy self; thy Soul (Which men enjoying sight oft without cause complain) Imprison’d now indeed, In real darkness of the body dwells. | O Loss of Sight! of thee I most complain! O worse than beggary, old age, or chains! My very Soul in real darkness dwells! |
| Samson Agonistes | Samson (act 1, scene 2) |
|---|---|
| O loss of sight, of thee I most complain! Blind among enemies, O worse than chains, Dungeon, or beggery, or decrepit age! … [Chorus] Thou art become (O worst imprisonment!) The Dungeon of thy self; thy Soul (Which men enjoying sight oft without cause complain) Imprison’d now indeed, In real darkness of the body dwells. | O Loss of Sight! of thee I most complain! O worse than beggary, old age, or chains! My very Soul in real darkness dwells! |
Samson, moreover, condemns himself, saying, “impiously to blab / God’s counsel! is a sin without a name” in his recitative “It shou’d be so” (act 1, scene 3), which is an adjustment of Milton’s phrase “A sin / That Gentiles in thir Parables condemn / To thir abyss and horrid pains confin’d” (SA, lines 499–501).63 Hamilton’s rewording makes his character’s view of his failure indescribably worse (“sin without a name”), placing him completely at odds with God.64
In the context of this portrayal, it is significant that Hamilton allows only one occasion in which Samson addresses God directly (“Why does the God of Israel sleep? / Arise with dreadful Sound,” act 1), whereas the Israelites repeatedly invoke God on behalf of their leader and their nation.65 The librettist’s construction of the text of “Why does the God of Israel sleep?” and all of the Israelites’ choruses petitioning for divine aid (“O first created beam…/ To thy dark servant, Life by light afford,” “Return O God of hosts,” “Hear Jacob’s God…/ Israel depends on thee alone; / Save us,” and “With thunder arm’d, Great God, arise / Help Lord…/ save us”) from other Miltonic sources (as well as his own words) indicates his deliberate differentiation between Samson and the Israelites on their level of confidence in accessing God.66 As Ruth Smith observes, the “Israelite Chorus voices a closer and stronger connection to God than Samson’s.”67 Their intercessions underscore Samson’s diminished ability to make appeals on his own (despite his status as a leader set apart by God even before birth).
Hamilton’s insertion of Samson’s sense of God’s wrath in “Total eclipse” is, thus, part of his broader portrayal of the main character’s destitution without divine support. In a drama where Samson’s plight is the main focus,68 and the Israelites’ repeated pleas for divine rescue create a suspense of whether God will indeed intervene, the themes of suffering and dependence on God for salvation go hand in hand throughout the work.69
The examination of the history of eclipse science reveals the subtle difference between Milton’s and Hamilton’s metaphorical treatments of the phenomenon and brings to the fore the biblical significance of darkness in “Total eclipse.” By layering the image of darkness during the total solar eclipse with darkness on the day of judgment, Hamilton was able not only to keep Milton’s eclipse metaphor while updating its astronomical description but also to preserve Samson’s sense of doom by emphasizing his fear of God’s wrath. The aria, therefore, is an expression of Samson’s suffering from blindness as well as spiritual insecurity. The analysis of Handel’s musical setting in light of this new textual reading will offer another layer of perspective on the portrayal of Samson’s pathos.
Handel’s “Total Eclipse” and His Musical Language
Notably, Handel fills “Total eclipse” with more repetitions of the final line, “Sun, Moon, and Stars are Dark to me,” than repetitions of any other phrase, greatly emphasizing its significance. Every reiteration intensifies Samson’s anxious processing of the meaning of his inability to see the three celestial bodies. The first statement begins with a tritone drop at measure 25, after which the melody ascends mostly chromatically (mm. 25–28). The climb to f″ is interrupted by an octave displacement at measure 29, dropping a major seventh to a harsh G♯ diminished-seventh harmony on the word “dark.” The melody, however, quickly rises again, this time through an arpeggiation and a leap of a tritone to come to a crashing halt at the word “stars,” exclaimed at the melodic peak on f♯″ above a D♯ diminished-seventh chord. The subsequent final statement, sung to a withering E minor scalar descent, implies Samson’s despair (see ex. 1). Paul McMahon interprets the chromatic ascent as an expression of Samson’s desperation and “hope of once more seeing the light of day and the celestial planets,” but as I have shown, the reference to divine wrath in this passage takes the darkness far beyond Samson’s blindness.70 I argue that the tension built through chromaticism, tritones, and diminished-seventh chords more fittingly represents Samson’s escalating anxiety, and his terrified exclamation at the top of his range emphasizes the significance of the absence of stars.
Handel further conveys the gravity of Samson’s predicament through his tonal design. “Total eclipse,” set in E minor, stands out from its surrounding movements (and indeed, from all of Samson’s other arias) for its sharp-key setting.71 It follows his friend Micah’s aria “O mirror of our fickle state” in F minor, which laments Samson’s fall from glory; but instead of remaining on the flat side Handel makes a bold tonal transition to the sharp side in the intervening recitative, “Whom have I to complain of,” which closes in B minor to set up Samson’s aria in E minor.
Tonally, E minor is one of the farthest keys from F minor in the circle of fifths, which, according to Joel Lester, was “commonly used by late seventeenth-century and early eighteenth-century theorists to measure the distance between keys.”72 Although the precise circular arrangement of the keys varied among theorists, their common purpose, Paula Telesco writes, was to recommend “staying within an orbit of closely related keys and rarely going directly from one key to another too far away.”73 We cannot be sure if Handel consulted (or needed to consult) any circle, but the key relationships he had in mind may not have been very different from the diagram published in 1735 by his contemporary and friend, Johann Mattheson (1681–1764).74 According to Walter Schenkman, Mattheson’s circle is arranged “on the basis of the proximity within it of related keys to a given key,” proceeding (clockwise) “by pairs—minors and majors—and by alternating skips of fifths and thirds” (i.e., d, a, C, G, e, b, D, A, etc.; see fig. 3).75 The circle demonstrates that from F minor, A-flat major and B-flat minor are closely related, while E minor and B minor are on the opposite end and most distant (eleven and twelve steps away, respectively). Because the circle also separates flat and sharp keys, moving from one side of the circle to the other creates space for enharmonicism.
Johann Mattheson’s “Musical circle” in Kleine General-Bass-Schule (Hamburg, 1735), 131; 4 Mus.th. 979, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, https://mdz-nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:12-bsb10527432-5.
Johann Mattheson’s “Musical circle” in Kleine General-Bass-Schule (Hamburg, 1735), 131; 4 Mus.th. 979, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, https://mdz-nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:12-bsb10527432-5.
This occurs precisely between “O mirror” in F minor and “Total eclipse” in E minor. All the flats in the former (four in the key signature, plus G♭ from the Neapolitan harmony) are enharmonically replaced by sharps in the latter (F♯ in the key signature, plus C♯, G♯, A♯, and D♯ introduced through various harmonic progressions and tonicizations). These enharmonic respellings form an interesting musical pun with the complete replacement representing the overlapping image of the total eclipse and its metaphor for blindness. But it seems likely that Handel was also seeking an effect beyond the enharmonic pun, given that the move to a distant key, employing five enharmonic changes, would not have been seamless in the unequal tuning system of Handel’s time.
The most characteristic eighteenth-century keyboard tuning was an irregular temperament, in which fifths were all usable but tuned differently, and thirds were variously tempered depending on the frequency of their use. The more regularly employed thirds in the C major scale, for example, were tempered lightly, making them more “resonant and limpid,” compared to the thirds in keys with more flats or sharps that were “rendered distinctly more impure than in equal temperament.” As a result, the amount of tempering changed as triadic harmonies moved around the circle of fifths.76 This gave various keys “a diversity of intonational shading that was highly valued by connoisseurs and formed a prominent aspect of eighteenth-century musical thought.”77 In this type of tuning, not only would there have been audible differences between enharmonic notes but also dissimilarities between affective qualities of distant keys on both sides of the enharmonic switch.
Even Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683–1764), who became a strong proponent of equal temperament as early as 1737 with his Génération harmonique (having earlier advocated for a modified mean-tone temperament in his Nouveau Systême of 1726), argues that although the mathematical difference of a quarter-tone between enharmonic notes is inaudible, its effect can be felt in the succession of unrelated keys that enharmonicism facilitates.78 He writes in Génération harmonique:
[The ear] feels in this lack of relation (rapport) the harshness which [the enharmonic genre] causes; we are struck by the quarter-tone without realizing it; we are revolted by it because it is unnatural and because our ear cannot appreciate it. Nonetheless, the common harmony by which this passage is carried out from one mode to the other modifies the harshness. The moment of surprise passes like a flash and soon this surprise turns into admiration when we find ourselves transported from one hemisphere to another, so to speak, without having had time to think about it.79
Rameau also explains in his Demonstration du principe de l’harmonie (Paris, 1750) that “the ear recalls nothing from the enharmonic genus. It is the product of the two extremes, very dissonant between each other, to which even nature has at first refused immediate succession.”80 Rameau’s description of the effects of this juxtaposition is particularly noteworthy: the enharmonic “leads the ear astray, carrying the passions to excess, frightening, terrifying, and putting everything into disorder.”81
The availability of various tuning systems during Handel’s time meant that aural experiences of enharmonicism were not uniform, but the marked effect of enharmonicism in any irregular temperament (what Handel would have used)—and, for that matter, in equal temperament—would have contributed to a prominent affective impact of transitioning to a distant key. The examination of Handel’s use of enharmonicism in recitatives and arias of Samson as well as in the chorus “He sent a thick darkness” of Israel in Egypt and the recitative “Thy rebuke hath broken his heart” of Messiah offers an important basis for understanding the key relationship between “O mirror” and “Total eclipse.” Handel employs two primary types of enharmonicism: (1) immediate, defined by Telesco as the most common type in early eighteenth-century music, which involves an enharmonic reinterpretation at a specific point, usually by way of diminished-seventh chords;82 and what I differentiate as (2) non-immediate, which features an enharmonic respelling after some gap.
The transition between “O mirror” and “Total eclipse” is facilitated by an immediate enharmonic respelling in the intervening recitative, which inaugurates a move from the flat to the sharp side. In Samson’s recitative “Whom have I to complain of,” his paradoxical use of the word “peace” in measure 14 (“But peace, my soul, strength was my bane”) to describe the stripping of his strength is set to an immediate enharmonic change from A♭ to G♯83 in the progression from an A♭ major chord to a G♯ diminished chord, forcing a modulation from A-flat major to E minor (see ex. 2).84 Samson’s continuing conversation with Micah brings the recitative through another flat-to-sharp tonal progression (mm. 27–46), this time through a harmonic switch of D minor chord to D major at measures 32–33 (that is, without an enharmonic pivot chord), to draw the movement to a close in B minor in preparation for “Total eclipse.” F minor in “O mirror” and E minor in “Total eclipse” thus form the outer tonal contexts of the flat-to-sharp tonal transition in the recitative.
In a series of recitative exchanges between Samson and his father Manoa toward the end of act 1, beginning with Manoa’s “For thee my dearest son,” Handel also employs intense harmonic progressions with several enharmonic respellings. In “It shou’d be so,” Samson refuses to be comforted and wallows in shame, identifying his fault as “a sin without a name.” A circle-of-fifths progression (mm. 8–11) that leads up to this self-condemning statement is interrupted on the word “sin,” thwarting the expected continuation to A♭ major with an unrelated A dominant-seventh chord highlighted by C♯ in the melody approached by a tritone. The following G♯ diminished-seventh chord introduces G♯ in the bass (m. 12), replacing A♭ heard just one measure before (ex. 3). This brings the short nine-measure recitative, which began in the key of F minor, to close with a cadence on a distant D major in Samson’s declaration of his crime.85
The extreme tonal progression continues in Manoa’s response “Be for thy fault contrite” as he tries to encourage Samson with the possibility of God’s mercy and his potential release by the Philistines. Handel distinguishes the two scenarios (faith in divine mercy and trust in human ingenuity) by closing the former with a perfect cadence in F-sharp major (m. 20) and opening the latter on an E♭ major chord (m. 21) with an immediate enharmonic exchange between A♯ and B♭ (ex. 4). This sudden shift to the flat side creates an uncommonly bold tonal break within a single recitative, disassociating Manoa’s appeal for his son to hope in God’s forgiveness from his own plan to ransom Samson. Moreover, as Manoa looks upon his debilitated son with pity and tries to reassure him that the Philistines’ “revenge is sated now, / To see thee thus; who cannot harm them more” (albeit ironically—Samson would ultimately collapse a building on them), another enharmonic change from A♭ (m. 23) to G♯ (m. 24) after “revenge” conveys the horror in Manoa’s recollection of harm inflicted on his son.86
Samson gives a short answer to Manoa’s effort to secure his freedom, saying, “Why should I live?…/ Soon shall these orbs to double darkness yield.” Handel illustrates Samson’s lack of purpose by setting these words to harmonies without a clear tonal direction (ex. 5). Samson’s tonal and narrative disorientation continues as Handel enharmonically respells the final F♯ major-seventh chord (m. 29) as a G♭ major chord with a suspended E in the bass, connecting the recitative to Samson’s accompagnato “My Genial spirits droop” and creating a “droop” in the enharmonic alteration to the flat side. Samson’s weariness in having run his “race of Glory” and his “race of shame” further delays the tonal resolution until the final enharmonic alteration (B♭ to A♯) at measure 10, which leads the music to settle in the unrelated and unprepared key of E minor as Samson wishes for death to “lay [him] Gently down with them that rest.”87
Handel, Samson, recitative “Why should I live?” and accompagnato “My genial spirits droop.”
Handel, Samson, recitative “Why should I live?” and accompagnato “My genial spirits droop.”
Enharmonicism is found less frequently in arias, given the (relatively) strict harmonic patterns of the form, but here too Handel uses it in the more modulatory B sections of the arias. In Micah’s E-flat–major aria “Return O God of hosts” (act 2, scene 1), repetitions of “his mighty griefs” (mm. 35–40) in the B section are intensified by the chromatic alteration of C minor chord to a C♯ diminished / A dominant-seventh chord (m. 38). But, as the expected resolution to D major/minor is negated by an enharmonic respelling of C♯ as D♭ (in a B♭ minor harmony) on the word “griefs,” a further tension is built before the music settles in B-flat minor as the Israelites plead with God to “redress” Samson's griefs—Handel repeats the same progression in the attached Israelite chorus, “To dust his glory they wou’d tread” (mm. 54–55). A restatement of the same textual phrase (mm. 44–45) receives a similar treatment, this time beginning in D major, reached in measure 43 through a chromatic ascent in the bass. A seventh is added to the D major chord in measure 44, and its continuation to a G♯ diminished harmony pushes for a resolution to A major/minor. However, this is again negated by the enharmonic replacement of G♯ with A♭ in the vocal line on the word “griefs,” intensifying the harmony before settling on E♭ major on the word “redress” (ex. 6).
Manoa’s D-minor aria “Thy glorious deeds” (act 1, scene 3) switches to a lament (Largo e piano in 3/4) at the second section after the Allegro first section in common time. Handel closes the first section in the relative key of F major but moves to its parallel minor in the second section: “To Sorrow now I tune my Song. / And set my harp to notes of woe.” By the end of the first full statement of this text (mm. 61–69), however, Handel modulates to close with a cadence on the sharp key of A major (ex. 7). This results in non-immediate enharmonic replacements of A♭ (m. 62) and E♭ (m. 64) at the beginning of the phrase with G♯ (m. 67) and D♯ (m. 68) at the end. The extreme modulation and enharmonicism aptly illustrate the metaphor of tuning and setting the harp to “notes of woe.”
The same juxtaposition of distant keys that underlies the local enharmonic replacements in “Thy glorious deeds,” as well as in the other examples, is (I argue) the foundation for Handel’s larger tonal design of setting “O mirror” in F minor and “Total eclipse” in E minor with non-immediate enharmonic replacements between them. Handel’s use of the F minor–E minor key relationship can be found in his other works, which confirm the consistency with which he deploys this musical language in depicting severe affliction and darkness. In the chorus “He sent a thick darkness” in part two of his earlier oratorio Israel in Egypt, Handel depicts the plague of darkness that descends on the Egyptians for rejecting God. Without a key signature, the chorus harmonically roams aimlessly (as though lost in the dark), establishing the first key, F minor, as late as measure 9. The chorus wanders through various flat keys until, in the final measures, the music sharply shifts with the chromatic alteration of a D minor chord to D major at measure 29;88 this abrupt move to the sharp side introduces five sharps (F♯, C♯, G♯, A♯, and D♯) as non-immediate enharmonic replacements for all the preceding flats and brings the movement to close in the key of E minor (ex. 8). Textually, as God not only sends “a thick darkness” (which is external) but also “darkness which might be felt” (which is internal), the impact of the plague on the Egyptians is both physical and spiritual. Handel’s depiction of the Egyptians suffering in darkness under divine wrath with the progression from F minor to E minor and enharmonicism is, therefore, consistent with his portrayal of Samson.89
Another application of this tonal design can be found in part two of Handel’s Messiah. The recitative “Thy rebuke hath broken his heart” begins in F minor but transitions to the sharp side with an immediate enharmonic change from B♭ to A♯ on the words “thy rebuke” (m. 6) and closes in the key of B minor to set up the aria “Behold, and see if there be any sorrow” in E minor (ex. 9). The opening F minor may be brief, but it recalls multiple preceding choruses in F minor on Christ’s crucifixion (“Surely he hath borne our griefs,” “And with his stripes,” and “And the Lord hath laid on him”—the closing Adagio section of “All we like sheep”), and, as we have seen in other examples, all the flats in these movements (four in the key signature and Neapolitan G♭) are replaced by their enharmonically equivalent sharps (in addition to E♯ at measure 17 of “Thy rebuke” that replaces F). “Thy rebuke” and “Behold, and see” narrate Jesus’s agony of being forsaken by God on the cross. According to the biblical accounts, darkness covered the land in the middle of the day.90 Jens Peter Larsen highlights “abandonment and hopelessness” as “central themes” of these movements,91 and the correlation between Jesus’s and Samson’s suffering in darkness deepens the relevance of Handel’s use of similar tonal design in his settings.92 Both characters endure physical torments that are exacerbated by the sense of God’s rejection. Considered together with the Israel in Egypt chorus, the three settings affirm the affective significance of transitioning from F minor to E minor with enharmonic exchanges in illustrating grave physical and spiritual suffering under the darkness of divine wrath.
Conclusion
Milton and Hamilton both portray Samson’s blindness and his sense of doom, but the difference in their treatments of the total eclipse as a metaphor for blindness reflects the changing perception of the astronomical phenomenon in Britain from the late seventeenth to the early eighteenth century. The long-held view that eclipses brought tragedies continued well into the eighteenth century. However, by the time Hamilton adapted Milton’s text, the scientific advancements that made possible the prediction of eclipses with greater precision also helped people understand them as natural events. Hamilton’s key omission of Milton’s portentous description of the total eclipse, while keeping the ominous tone in his new wording, is thus consistent with the mixed information circulating during his time. Hamilton retains Samson’s sense of doom in Milton’s Samson Agonistes by transferring the referent of the eclipse’s darkness to the biblical day of judgment, signified by the darkness of sun, moon, and stars. Identifying this allusion to God’s wrath offers us a new understanding of the increasing tension in the repeated statements of Samson’s agonizing inability to see the three celestial bodies. Handel’s further expression of Samson’s deep physical and spiritual affliction through the move to a distant key and the use of enharmonicism finds greater context in his varied use of enharmonicism in Samson, Israel in Egypt, and Messiah. The interdisciplinary examination of “Total eclipse” reveals the intersection of science, literature, theology, and eighteenth-century music theory and practice in Hamilton and Handel’s depiction of Samson’s pathos. In doing so, it offers a new perspective not only on the aria and its impact on the rest of the oratorio but also on the contribution of Samson to the mid-eighteenth-century musico-dramatic style.
Notes
1 would like to thank Ellen T. Harris for reading through many versions of this paper, offering invaluable help, support, and advice. I am also indebted to Ruth Smith and various anonymous readers for their expert views on different disciplines explored in this work. Moreover, I am grateful to have received many constructive comments and suggestions after reading an early version of this paper at the 2021 American Musicological Society Annual Meeting on November 11, 2021, and at the 2021 American Handel Society Conference on March 13, 2021, both held online.
Handel drafted the oratorio between September and October 1741 but did not complete it until a year later on October 12, 1742. The oratorio was first performed on February 18, 1743, at London’s Theatre Royal, Covent Garden. For details on the composition, early performances, and Handel’s activities during this time, see George Frideric Handel, Samson: Oratorio in Three Acts, HWV 57, ed. Hans Dieter Clausen, Hallische Händel-Ausgabe, ser. 1, vol. 18.1 (Kassel: Bärenreiter-Verlag, 2011), xix–xxx; Donald Burrows, Handel (New York: Schirmer, 1994), 259–69, 309–12; and Winton Dean, Handel’s Dramatic Oratorios and Masques (London: Oxford University Press, 1959), 326–64.
The oratorio dramatizes the final day in the life of Israel’s disgraced hero Samson, after he had been imprisoned and blinded by Israel’s longtime enemy, the Philistines. Formerly known for his strength, Samson relives his fall from glory through visitations from Micah (friend), Manoa (father), Dalila (wife), and Harapha (Philistine giant). He ultimately embarks upon a suicide mission to avenge the Philistines and deliver his people from their oppression.
The title page of the 1743 wordbook published for the first set of performances in London discloses the source: “Alter’d and adapted to the Stage from the Samson Agonistes of John Milton” (reproduced in fig. 1). Milton published Samson Agonistes, a Dramatic Poem (London, 1671) together with Paradise Regain’d, A Poem. In IV Books (London, 1671). For a full side-by-side comparison of the libretto and Samson Agonistes (along with other sources), see Handel, Samson, ed. Clausen, xxxv–lxvii. Hamilton was Handel’s librettist for two other works, Alexander’s Feast (1736) and the Occasional Oratorio (1746).
David E. Pingree and Robert A. Gilbert, “Astrology,” in Encyclopaedia Britannica, accessed October 25, 2022, https://www.britannica.com/topic/astrology.
Alice N. Walters, “Ephemeral Events: English Broadsides of Early Eighteenth-Century Solar Eclipses,” History of Science 37 (1999): 1–43, at 1–2. See also Michelle Pfeffer, “The Society of Astrologers (c.1647–1684): Sermons, Feasts and the Resuscitation of Astrology in Seventeenth-Century London,” British Journal for the History of Science 54 (2021): 133–53.
Walters, “Ephemeral Events,” 9–10, 15. See also Jay M. Pasachoff, “Halley and His Maps of the Total Eclipses of 1715 and 1724,” Astronomy & Geophysics 40, no. 2 (1999): 18–21; and Larry Stewart, The Rise of Public Science: Rhetoric, Technology, and Natural Philosophy in Newtonian Britain, 1660–1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). Halley was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1678 and became the second Astronomer Royal in Britain in 1720. See “Halley; Edmond (1656–1742); astronomer,” The Royal Society Collections Catalogues, accessed October 25, 2022, https://catalogues.royalsociety.org/CalmView/Record.aspx?src=CalmView.Persons&id=NA8423.
John Westfall and William Sheehan, Celestial Shadows: Eclipses, Transits, and Occultations (New York: Springer, 2015), 102, 109.
Westfall and Sheehan, Celestial Shadows, 109.
Westfall and Sheehan, Celestial Shadows, 114.
Westfall and Sheehan, Celestial Shadows, 114–15.
Ahead of the 1715 eclipse, Halley published A Description of the Passage of the Shadow of the Moon over England, In the Total Eclipse of the SUN, on the 22d Day of April 1715 in the Morning (London, 1715); and Whiston published Calculation of the Great Eclipse of the Sun (London, 1715) and Compleat Account of the Great Eclipse of Sun (London, 1715). In 1724 Halley released a similar map, A Description of the Passage of the Shadow of the Moon over England, In the Total Eclipse of the Sun on 11th day of May, 1724 in the Evening. Togather [sic] with the Passage of the Shadow as it was Observ’d in the last Total Eclipse of 1715 (London, 1724), as well as A Description of the Passage of the Shadow of the Moon over Europe, As it May be Expected May 11th 1724 in the Evening (London, 1724); and Whiston contributed The Transit of the Total Shadow of the Moon over Europe (London, 1724). See Pasachoff, “Halley and His Maps,” 18–21.
Halley, “Observations of the Late Total Eclipse of the Sun on the 22nd of April Last Past,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 29 (1715): 245–62, at 246; quoted in Westfall and Sheehan, Celestial Shadows, 115.
Halley, A Description of the Passage…on the 22d Day of April 1715 in the Morning; quoted in Walters, “Ephemeral Events,” 13. See also Pasachoff, “Halley and His Maps,” 18–19.
Westfall and Sheehan, Celestial Shadows, 115. According to Walters (“Ephemeral Events,” 10, 39n18), the publication of Halley’s broadside was advertised twice ahead of the event in the London Gazette, March 8–12 and April 2–5, 1715.
Halley, A Description of the Passage…as it was Observed in the late Total Eclipse of the SUN April 22d 1715; quoted in Walters, “Ephemeral Events,” 15. See also Pasachoff, “Halley and His Maps,” 20.
Walters, “Ephemeral Events,” 11–14. See also Pasachoff, “Halley and His Maps,” 18–19.
David Gay, “Astrology and Iconoclasm in Milton’s Paradise Regained,” Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900 41 (2001): 175–90, at 179.
William Lilly, The Starry Messenger;…The Effects of the Eclips of the Sun, which Will be Visible in England, 11. August 1645 (London, 1645); quoted in Ann Geneva, Astrology and the Seventeenth Century Mind: William Lilly and the Language of the Stars (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), 250.
William E. Burns, “‘The Terriblest Eclipse That Hath Been Seen in Our Days’: Black Monday and the Debate on Astrology during the Interregnum,” in Rethinking the Scientific Revolution, ed. Margaret J. Osler (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 137–52, at 141. Notably, Lilly published two works ahead of the event: Annus Tenebrosus, Or the Dark Year (London, 1652); and An Easie and Familiar Method Whereby to Judge the Effects Depending on Eclipses, Either of the Sun or Moon (London, 1652).
Nicholas Culpeper, Catastrophe Magnatum: Or, the Fall of Monarchie. A Caveat to Magistrates, Deduced from the Eclipse of the Sunne, March 29. 1652 (London, 1652).
Vincent Wing, Ouranizomai, or an Almanack (London, 1652), C3v; quoted in Lara Dodds, “Hester Pulter Observes the Eclipse: Or, the Poetics of the Astronomical Event,” Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 20 (2020): 144–68, at 152.
Black Munday: Or, A Full and Exact Description of that Great and Terrible Eclipse of the Sun which Will Happen on the 29. Day of March 1652 (London, 1652), title page.
Burns, “Terriblest Eclipse,” 142.
Burns, “Terriblest Eclipse,” 151–52. See also Pfeffer, “Society of Astrologers,” 149.
William Knight, Vox Luminarium (London, 1699), title page.
Charles Leadbetter, A Treatise of Eclipses For 26 Years: Commencing Anno 1715. Ending Anno 1740 (London, 1717), 5.
“Concerning the Great Eclipse,” Weekly Journal or British Gazetteer, September 3, 1726, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/Z2001590960/BBCN?u=camb55135&sid=BBCN&xid=67fda2dd.
“Black Thursday, July 14, 1748,” Old England, June 4, 1748, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/Z2000989887/BBCN?u=camb55135&sid=BBCN&xid=dfd4079d. Elaine Sisman also mentions an anecdote from 1764, when a near-total solar eclipse was visible in Paris: Leopold Mozart wrote in a letter to Lorenz Hagenauer on April 1 that “even though all appearances of superstition were banished in France, the supposedly rational Parisian populace acted like fearful idiots, crowding into churches to avoid being poisoned with plagues by the darkened air.” Elaine Sisman, “Haydn’s Solar Poetics: The Tageszeiten Symphonies and Enlightenment Knowledge,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 66 (2013): 5–102, at 6.
Including those by Halley and Whiston already mentioned in note 11; Eighteenth-Century Collections Online (ECCO), https://www.gale.com/primary-sources/eighteenth-century-collections-online, contains about a dozen sources published in England between 1723 and 1725 on the total solar eclipse of 1724.
“Concerning the Great Eclipse,” Weekly Journal or Saturday’s Post, April 25, 1724, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/Z2001598748/BBCN?u=camb55135&sid=BBCN&xid=416987f0.
Walters, “Ephemeral Events,” 36; and Westfall and Sheehan, Celestial Shadows, 116.
Walters, “Ephemeral Events,” 2.
“Observations on the total Eclipse of the Sun, April 22. 1715. at London,” Memoirs of the Royal Society 6 (London, 1740): 151–63.
Walters, “Ephemeral Events,” 4. Jeffrey Wigelsworth shows the effectiveness of advertisements of public science in London newspapers in reaching London’s reading population. See Jeffrey R. Wigelsworth, “Bipartisan Politics and Practical Knowledge: Advertising of Public Science in Two London Newspapers, 1695–1720,” British Journal for the History of Science 41 (2008): 517–40. Paul Elliott and Stephen Daniels also show the promotion of science through Freemasonry in eighteenth-century England, mentioning astronomy as one of the subjects of its lectures and noting the involvement of freemasons in publications of scientific writings, especially the printer John Senex (1678–1740), who published numerous works on astronomy including Halley’s 1715 and 1724 broadsides. See Paul Elliott and Stephen Daniels, “‘The ‘School of True, Useful and Universal Science’? Freemasonry, Natural Philosophy and Scientific Culture in Eighteenth-Century England,” British Journal for the History of Science 39 (2006): 207–29, esp. 216. For details on Senex’s publications, see Walters, “Ephemeral Events,” 3.
Burns, “Terriblest Eclipse,” 152; see also Pfeffer, “Society of Astrologers,” 147–51.
Barbara Kiefer Lewalski, The Life of John Milton: A Critical Biography, rev. ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003), 279.
Mike Frost, “Henry Beighton’s Eclipse Chart,” in New Insights from Recent Studies in Historical Astronomy: Following in the Footsteps of F. Richard Stephenson, ed. Wayne Orchiston, David A. Green, and Richard Strom (Cham: Springer, 2015), 223–33, at 229. Frost notes that in addition to the total solar eclipses in 1715 and 1724, there were three annular eclipses visible from England in 1737, 1748, and 1764.
On “th’eclipse” (“Lycidas,” line 101), James Sitar and Thomas H. Luxon note that “A ship built during an eclipse might be imagined to be either cursed with bad luck or simply ill-built as a result.” See John Milton, “Lycidas,” with introduction and notes by James Sitar and Thomas H. Luxon, The John Milton Reading Room, https://milton.host.dartmouth.edu/reading_room/lycidas/text.shtml. Lewalski (Life of John Milton, 84) interprets lines 100–102 more allusively: they “reverberate with dark connotations, but the primary metaphor is that of sailing on the seas of life in the frail bark of the human body, subject to the ‘curse’ of mortality because of the Fall. That, the metaphor suggests, is why Lycidas died.”
Milton, “Lycidas,” lines 100–102.
John Milton, Paradise Lost: A Poem in Twelve Books, 1.597–99, introduction and notes by Alison G. Moe and Thomas H. Luxon, The John Milton Reading Room, https://milton.host.dartmouth.edu/reading_room/pl/book_1/text.shtml. For discussion of Milton’s association of “Satan with astrology, eclipses, and cosmic portents,” see Gay, “Astrology and Iconoclasm,” 178.
King Lear, act 1, scene 2, lines 109–10, 112–15. In this scene the Earl of Gloucester’s son Edmund also speaks of eclipses in superstitious terms: “O, these eclipses do / portend these divisions” (lines 143–44); and “I am thinking, brother, of a prediction I read / this other day, what should follow these eclipses” (lines 147–48). See William Shakespeare, King Lear, The Folger Shakespeare, https://shakespeare.folger.edu/shakespeares-works/king-lear/entire-play/. See also John Dvorak, Mask of the Sun: The Science, History and Forgotten Lore of Eclipses (New York: Pegasus Books, 2017), 8.
William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, act 3, scene 13, lines 188–89, The Folger Shakespeare, https://shakespeare.folger.edu/shakespeares-works/antony-and-cleopatra/entire-play/. See also Dvorak, Mask of the Sun, 8.
William Shakespeare, Othello, act 5, scene 2, lines 122–25, The Folger Shakespeare, https://shakespeare.folger.edu/shakespeares-works/othello/entire-play/. See also Dvorak, Mask of the Sun, 8.
On Milton’s use of metaphors in Samson Agonistes, see Robert L. Entzminger, “Samson Agonistes and the Recovery of Metaphor,” Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900 22 (1982): 137–56.
Lewalski, Life of John Milton, 523. See also E. S. Gerhard, “The Autobiographical Elements in Samson Agonistes,” Nassau Literary Magazine (1899): 306.
John Milton, Samson Agonistes, with introduction and notes by Laura Ferrell and Thomas H. Luxon, The John Milton Reading Room, https://milton.host.dartmouth.edu/reading_room/samson/drama/text.shtml. All quotations hereafter from Samson Agonistes are from this edition, which is based on the 1671 edition as found in the Rauner Special Collections, Dartmouth College Library (Val. 824/M64/U612).
Dodds, “Hester Pulter Observes the Eclipse,” 155.
Black Munday, 1; quoted in Dodds, “Hester Pulter Observes the Eclipse,” 150. See also Wing, Ouranizomai: “Turning the bright day into a darksome night, whereby the Starres will appear in the day time” (C2r); quoted in Dodds, “Hester Pulter Observes the Eclipse,” 152. Halley in 1715 also forewarned people of “the suddain darkness, wherin the Starrs will be visible about the Sun”; quoted in Walters, “Ephemeral Events,” 13. See also the notice in the Weekly Journal or Saturday’s Post (April 25, 1724) quoted above at note 30.
He dies avenging the Philistines, breaking the pillars of their temple to collapse the building on them and himself during the feast of Dagon, the Philistine god.
All quotations of the oratorio text are from Handel, Samson, ed. Clausen, xxxv–lxvii.
See note 48 above.
John Milton, “To Mr. Cyriac Skinner: Upon his Blindness,” lines 4–5, The John Milton Reading Room, https://milton.host.dartmouth.edu/reading_room/sonnets/sonnet_22/text.shtml.
See Moe and Luxon’s commentary on the words “inferior Orbs” in Milton, Paradise Lost, 3.420.
David Quint notes that “the flying devil lands on the dark outside of the universe and ‘alighted walks’ (3.422); the Latinate pun suggests that he is deprived of light.” David Quint, “‘Things Invisible to Mortal Sight’: Light, Vision, and the Unity of Book 3 of Paradise Lost,” Modern Language Quarterly 71 (2010): 229–69, at 232.
Genesis 1:3 and 1:16–17 (King James Version; all biblical references henceforth are to this version): “And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.…And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth.” Sara Eckerson observes that “there are hints in the direction of the creation narrative in [Samson's] reference to the sun, moon, and stars.” See Sara E. Eckerson, “The Material of the Servant: Theology and Hermeneutics in Handel’s Samson,” Yale Journal of Music & Religion 4, no. 2 (2018): 1–32, at 10.
This is restated almost word for word in Joel 3:15. See also the New Testament references to sun, moon, and stars in Matthew 24:29 and Luke 21:25.
Samson was a Nazarite, which meant that he was given specific rules on his life (see Numbers 6:1–21), among which was the injunction that “No razor shall come on his head” (Judges 13:5).
See Judges 16:19–20. The notion of God’s departure can also be found in the story of King Saul, which would have been familiar to Handel’s oratorio audiences from the production of Saul (1739). For discussion of Saul’s loss of divine favor, see Minji Kim, “The Amalekite Case and the Portrayal of Saul in Handel and Jennens’s Oratorio Saul (1739),” Journal of Musicological Research 35 (2016): 45–60.
See Jennifer Lodine-Chaffey, “John Milton’s Samson Agonistes: Deathly Selfhood,” Parergon 36 (2019): 155–77, who remarks on the impact of God’s removal of his favor on Samson’s identity: “For Samson…, his physical ability served as proof of his spiritual empowerment. Without the external markers of election, however, Samson now struggles to understand who he is” (160). She continues, “when Samson laments that ‘Light the prime work of God to me is extinct,’ his condition signifies the annihilation of not only a sensory organ, but also his knowledge of himself as the recipient of God’s divine inspiration” (165).
This is changed to “Praise we Jehovah then, who to the end / Not parted from him, but assisted still” in Micah’s recitative “Why should we weep or wail” (act 3, scene 3).
Clausen identifies Milton’s paraphrases of Psalms 7, 80, and 86 as textual sources for this aria and chorus. See Handel, Samson, ed. Clausen, xlvi–xlvii.
Jeremiah 6:16 states, “Thus saith the Lord, stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls.” Jesus, in Matthew 11:29, also promises “rest unto your souls” in following and believing in him.
According to Thomas Newton’s footnote in his 1754 edition of Milton’s Paradise regain’d, the “sin” mentioned here is in reference to “the story of Tantalus, who for revealing the secrets of the Gods was condemn’d to pains of Hell,” recounted in Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations, 4.16. See Milton, Paradise regain’d, A poem, in four books. To which is added Samson agonistes: and poems upon several occasions.…A new edition; with notes of various authors, by Thomas Newton, D.D. (Dublin, 1754), 1:218n500.
For further discussions on Hamilton’s adjustment of Samson Agonistes, see Ruth Smith, “Intellectual Contexts of Handel’s English Oratorios,” in Music in Eighteenth-Century England: Essays in Memory of Charles Cudworth, ed. Christopher Hogwood and Richard Luckett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 115–33, at 116–18; Smith, “Milton Modulated for Handel’s Music,” in Milton in the Long Restoration, ed. Blair Hoxby and Ann Baynes Coiro (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 159–78; Smith, “National Aspiration: Samson Agonistes Transformed in Handel’s Samson,” in The Edinburgh Companion to Literature and Music, ed. Delia da Sousa Correa (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020), 304–10; and Smith, Handel’s Oratorios and Eighteenth-Century Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 298–99.
See Smith, “National Aspiration,” 306. In “Milton Modulated” (173), Smith also writes, “Reflecting the familiar Early Modern paralleling of the chosen people of the Old Testament with the contemporary Christian community, Hamilton’s main theme is not Samson’s recovery as God’s champion, but God’s championship of his chosen people. So it is not illogical that Hamilton’s Israelite Chorus repeatedly intercedes for Samson with God, making appeals on his and the nation’s behalf which are quite outside the parameters of [Samson Agonistes].”
“To thy dark servant” appears to be Hamilton’s own words; “Return, O God of hosts” is partially drawn from Milton’s Psalms 7, 80, and 86; “Hear, Jacob’s God” reflects sentiments in Milton’s Psalms 84 and 88; “With thunder arm’d, great God, arise” contains some elements of Milton’s Psalms 3, 7, and 86. See also Handel, Samson, ed. Clausen, xxxv–lxvii; and Dean, Handel’s Dramatic Oratorios, 330.
Smith, “National Aspiration,” 306. Smith also notes that “this inversion of relationships to the divine is the most substantial and transformative alteration to Milton’s drama, and it enabled Handel to make the oratorio a prime manifestation of that favourite eighteenth-century mode, the religious sublime” (306).
Dean comments on the lack of “incident and variety” in act 1, which “stems from the inactivity of Samson himself, who is a sufferer, not an agent” (Handel’s Dramatic Oratorios, 330, 332).
Smith writes that in the oratorio, “Milton’s ‘plot’ of Samson’s gradual spiritual regeneration is replaced with a drama of suspense” of whether God will “intervene in time to save His nation” (Smith, “National Aspiration,” 308), but it should be noted that some Milton scholars argue against the view of Samson’s gradual spiritual regeneration in Samson Agonistes. J. Martin Evans, for example, insists that “there is no detectable progression…, no moral or spiritual development.” He maintains that in the last act, Samson “suddenly, unexpectedly, undeservedly” experiences “rouzing motions,” which Evans identifies as “God’s intervention,” a perspective more in line with Hamilton’s libretto. See J. Martin Evans, The Miltonic Moment (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2014), 131.
Paul McMahon, “Darkness and Light: Handel’s Rhetorical Vocal Writing in the English Oratorio Samson,” Journal of Music Research Online 8 (2017): 1–27, at 11, http://www.jmro.org.au/index.php/mca2/article/view/198/58.11.
Samson’s other arias include: “Torments alas” (act 1) in C minor; “Why does the God of Israel sleep?” (act 1) in B-flat major; “Your charms to ruin” (act 2) in D minor; “My strength is from the living God” (act 2) in C minor; and “Thus when the sun” (act 3) in B-flat major.
Joel Lester, “Tone-painting the Mysterious: The ‘Et expecto’ from J. S. Bach’s Mass in B Minor,” Bach 51 (2020): 5–43, at 33.
Paula Telesco, “Forward-Looking Retrospection: Enharmonicism in the Classical Era,” Journal of Musicology 19 (2002): 332–73, at 371.
Johann Mattheson, Kleine General-Bass-Schule (Hamburg, 1735), 131.
Walter Schenkman, “Theory and Practice: Mattheson’s Differing Key Arrangements, Part I,” Bach 12 (1981): 2–10, at 2.
Mark Lindley, “Irregular Temperaments from 1680,” in “Temperaments,” Grove Music Online, accessed June 29, 2022, https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.27643.
Lindley, “Introduction,” in “Temperaments.” Ellen T. Harris, in George Frideric Handel: A Life with Friends (New York: W. W. Norton, 2014), 84–85, also notes that “in Handel’s lifetime, the standard tuning system gave more individuality to the various keys than now (the rise of equal temperament having smoothed out the differences), and the harmonic variations that resulted from the tuning allowed different keys to project distinctly different moods.” For further reading, see A. C. N. Mackenzie of Ord, The Temperament of Keyboard Music: Its Character; Its Musicality; and Its History (Bristol: A.C.N. Mackenzie of Ord, 2007); and Bruce Haynes, “Beyond Temperaments: Non-Keyboard Intonation in the 17th and 18th Centuries,” Early Music 19 (1991): 356–81.
Alexander Rehding, “Rousseau, Rameau, and the Enharmonic Furies in the French Enlightenment,” Journal of Music Theory 49 (2005): 141–80, at 158.
Jean-Philippe Rameau, Génération harmonique (Paris, 1737), 153; quoted in Thomas Christensen, Rameau and Musical Thought in the Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 207.
Jean-Philippe Rameau, Demonstration du principe de l’harmonie (Paris, 1750), 96–97; quoted in Rehding, “Rousseau, Rameau,” 165.
Rameau, Demonstration du principe de l’harmonie, 99; quoted in Charles Dill, “Rameau’s Imaginary Monsters: Knowledge, Theory, and Chromaticism in Hippolyte et Aricie,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 55 (2002): 433–76, at 469.
Telesco, “Forward-Looking Retrospection,” 333. Telesco also identifies a second category, retrospective enharmonicism, which “does not involve the reinterpretation of an enharmonic pivot chord, nor is a reinterpretation perceived at any one point—there is no aural clue. It becomes clear only in retrospect that one must have occurred” (334). She discusses this type in examples from late eighteenth-century compositions.
In Handel’s autograph (British Library R.M.20.f.6, f.24r) and Handel, Samson, ed. Clausen, 61, the melody remains on A♭ at “peace,” but the continuo figure shows the change in harmony to G-sharp diminished chord. The melodic note is respelled as G♯ in Handel, Samson, ed. Donald Burrows, Vocal Score (London: Novello, 2005), 40. Although these measures are cut in the shortened version Handel used for his later productions (see version B in Handel, Samson, ed. Burrows, 43–44), the same tonal outline (opening in E-flat major and proceeding through E minor to B minor), is retained, and the enharmonic switch from B♭ at measure 7 to A♯ at measure 8 facilitates this modulation from the flat to the sharp side.
The examples are annotated with roman numerals when the key is stable or unambiguous (prefaced by an indication of the key, set in boldface); when a passage is modulatory or ambiguous, the annotations take the form of chord symbols, even when there is an arguable functional analysis in one or more keys.
Although this cadence could be analyzed in D minor with a “Picardy” third, the move to the sharp side with the establishment of D major sets up the sharp keys in Manoa’s recitative, “Be for thy fault contrite,” that immediately follows.
Handel cut most of Samson’s “It shou’d be so” (except the first measure) and all of Manoa’s “Be for thy fault contrite” for his later version (see Handel, Samson, ed. Burrows, 88–89), but his original settings offer valuable examples of his use of enharmonicism.
Handel notably retains this sequence from “Why should I live?” to “My genial spirits droop” in his later version (see Handel, Samson, ed. Burrows, 88–89). There are several associations of Samson’s suffering with the key of E minor in the oratorio. In addition to “Total eclipse,” Samson’s opening recitative “This day, a solemn feast” begins in E minor; Samson’s recitative “Whom have I to complain of” closes in E minor on the statement “Strength was my bane, the source of all my woes. / Each told apart wou’d ask a life to wail” (see ex. 2); Manoa’s accompagnato “O miserable change” ends in E minor on the words: “Now unequal match / To Guard his breast against the Coward’s Spear”; and Philistine air and chorus “Great Dagon has subdu’d our foe,” which celebrates Samson’s subjugation, is set in E minor.
See also the above discussion of Samson’s recitative “Whom have I to complain of,” where Handel uses the D minor–D major chord switch (mm. 32–33) to move from the flat to the sharp side.
In a wordbook for Israel in Egypt published for a performance in Oxford (ca. 1740s), the chorus “He sent a thick darkness” is followed by an inserted aria “Total eclipse” from Samson. This interestingly illustrates the recognition of the topical connection between the two movements. See George Frideric Handel, Israel in Egypt, an Oratorio. (Oxford, n.d.), 6–7, ECCO, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/CW0110214891/ECCO?u=camb55135&sid=bookmark-ECCO&xid=c271d371&pg=1.
See, for example, Matthew 27:45. There is a centuries-old debate about whether the darkness over Egypt mentioned in the book of Exodus and at the time of Christ’s crucifixion could have been caused by a total eclipse, although the general consensus has been negative. In addressing the plague of darkness over Egypt, the leading French protestant reformer and theologian John Calvin (1509–64) argued that “the cause of the darkness could not be assigned to an eclipse, both on account of its density and the time it lasted.” John Calvin, John Calvin’s Bible Commentaries on the Harmony of the Law (1563), trans. Charles William Bingham (Loschberg: Jazzybee Verlag, 2018), 1:143. Titles of publications from the early eighteenth century also provide some sense of the debate on the darkness during Christ’s crucifixion. Arthur Ashley Sykes, A Dissertation on the Eclipse mentioned by Phlegon: or, An Enquiry Whether that Eclipse had any Relation to the Darkness which happened at our Saviour’s Passion (London, 1732), was followed just one year later by Sykes, The Defence of the Dissertation on the Eclipse Mentioned by Phlegon: Wherein is Further Shewn, that the Eclipse had no Relation to the Darkness which Happened at our Saviour’s Passion (London, 1733).
Jens Peter Larsen, Handel’s Messiah, 2nd ed. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1972), 147.
Burrows mentions the similarity of pathos in Handel’s portrayal of Samson’s and Jesus’s endurance of antagonism by their enemies, setting the aria and chorus “Return, O God of hosts” and “To dust his glory” in “striking parallel to ‘He was despised’ in Messiah” (Handel, 310). The typological association of Samson with Jesus is also evident throughout the libretto: (1) Hamilton transferred the expression of sorrow over Christ’s death in Milton’s The Passion (1645) to Manoa’s lament over the disgrace of his son in the aria “Thy glorious deeds”; (2) Samson’s final aria “Thus when the sun” is adapted from Milton’s poem On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity (1629), placing Samson in direct comparison with Jesus and identifying them both as the ones who dispel evils of darkness; and (3) in Samson’s aria “My strength is from the living God,” Hamilton appends the last two lines: “but to the righteous peace and rest / With liberty to all opprest.” Here, the librettist confers on Samson the power attributed to Jesus, who offers peace, rest, and liberty. Hamilton thus associates Samson birth, suffering, and self-sacrifice with Christ, in addition to his role as prophet (“Why does the God of Israel Sleep?”), deliverer (“My strength is from the living God”), and judge (“Thus when the sun”). For an example of eighteenth-century typological interpretation of Samson’s story, see Matthew Henry, “Exposition with Practical Observations of the Book of Judges,” in An Exposition of All the Books of the Old and New Testament, vol. 2 (London, 1725), https://www.ccel.org/ccel/henry/mhc2.Jud.i.html.
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