ABSTRACT
To investigate whether Milton’s poetic theory of music can be realized in actual music, this chapter explores the Baroque composer G.F. Handel’s oratorio Samson, an adaptation of Milton’s Samson Agonistes. The stiffest test of Milton’s theory of music as both sound and metaphor is posed by the cacophonous climax of Milton’s play. Cacophony presents a special challenge for Western tonal music, which privileges consonance over dissonance, especially in the Baroque and Classical periods. After developing an account of Milton’s radical poetics of cacophony, the chapter traces Handel’s virtuosic if more conservative approach to the problem of cacophony. Where Milton is willing to risk the structural integrity of poetic form to represent cacophony, Handel defangs the threat cacophony poses to musical harmony by reimagining the nature of the dramatic world in which the action takes place. Handel transforms Milton’s musicless drama of Samson’s personal agon into a communal conflict of cultures in which Philistines and Hebrews struggle against one another through the power of diegetic music-making. Handel converts cacophony from a real sound into pure metaphor that sounds nothing like cacophony. In his symbolic rendering of cacophony, Handel rebukes Milton’s theory of music as more visionary than practical.
