The concept of “appropriateness” in music, as first articulated by seventeenth-century French theorist Michel de Pure, provides a key lens through which to examine the French influences on Handel’s work. In his Idées des spectacles anciens et nouveaux (1668), de Pure praises Jean-Baptiste Lully’s divertissements for their appropriateness, which he defines as “the correct relation that the air must have to the thing represented”.1 This idea emphasizes the regulatory role of music, where its power is constrained by its fidelity to the text, thereby preventing the music from expanding boundlessly within the imagery of the narrative.