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HANDEL AT VAUXHALL VOL.2 w Chorus: ‘Happy, happy, happy plains!’ [1.31] Eleanor Dennis & Claire Bessent sopranos, Benjamin Bevan bass e Air: ‘There sweetest flowers of mingled hue’ [4.39] 1 Spring Gardens (Rural Beauty or Vaux-Hal Garden) William Boyce [3.21] Claire Bessent soprano Greg Tassell tenor r Chorus: ‘Happy, happy, happy plains!’ [1.28] Eleanor Dennis & Claire Bessent sopranos, Benjamin Bevan bass Concerto No. 4 Op. 6 in A minor, HWV 322 G. F. Handel t Air: ‘There youthful Cupid, high advanc’d’ [2.47] 2 Larghetto affetuoso [2.49] Eleanor Dennis soprano 3 Allegro [2.43] y Chorus: ‘Happy, happy, happy plains!’ [1.32] 4 Largo e piano [2.22] Eleanor Dennis & Claire Bessent sopranos, Benjamin Bevan bass 5 Allegro [2.47] Bonus Tracks u 6 The Power of Music and Beauty John Stanley [3.17] The Ladies in Vaux- hall- Gardens, Thomas Gladwin [3.18] Mary Bevan soprano to the British Officers at Dettingen Eleanor Dennis soprano 7 A Song on the Victory over the Rebels G. F. Handel [2.44] i by his Royal Highness the Duke of Cumberland, HWV 228.9 Roger and Sue a Ballad Johann Adolph Hasse [3.43] Greg Tassell & Charles MacDougall tenors to a Favourite Air by Sig.r Hasse Nicky Spence tenor 8 Colin’s Description of Vauxhall or Green-Wood Hall Thomas Gladwin [8.09] Nicky Spence tenor o A Loyal Song for two Voices Anonymous [1.38] ‘God save great George Ye king 9 Hornpipe in D major, HWV 356 G. F. Handel [3.10] Charles MacDougall tenor, Benjamin Bevan bass Compos’d for the Concert at Vauxhall 1740 Total timings: [59.44] 0 The Farewel to Vaux Hall John Lampe [3.59] Greg Tassell tenor LONDON EARLY OPERA BRIDGET CUNNINGHAM CONDUCTOR The Finale DANIEL MOULT ORGAN Comus, HWV 44 G.F Handel CLAIRE BESSeNT • MARY BEVAN • ELEANOR DENNIS q Air: ‘There, in blissful shades and bow’rs’ [3.47] BENJAMIN BEVAN • CHARLES MACDOUGAlL • NICKY SPENCE • GREG TASSELL Benjamin Bevan bass www.signumrecords.com HANDEL AT VAUXHALL Vauxhall though, was never a simple pleasure an unfortunately memorable phrase, Dr Johnson salaries of performers and composers, but David E. Coke park. It began under the Stuarts as a common tells us that the music there was “not too also in the design and erection of high quality tavern garden, but with the Georgians it was refined for the general ear”, and for a long time, specialist permanent buildings; these were Vauxhall Gardens, on the south bank of the turned into a real force for good in the the phrase ‘pleasure garden music’ has evoked some of the first such buildings in Europe, River Thames just upstream from Lambeth transformation and modernisation of London, the 18th century equivalent of ‘easy listening’. intended to present the performers to the Palace, was the pre-eminent pleasure garden helping to make it the most elegant and polite To those who have been misled by Dr Johnson greatest advantage for their new audience, of Georgian England. It was the largest, the capital city in Europe. Part of the reason for and others, this CD and Handel at Vauxhall many of whom would never have been exposed most commercially successful, and the most this cultural impact was the artistic patronage Vol.1 will come as a revelation, maybe even to music of this quality before. influential of all the sixty or more such places of its remarkable proprietor, Jonathan Tyers a shock. Vauxhall’s music was the best and in London. ‘Pleasure gardens’ were private (1702-1767), who played such an important role most original that England had to offer, What is clear is that part of the fascination commercial resorts where visitors could in the development of English art and music not just as regards composition, but also of Vauxhall was the experience of listening to expect, for a small admission charge, to be in the 18th century. Under his management, in terms of its performance, executed by music in the open air, with the opportunity of trying entertained with music, refreshments, and a Vauxhall became a hot-bed of artistic creativity some of the outstanding musicians of the all sorts of different places to listen from; this pleasurable rural atmosphere; most had little right at the centre of the cultural and social time. Much of it was written specifically for was quite new to an audience more used to or no horticultural interest. Vauxhall attracted life of London, where a success would advance performance at the pleasure gardens, and sitting in a relatively fixed position in a concert some 100,000 visits each Summer season, a career, and a failure hardly mattered. almost all of it was very new; some, indeed, room or theatre. Music heard while drinking in a and it thrived as a business for nearly two William Hogarth helped Tyers to turn it into would certainly have been too sophisticated ‘for supper-box or strolling in a distant point of the centuries, from 1661 until 1859. the first great public gallery for contemporary the general ear’, while some of the rest would garden would have produced entirely different British art, and George Frideric Handel found have had a broad appeal. Despite the rival experiences from that of standing in front of The gardens became internationally famous, there the ideal outlet for his secular music, in attractions of the artworks, the food, the the Orchestra itself, or on the balcony around the spawning many imitators not only in London particular his grand ceremonial pieces, performed displays, and the company, it was always music organ. On her visit to Vauxhall, Fanny Burney’s and the British Isles, but throughout the there to an entirely new audience, amongst that was the centre of attention at Vauxhall heroine Evelina is impressed by the al fresco World, from Charleston in the USA to Dunedin in whom his fame would quickly spread. Gardens, at least from the mid 1730s until the music, despite her ungracious companions: New Zealand. Vauxhall Gardens featured in second decade of the 19th century, when other the drama and fiction of its time, ensuring its For a long time, we have been authoritatively more spectacular attractions began to monopolise ‘There was a concert, in the course of which, a literary immortality, and it is still used by persuaded that the music performed at public wonder. Jonathan Tyers, the developer hautbois concerto was so charmingly played, romantic novelists today, as it was in the Vauxhall Gardens in the 18th century is hardly and sole proprietor of Vauxhall Gardens from that I could have thought myself upon enchanted 18th century, as a shorthand for sexual adventure worth our notice – mere background noise to 1729 until his death, consistently invested ground, had I had spirits more gentle to associate and intrigue. the main entertainments of the gardens. In heavily in music, not only in the fees and with. The Hautboy in the open air is heavenly’. - 4 - - 5 - Vauxhall was an outdoor entertainment, which was not yet a classic pleasure garden, but the entertain his guests. Among the works of art attraction of royal patronage and royal ownership, came into its own after dark under artificial great appeal of the place was that the sexes was the remarkable series of fifty or more much exploited by Tyers. lighting. This novel convivial diversion was could meet freely there, without the constraints modern genre paintings designed by Francis open every day from May to September, usually that circumscribed the tricky process of Hayman, a close colleague of William Hogarth, Music played a vital role in Tyers’s Vauxhall. from 5 or 6 o’clock in the evening until the early socialising among young men and women in to decorate the supper-boxes which surrounded It was the element that set the tone of the hours of the morning. For the charge of just polite society; dozens of the visitors on any the Grove, the central gathering place of the gardens; it not only provided visitors with a rich one shilling, the equivalent cost of admission one evening would certainly be working girls gardens, and the remarkable life-sized marble topic of polite conversation and discussion, to a major art exhibition today, Tyers’s visitors, from the streets of London, looking out for statue of Handel, the presiding musical genius but it also encouraged people to relax and drawn from a huge cross-section of the new clients. Pepys himself, though married at of Tyers’s Vauxhall, designed and created by enjoy themselves, and to behave in an orderly public, could, for the first time, freely enjoy top the time, would regularly take lady-friends Louis François Roubiliac. To Tyers, though, manner during their visit. quality music alongside original contemporary to the gardens for some amorous dalliance the art and music at Vauxhall were never architecture decorated with some of the best after dark. just decoration or entertainment – as far as Tyers’s early concerts were never advertised in available contemporary visual art. If they he was concerned all the arts were morally the press except in the most general terms, wanted, they could also purchase some very When Jonathan Tyers took over the New redemptive, the civilising influence in a chaotic and are poorly documented, but it is clear expensive refreshments, but this was entirely Spring Gardens, Vauxhall, in 1729, he could see world, so his investment in the arts was as from the reports that do exist that he consistently voluntary, even though it was the sale of food that it was ripe for a complete transformation; much idealistic as commercial.

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