Handel Celebration Notes

A Handel Celebration May 2013 PROGRAMME NOTES In 1710 Handel arrived in London, fresh from three years immersed in the study and composition of opera in Italy. The English audiences had been slow to accept Italian opera as a viable entertainment, but with the arrival of Handel were quick to change their minds. For over twenty years Handel regaled London audiences with a steady stream of opera productions at the King’s Theatre in the Haymarket — all in Italian, and sung by Italian singers. By the 1730s the English public was starting to tire of the foreign entertainment. Although Handel was far from finished with opera seria, he started to experiment with English entertainments: odes, serenades, and the first English oratorios. An oratorio is, by definition, a musical setting of a sacred text. It includes dramatic, narrative and contemplative elements, and its musical forms are closely linked to those of opera. It is presented as a concert, without action, costume or extensive scenery. The English oratorio was essentially Handel’s own invention, and owed much to his talent and experience as an opera composer, thus resplendent with stunning arias. The librettos of the oratorios, usually drawn from the Old Testament, led Handel to give prominence to the chorus. Like a Greek chorus it participated on various levels, sometimes involved directly in the action, and at other times serving as commentator. This choral element, lacking in Italian opera, contributed much to the success of the genre. It also gave Handel an opportunity to demonstrate his genius as a choral composer to a larger audience. Between 1732 and 1757 Handel composed seventeen oratorios based on biblical texts. He also composed two oratorios based on mythological tales: Semele and Hercules — arguably English operas, though including a chorus and written for concert, not staged, performance. A number of extended odes were also presented as part of Handel’s oratorio seasons, including a masterful setting of Milton’s L’Allegro ed il Penseroso, and the charming masque-like Acis and Galatea — and for St. Cecilia’s Day in 1739, a setting of Dryden’s A Song for St. Cecilia. Neither Handel nor his audiences embraced the new English entertainments overnight, but both were increasingly drawn to it. The vernacular language, the familiar and morally upright stories, the homebred English singers who replaced the imported Italian superstars, the tenor — rather than castrato — as hero, the stirring choruses: all combined to create an entertainment that suited Handel’s talents and his audience’s tastes. By 1743 Handel had stopped presenting opera seria altogether, devoting his time in the theatre to the new forms he created. A Handel Celebration: A Personal Selection by Ivars Taurins When Handel turned to writing large-scale works in English, he set the benchmark for future generations. His oratorios inspired Haydn to write his two great works, The Creation and The Seasons, and influenced nineteenth- century composers such as Beethoven and Mendelssohn. Handel’s genius as a composer of opera and of large-scale sacred choral works shines out from every page of the scores of his oratorios, musical dramas, and odes. His uncanny sense of dramatic pacing, and his ability to convey human emotions and psychological struggles in music, gleaned through years of writing for the opera theatre, are evident everywhere. The magnificent choruses reflect Handel’s talent for writing music for grand occasions with bold brushstrokes. He is able at one moment to deal with a panoply of monumental events — battles, feasts, plagues, ceremonies — and in the next to draw us into the most intimate workings of the heart and mind. There is so much fine music in these works, most of it rarely heard today (when was the last time you heard Alexander Balus?). And so, how best to show all of this in one concert? I created this Handel Celebration by sifting through his many oratorios and odes, compiling some of his “best” airs and choruses to create a musical whole. This technique, known as pasticcio (derived from the Italian culinary word for a kind of filled pie made of many ingredients), was very popular in the eighteenth century. It was, if you will, a musical medley of various ingredients borrowed from other pre-existing works. I hope that my Handel pasticcio gives you something of the flavour of the grandeur, pathos, drama, intimacy, and joy to be found in Handel’s English dramatic works. Some will be old chestnuts. Others will, I hope, invite you to explore more of the riches of this great composer. We open the programme with contrasting images of Music: that of celebration and praise, both extrovert and intimate (Solomon, Esther); the beguiling power of Music (St. Cecilia Ode); and the brazen, stirring and “dreadful” music of battle (Judas Maccabeus). In every conflict there is the victor and the vanquished. Handel is equally adept at, and sensitive to, portraying both sides of war. Indeed, his musical images of grief, woe, and despair are among his most potent, whether for chorus (Deborah) or for solo voice (Theodora). Turning to celebration, thanksgiving and solemn praise, Handel paints radiant peace (Jonathan in Alexander Balus; Zadok in Solomon) or joyful triumph (Samson). In the second half, we focus on Love and all its facets: from its “soft delights,” to its bedfellows Desire and Despair. Handel had a particular affinity with the English landscape, and his pastoral music is second to none (with the possible exception of Vaughan Williams!). From the rustic quality of “Crown with festal pomp” (Hercules) to the idyllic duet from L’Allegro, Handel captures the essence of the “fairest Isle.” Handel bequeathed his setting of the coronation anthem Zadok the Priest to the nation — it has been a part of every coronation since George II. His masterful sense of grandeur and occasion, whether for secular (Water Music, Royal Fireworks) or sacred (Coronation Anthems) events, was used by him to great effect in his oratorios. The final chorus from Athalia is a brilliant example of this, and a fitting end to a programme of excerpts from Handel’s many and varied settings of English texts. .

Load more