HANDEL’S ORGANO AD LIBITUM:
A STUDY OF ADAGIOS IN HIS ORGAN CONCERTOS
______
A Doctoral Essay
Presented to
The Faculty of Moores School of Music
University of Houston
______
In Partial Fulfillment
Of the Requirements for the Degree of
Doctor of Musical Arts
By
HyeHyun Sung
May, 2016
1 HANDEL’S ORGANO AD LIBITUM:
A STUDY OF ADAGIOS IN HIS ORGAN CONCERTOS
______
An Abstract of a Doctoral Essay
Presented to
The Faculty of Moores School of Music
University of Houston
______
In Partial Fulfillment
Of the Requirements for the Degree of
Doctor of Musical Arts
By
HyeHyun Sung
May, 2016
2 ABSTRACT
This study seeks to discover Handel’s likely improvisational process, specifically in the adagio ad libitum sections of his organ concertos. Handel indicated organo ad libitum in twelve adagio movements in the fifteen organ concertos, offering extensive opportunities for extemporaneous performance. The study helps today’s organists understand Handel’s improvisational process and create their own improvisations in the adagio sections of his organ concertos.
Chapter One explains the historical concepts needed to understand the scant notation in Handel’s adagios. A Baroque musician read the indication “adagio” not as a mere tempo marking but as a genre requiring improvisation. Handel’s music education included the development of improvisational skills requiring the memorization of musical formulas that he could retrieve at the moment of performance. The steps involved in the improvisational process can be labeled with rhetorical terms from Baroque education: dispositio (the underlying large-scale framework), elaboratio (voice-leading), and decoratio (surface-level ornamentation). Understanding such concepts is a preliminary step towards creating one’s own adagio ad libitum improvisations in a style befitting a Handel organ concerto.
Chapter Two describes the improvisational process as applied to Handel’s scores. The primary material that Handel left becomes a starting point in the construction-deconstruction- reconstruction cycle, a process borrowed from Pamela Ruiter-Feenstra. The underlying harmonic framework and voice-leading progressions of Handel’s complete adagios are studied and analyzed, along with the surface-level ornamentation. The analysis reveals musical formulas employed by Handel. These formulas are then used to generate two newly composed adagios, which can easily be performed as though they were improvisations.
3 Baroque treatises that might have influenced Handel’s formation as a young musician are also investigated in order to understand conventional Baroque improvisational practices. The study includes musical examples from treatises by Wolfgang Gaspar Printz, Johann Moritz
Vogt, Friedrich Niedt, Johann Joachim Quantz, and Michael Wiedeburg. Handel’s own music and theoretical sources help modern organists create improvisations for the adagio ad libitum sections of his organ concertos.
4 TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Figures ...... vii
Introduction to the Study ...... 1
Chapter One: Historical Background
Introduction to the Baroque Adagio: Genre and Organo ad Libitum ...... 7
Rhetorical Categories and Improvisational Memory ...... 8
Handel’s Education and Pedagogy ...... 10
Chapter Two: Handel’s Dispositio, Elaboratio, and Decoratio in the Adagios ...... 15
Deconstruction from Decoratio to Elaboratio ...... 21
Reconstruction from Elaboratio to Decoratio ...... 24
Reconstructing Decoratio from Dispositio ...... 33
Examination of Handel’s Elaboratio and Decoratio ...... 36
Conclusion ...... 39
Bibliography ……………………………………………………………………………..42
5 LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1. Construction-deconstruction-reconstruction cycle of improvisation…………….….5
Figure 2. Adagios marked organo ad libitum...... 15
Figure 3. Adagio from Concerto No. 11, HWV 310: Handel’s disposition………………….17
Figure 4. Adagio from Concerto No. 15, HWV 304: Handel’s elaboratio…………………..18
Figure 5. Adagio from Concerto No. 1, HWV 289: Handel’s decoratio...... 19
Figure 6. Adagio from Concerto No. 10, HWV 309: Handel’s decoratio…………………... 20
Figure 7(a). Adagio in Concerto No. 10, HWV 309: Handel’s decoratio………………...… 21
Figure 7(b). Adagio in Concerto No. 10, HWV 309: Author’s elaboratio…………………..21
Figure 8(a). Adagio e Staccato from Concerto No. 2, HWV 290: Handel’s decoratio……... 23
Figure 8(b). Adagio e Staccato from Concerto No. 2, HWV 290: Author’s elaboratio……..23
Figure 9. Grave from Concerto No. 14, HWV 296a: Handel’s elaboratio…………………..24
Figure 10. Wolfgang Gaspar Printz, Phrynidis Mytilenaei oder Satyrischen Componisten (1696): Melodic figures………………………………………………………………………26
Figure 11. Moritz Vogt, Conclave Thesauri Artis Musicae (1719): Sequential melodies…...27
Figure 12. Friedrich Niedt, Musicalische Handlung (1721): Diminutions above a figured bass ………………………………………………………………………………………………..28
Figure 13. Grave from Concerto No. 14, HWV 296a: Author’s decoratio (simple diminution) above Handel’s elaboratio…………………………………………………………………... 29
Figure 14. Michael Wiedeburg, Der Sich Selbst Infromirende Clavierspieler: (a) Schleifer, (b) Doppelschlag, (c) Schneller……………………………………………………....………30
Figure 15. Johann Joachim Quantz, Versuch einer Anweisung die Floete traversiere zu spielen (1752): Embellishing a three-note progression………………………………………31
Figure 16. Grave from Concerto No. 14, HWV 296a: Author’s decoratio (complex)……… 32
Figure 17(a). Adagio from Concerto No. 11, HWV 310: Handel’s disposition…………….. 34
6 Figure 17(b). Adagio from Concerto No. 11, HWV 310: Author’s elaboratio...... 34
Figure 17(c). Adagio from Concerto No. 11, HWV 310: Author’s decoratio (simple)……...34
Figure 17(d). Adagio from Concerto No. 11, HWV 310: Author’s decoratio (complex)...….35
Figure 18. Adagio from Harpsichord Suite, No. 2 in F Major, Book I, HWV 427…………..37
7 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY
Handel’s improvisational skills as an organist played an important role in his career.
Several colorful accounts attest to his fame as a keyboard improviser, including reports from competitions with Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757) at the Palazzo della Cancelleria in
Rome,1 and with Johann Mattheson (1681-1764) during a performance of Mattheson’s opera
Cleopatra in 1704.2 Another report says Maurice Green, Handel’s friend and organist at St.
Paul’s Cathedral in London, often offered to act as the “organ-blower” simply to hear Handel at his organ.3 According to the British historian Charles Burney (1726-1814), two musicians,
Michael Christian Festing (1705-1752) and Thomas Augustine Arne (1710-1778), reported to him after attending the performance of Handel’s oratorio Athalia and hearing Handel improvise on the organ in Oxford in 1733: “[they] assured me, that neither themselves, nor anyone else of their acquaintance, had ever before heard such extempore, or such premeditated playing, on that or any other instrument.”4
The organ was the principal instrument in Handel’s oratorio performances in
England. According to Newburgh Hamilton (1691-1761) in his preface to his libretto for
Samson, Handel “so happily introduc’d here Oratorios, a musical Drama, whose Subject must be Scriptural, and in which the Solemnity of Church-Musick is agreeably united with
1 Donald Burrows, Handel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 592. According to Mainwaring, Handel’s first biographer, Handel and Scarlatti had a ‘trial of skill’ on the harpsichord and the organ at Cardinal Ottoboni’s court. 2 Ibid., 24-25. A power struggle took place when Handel refused to give up the harpsichord bench despite Mattheson’s wish. 3 Stanley Sadie, BBC Music Guides: Handel Concertos (London: BBC Publications, 1972), 21. 4 Charles Burney, An Account of the Musical Performances in Westminster-Abbey (New York: Da capo Press, 1785, 1979), “The Sketch of the Life of Handel,” 23.
8 the most pleasing Airs of the Stage.”5 Handel achieved the solemn quality of church music by incorporating the English choral sound of professional male singers and organ accompaniment. While conducting and playing from the organ bench, Handel was able to display his improvisational skills as a virtuoso. Improvisation became a regular feature at his oratorio performances, as the advertisement “with a Concerto on the Organ” continued to appear from 1735 onwards.
Burney mentioned that Handel improvised “an extempore fugue, a diapason piece,
[and] an adagio” in the performance of Handel’s organ concertos.6 Regarding the “diapason piece,” another great British historian, John Hawkins (1719-1789), recorded that Handel
“introduced [his organ concertos] with a voluntary movement on the Diapasons [Open and
Stopped Diapasons], which stole on the ear in a slow and solemn progression.”7 Hawkins lauded “the fullness of [Handel’s] harmony, the grandeur and dignity of his style, the copiousness of his imagination, and the fertility of his invention.”8 Handel’s inventive contrasts of various styles and genres, such as fugues, voluntaries, and adagios, shaped the standard movements of his organ concertos, Op. 4 (1738). A later collection, Op. 7
(published posthumously in 1761) included even more diverse styles, including chaconne, overture, variations, and dances.
The true essence of Handel’s improvisation, however, was in his adagios. During
Handel’s time, concertgoers esteemed a well-improvised adagio as entertainment par
5 Otto Erich Deutsch, Handel: A Documentary Bibliography (New York: W. W. Norton, 1955), 559. 6 Burney, An Account of the Musical Performances in Westminster-Abbey, “The Sketch of the Life of Handel,” 23. 7 John Hawkins, A General History of the Science and Practice of Music (London: Novello, 1776, 1853), 912. 8 Ibid.
9 excellence. Burney claimed, “the talent of executing an adagio well, in which performers of great powers of execution often fail, is a merit of the highest class which a musician can possess.”9 A soloist’s improvisations allowed a concertgoer to enjoy multiple performances of the same work. The concertgoer witnessed—with each new adagio—the inexhaustible imaginations of superior performers such as Johann Joachim Quantz (1697-1773) and
Arcangelo Corelli (1653-1713). In his treatise On Playing the Flute (1752), Quantz discussed adagio improvisation in depth in the chapter “Of the Manner of Playing the Adagio.”10 Soon after Corelli published his Violin Sonatas, Op. 5, in Rome (1700), Corelli’s students and followers produced and circulated well over two dozen sets of embellishments for the slow movements, which indicates an overwhelming interest in improvised adagio movements.11 In response to popular demand, Estienne Roger published an ornamented edition in 1710, supposedly as Corelli himself performed at a concert and with his approval. The intention was only pedagogical, as his improvisations were not to be reproduced for performances:
The Roger edition of Corelli’s Opus 5 contains “essential graces” more by chance and as an exception. It was much more concerned with showing how Corelli played his own works (“comme il les joue”) and not how others were supposed to play them. Only thus can we understand why Corelli’s pupils Veracini and Geminiani, and indeed later their pupil Dubourgh as well were able to go public with their own new versions of the violin part. Behind their efforts lay no lack of respect for the master’s works, but instead a conception of the works in which they knew the value of the performer, his spiritual commitment and his manual capabilities.12
9 Abraham Rees, ed., The New Cyclopaedia, or, Universal Dictionary of the Arts and Science (London: Longman, 1802-20), s.v. “Adagio.” The entry was written by Charles Burney. 10 Johann Joachim Quantz, On Playing the Flute, ed. Edward Reilly (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2001), 162-78. 11 Neal Zaslaw, “Ornaments for Corelli’s Violin Sonatas, Op. 5,” Early Music 24, no. 1 (February 1996): 95-116. 12 Arcangelo Corelli, Sonatas for Violin and Basso Continuo, Op. 5, ed. Reinhard Goebel (Vienna: Wiener Urtext Edition, 2003), xvi.
10 The historical context of Handel’s organ concertos—in his oratorio performances— helps understand one reason why they were significant: the genre was a breakthrough for the instrument and for organists because it promoted them to the role of soloists in concerts outside the walls of a sacred space. This paper concentrates on the adagio improvisations in
Handel’s organ concertos, specifically in the ad libitum sections, in part because this represents the pinnacle of Handel’s performance as a keyboard artist.
Performing the adagio ad libitum sections of Handel’s organ concertos might be a daunting task for some of today’s organists who do not have training in Baroque improvisation practice. Primary written sources give little information about how Handel improvised these sections or how he learned this skill. By studying existing compositions by
Handel, however, it is possible to speculate on the process by which he learned to improvise.
By extension, today’s organists can learn from the same process. One can also learn about
Baroque improvisational practice from written accounts and treatises that were available during Handel’s formative years. For this purpose, treatises by Wolfgang Gaspar Printz,
Johann Moritz Vogt, Friedrich Niedt, Johann Joachim Quantz, and Michael Wiedeburg will be discussed. The study of Handel’s compositions includes analyses of his adagios, which reveal inventive formulas that he may have utilized in improvisation. Those formulas will be combined to produce new ones that may be applied in one’s own improvisations today. After creating such improvisations, one may revisit Handel’s existing compositions or the previous analytical stages to refine the improvisations. Pamela Ruiter-Feenstra described exactly this process with three terms: construction, deconstruction, and reconstruction. The visual image below helps one understand this cycle:
11 Figure 1. Construction-deconstruction-reconstruction cycle of improvisation13
The goal of this study is to help today’s organists understand Handel’s likely improvisational process and then create their own improvisations in the adagio ad libitum sections of his concertos. This study encourages them to write out new realizations or even extemporaneously improvise in Handel’s style. The primary material that Handel left is used as a starting point in the construction-deconstruction-reconstruction cycle. This essay is structured according to this step-by-step pedagogical and creative process. The realizations created in each step will lead to the ultimate written-out “improvisation” of two adagio movements. These realizations are flexible models and do not pretend to be the only solutions to the performance of these adagios.
This paper attempts to help modern organists understand and recapture Handel’s adagio improvisational process. To do so, an organist first needs to understand what improvisation of adagios meant and entailed during Handel’s lifetime. The first chapter defines and contextualizes the problem. It defines the Baroque adagio as a genre and the
13 Pamela Ruiter-Feenstra, Bach and the Art of Improvisation (Ann Arbor: CHI Press, 2011), 11.
12 related term organo ad libitum. It also explains classical rhetorical terms and the role of improvisational memory as organists in Handel’s time used them. To that end, Handel’s education and pedagogy must be discussed.
Narrowing down the focus from context to the specific written-out improvisations of
Handel himself, the second chapter examines Handel’s written-out improvisations as they appear in his organ concertos. The paper’s analysis of his written-out improvisations consists of what Ruiter-Feenstra calls “deconstruction.” Because Handel left only a handful of fully written-out adagios in his concertos, modern organists may need more guidance, as a practical matter. So the second chapter also draws on practical treatises from Handel’s era.
All the acquired information ultimately leads to two adagios “reconstructed” for use in performance. Then Handel’s other existing compositions are studied for even further refinement of modern attempts to improvise in a style like Handel’s own.
13 CHAPTER ONE: HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
Introduction to the Baroque Adagio: Genre and Organo ad Libitum
For Baroque musicians, adagio meant more than a tempo indication. Originating from an Italian word meaning “at ease” or “leisurely,” a Baroque adagio was a specific genre of slow movement that had the potential of being constantly refreshed by adding idiomatic embellishments to the melody. Burney noted the following: “an adagio in a song or solo is, generally … little more than an outline left to the performer’s abilities to colour”; therefore,
“the performer who is not enabled to interest an audience by the tone of his voice or instrument, and by taste and expression, should never be trusted with slow notes.”14 A
Baroque adagio left room for a capable soloist to join in creative collaboration with the composer. Handel expressly encouraged the organist to improvise his adagios by adding the marking organo ad libitum above his written-out music. Twelve adagio movements in the fifteen authentic organ concertos are marked organo ad libitum.15
These occur in three different types of adagio. The first type is a short cadenza at the final cadence of a movement. Quantz defined it in this way: “Those embellishments commonly introduced on the last note but one ... [are] the productions of the momentary invention of the performer.”16 He further explained that such cadenzas are not performed in strict time and must have a judiciously moderate length. Good examples occur at the end of
Corelli’s Op. 5 sonatas and concerto grosso movements, where the composer often added
14 Rees, ed., The New Cyclopaedia, s.v. “Adagio.” 15 This study is based on the fifteen organ concertos from the critical edition of Hallische Händel Ausgabe (Bärenreiter), series IV, vol. 2 (2001), edited by Terence Best and William D. Gudger, and series IV, vol. 8 (1989) edited by Siegfried Stockmeier Flesch, Eva Wolfgang Gerlach, and Inge Schneider. 16 Quantz, On Playing the Flute, 22.
14 flourishes immediately before the cadential trills. Handel followed this basic procedure, but instead of limiting himself to a single embellished note, he extended the ornamentation to as many as four.
The second type consists of a walking bass line accompanying a long cantabile melody. This includes the adagio features for which Corelli’s sonatas were famous. Corelli’s adagios as well as Handel’s involve a florid ornamentation of the melody, a common time signature, and a slow-moving bass line mostly in eighth notes.17
The last type occurs in organ solo episodes between orchestral ritornellos. Burney reports that for Handel’s organ concerto performances, he gave the orchestra only the music for the ritornello. Then he “played all the solo parts extempore, while the other instruments left him, ad libitum; waiting for [his] signal ... before they played [the ritornello] as they found in their books.”18 In addition to the marking ad libitum, Handel’s own solo scores include rests and fermatas on the rests. In this way, he took the freedom to improvise as long as he wanted, whereas he wrote all the notes for the orchestra.
Rhetorical Categories and Improvisational Memory
Handel’s adagio ad libitum movements display varying degrees of compositional completeness. For Handel, who was both the composer and performer of the organ concertos, improvisation was extemporaneous composition. In order to glean Handel’s likely improvisational process, this essay uses a system recently devised by Michael Callahan in his
17 David Ledbetter, “On the Manner of Playing the Adagio: Neglected Features of a Genre,” Early Music 29, no. 1 (February 2001): 15-26. 18 Kazlitt Arvine, ed., The Cyclopaedia of Anecdotes of Literature and the Fine Arts (Boston: Gould and Lincoln, 1856), s.v. “Handel.”
15 dissertation Techniques of Keyboard Improvisation in the German Baroque.19 Callahan borrows three terms from classical rhetoric, dispositio, elaboratio, and decoratio. This essay uses these terms to identify Handel’s improvisational and compositional stages, which range from the simplest to the most intricate levels of completeness. Dispositio contains the simplest structure, with the large-scale framework identified with cadences. Elaboratio displays harmonic structure, including smaller-scale formulas and voice-leading progressions. Decoratio shows the most developed level of the three, comprising surface- level rhythmic and melodic diminutions as well as ornamentation. Handel’s written-out adagios show these three stages and thus hint at his improvisational as well as compositional process—for his improvisations were in fact extemporaneous compositions.
In the context of this process, William Porter explains that improvisation required a special sort of memory for Baroque organists. Instead of preserving information, the function of improvisational memory was to generate new formulas by the improviser using flexible combinations and applications:
It should perhaps be underscored here that the references to memory … before the eighteenth century could not be understood in the same way as we commonly speak of memory today. For us, the notion of memorizing music normally has the connotation of rote memorization, culminating in a performance that reproduces every memorized detail. From the perspective of the improviser in the 16th and 17th centuries, this modern practice may well represent a debasement of the earlier concept of memory. Traditionally, the role of memory in rhetoric as well as in musical performance was not to reproduce in exact detail a pre-existing work or even a portion of a pre- existing work, but rather to serve the process of imprinting and internalizing images or structures in the mind, which would be brought to bear upon the creative process at the moment of performance.20
19 Michael Callahan, “Techniques of Keyboard Improvisation in the German Baroque and their Implications for Today’s Pedagogy” (Ph.D. diss., University of Rochester, 2010). 20 William Porter, “Reconstructing 17th-Century North German Improvisational Practice,” in Goart Research Reports, vol. 2, ed. Sverker Jullander (Göteburg: Göteburg Organ Art Center, 2000), 29.
16
Callahan’s concept of the three terms—dispositio, elaboratio, and decoratio—can be understood in the light of this generative and flexible improvisational memory.
A hierarchical conception allows existing musical material to be digested on several levels simultaneously; an improviser can consider its large-scale organization, its more local generating principles, and its surface-level realization independently, and commit the music hierarchically to memory. As a result, the improviser can reproduce some aspects of the memorized music while varying others—applying its motivic content to a different set of skeletal voice-leading progressions (i.e., preserving elaboratio while varying decoratio), or rendering its same underlying voice-leading by means of different diminution formulas (i.e., vice versa).21
Handel’s Education and Pedagogy
How would Handel have learned to improvise on the organ? His improvisational skills no doubt rested on the strong foundation of the education he received in the Latin school under the Cathedral Cantor, Friedrich Wilhelm Zachow (1663-1712). During
Handel’s formative years in Halle, an influx of Calvinists discouraged any music in church other than songs of penitence and prayers of thanksgiving sung by the entire congregation.
Consequently Handel and many other young musicians performed mostly secular music, such as comedies, tragedies, and sung operas, in secular venues and private homes.22
At the Latin school, students studied the new Italian style and counterpoint based on figured-bass harmony. Around the time when Handel studied with Zachow in Halle, the new
Italian style emerged, and students at the Latin school learned about the new stylistic concepts by studying widely circulated treatises. They knew Wolfgang Mylius’s Rudimenta musices (Mühlhausen, 1685), which thoroughly explained the new style of singing and its
21 Callahan, “Techniques of Keyboard Improvisation,” 57. 22 John Butt, “Germany—Education and Apprenticeship,” in The Cambridge Companion to Handel, ed. Donald Burrows (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 18.
17 detailed repertory of ornaments. Then they applied the new techniques in their performances of comedies, tragedies, and opera. They also studied Georg Daniel Speer’s Grundrichtiger
Unterricht der musikalischen Kunst (1697), which explains how to work from figured bass using numerals as part of keyboard practice. Figured bass theory, according to Speer, forms the basis for counterpoint.23
According to the modern scholar John Butt, Handel would have been familiar with both the older compositional theory of Wolfgang Gaspar Printz (1641-1717) and the new compositional style advocated by Friedrich Erhard Niedt (1674-1717). Printz’s treatise begins with a study of intervals and classifies numerous ornamental figures from which students could develop variations and even new themes; the treatise ends with the explanation of figured bass. Unlike Printz, Niedt addresses figured bass first and counterpoint proper only at the end; for him, counterpoint is a mere refinement of figured-bass realization rather than a separate, new task. Both authors offer a glossary of ornaments. Butt believes that Handel probably knew at least some of these books directly or indirectly, because of his study with Friedrich Wilhelm Zachow (1663-1712), who taught the same arts of ornamentation, counterpoint, and figured-bass realization.24
Handel’s first biographer, John Mainwaring (1724-1807), summarized Handel’s study with Zachow in Halle:
The first object of his attention was to ground him thoroughly in the principles of harmony. His next care was to cultivate his imagination, and form his taste. … He frequently gave him subjects to work, and made him copy, and play, and compose in his stead. Thus he had more exercise, and more experience than usually falls to the share of any learner at his years.25
This account demonstrates two important elements in the application of traditional German
23 Ibid., 18-21. 24 Ibid. 25 Ibid., 19.
18 pedagogy. The first element is that composition was considered a craft that could be taught and learned. In his treatise, Quantz urged composers to master the technical skills:
Why do the finished products of every good composer show a great improvement over his first sketches? Is this to be attributed to pure natural ability, or to ability and skill combined? Natural ability is innate, while technical skill is learned through good instruction and diligent inquiry, and both are necessary to a good composer.26
Under the tutelage of Zachow, young Handel earnestly studied the rules and imitated the work of established masters.27 Likewise, J. S. Bach credited his accomplishments to education and practice, saying, “I had to work hard; anyone who is as industrious, can achieve the same level.”28 As part of their method, students at this time memorized, analyzed, applied, varied, combined, and internalized the skills they learned. Such internalization equipped them with improvisational skills that were generative and analytical. Improvisation was a learnable, generative process.
The second element is that the study of composition was based on the “principles of harmony.” This is reflected in the adagios of Handel’s organ concertos, which typically include figured bass. This is also reflected in Handel’s own teaching. In his only pedagogical writing, the tutorial exercises for the daughters of King George II, one can gain a glimpse of his teaching. Between 1724 and the mid-1730s, Handel devised these exercises to teach the royal children, using a graded approach founded entirely on figured bass.29 The book
26 Quantz, On Playing the Flute, 20. 27 Händel-Handbuch, Vol. 4: Dokumente zu Leben und Schaffen (Kassel and Leipzig, 1985), 17. Dated 1698, a musical notebook with Handel’s initials was found, including the keyboard music by the most important 17th-Century German composers, such as Zachow, Alberti, Froberger, Krieger, Kerll, Ebner, and Strungk. 28 Dietrich Bartel, Musica Poetica: Musical-Rhetorical Figures in German Baroque Music (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997), 64. 29 David Ledbetter, Continuo Playing According to Handel: His Figured Bass Exercises (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 1-3.
19 includes the essential formulas for figured-bass playing: root-position chords, seventh chords, inversions, suspensions, and finally fugal writing. An understanding of harmony through the study of figured bass formed the foundation of Handel’s pedagogy.
Another important element, not discussed by Mainwaring, is the study of rhetoric.
Baroque teachers such as Zachow and J. S. Bach taught Latin grammar and rhetoric in addition to music. Therefore German students naturally learned how to combine the disciplines of music and rhetoric, which was called musicus poeticus. They practiced how to order the musical structure eloquently, a different priority from the rhetorical focus that
Italian pedagogy placed on music’s dramatic performance.30 Although no records have been found to show that Handel completed the liberal arts curriculum, he probably knew or was at least familiar with the basic concepts of rhetoric from his surroundings. And he might have studied his contemporaries’ treatises about the popular subject, musicus poeticus.
Johann Mattheson (1681-1764) created a five-part hierarchical process in rhetoric, using the Latin terms inventio, dispositio, elaboratio, decoratio, and executio.31 Heinrich
Christoph Koch (1749-1816) created a three-part process, using the German terms Anlage,
Ausführung, and Ausarbeitung;32 Koch’s three-part process parallels Mattheson’s three middle levels.33 By using rhetorical terminology, such theorists viewed compositions hierarchically. Students began at the bottom of this hierarchy using figured bass and built upward to the more complex levels. Dispositio or Anlage, as Mattheson and Koch respectively named them, required a structural plan, including the key and cadence.
Elaboratio or Ausführung consisted of elaborating the plan with voice-leading progressions.
30 Bartel, Musica Poetica, 64. 31 Ibid., 78. 32 Callahan, “Techniques of Keyboard Improvisation,” 51. 33 Ibid.
20 Decoratio or Ausarbeitung included embellishment with surface-level rhythmic and melodic diminutions. In short, this approach includes three steps: (1) the construction of a simple structure including key and cadence, (2) the production of a voice-leading progression in two voices, and (3) the creation of embellishments with surface-level diminutions.
It is interesting that Koch omitted Mattheson’s first step, inventio, or the creative spark.34 This may indicate that Koch understood improvisation as a learned skill, not one of spontaneous creation. Improvisers studied musical patterns and memorized them ahead of time so that they could combine, apply, and vary these in their extemporaneous performances.
34 Ibid., 54.
21 CHAPTER TWO: HANDEL’S DISPOSITIO, ELABORATIO, AND DECORATIO IN THE ADAGIOS
To create a process similar to the one that Handel employed for his improvisations, the first step is to study his written-out adagios. The amount of detail in Handel’s written-out adagios varies. They can be divided into the three rhetorical categories. Figure 2 lists all twelve adagios marked organo ad libitum.35 Three are written as dispositio, four as elaboratio, and five as decoratio. Two of the decoratio movements are moderately ornamented, and the other three are heavily ornamented. Some adagios are placed between fast movements or sections, while others are not. A few concertos include more than one adagio ad libitum section or movement. Concerto No. 11 includes two cadenzas at the dispositio level. Concerto No. 14 contains two adagios at the elaboratio level, one solo episode in an andante movement and a cadenza between andante and allegro movements.
Figure 2. Adagios marked organo ad libitum
1. Rhetorical Category: Dispositio
Concerto No. HWV Placement Type of Adagio Length 7 306 At end of allegro mvt. Cadenza 2 bars 11 310 At end of allegro mvt. Cadenza 5 bars 11 310 At end of andante mvt. Cadenza 5 bars
35 For the scope of this paper, the author has excluded the sections between movements where Handel indicated organo ad libitum but did not provide any score. Handel did not mark these sections adagio.
22 2. Rhetorical Category: Elaboratio
Concerto HWV Placement Type of Length No. Adagio 1 289 After initial ritornello in larghetto e Solo 4 bars staccato mvt. episode 14 296a After initial ritornello in andante Solo 2 bars; fermatas mvt. episode on rests in each bar 14 296a Between andante and allegro mvts. Cadenza 6 bars 15 304 After initial ritornello in andante Solo 8 bars mvt. episode
3. Rhetorical Category: Decoratio
(a) Moderate ornamentation
Concerto HWV Placement Type of Adagio Length No. 1 289 Between allegro and andante mvt. Cantabile mvt. 10 bars 4 292 Between andante and allegro mvt. Cantabile mvt. 9 bars
(b) Heavy ornamentation
Concerto HWV Placement Type of Length No. Adagio 2 290 Between two allegro mvts. Cadenza 6 bars 7 303 Before final ritornello in adagio mvt. Cadenza 6 ½ bars 10 309 Before final ritornello in adagio mvt. Solo episode 6 ½ bars
Figure 3 shows an adagio at the dispositio level. This level contains the least amount of music from the composer himself and reveals only a large-scale structure. The structural plan includes the key of G minor and a Phrygian cadence concluding the section. The measures in the middle with whole rests are to be invented ex nihilo during the performance.
23 Figure 3. Adagio from Concerto No. 11, HWV 310: Handel’s dispositio