HANDEL AT VAUXHALL, VOL.1 w The Melancholy Nymph, HWV 228 No. 19 G. F. Handel [3.35] 1 Sinfonia from Acis and Galatea, HWV 49 G. F. Handel [3.36] Charles MacDougall tenor 2 Organ Improvisation in the style of John Worgan and Handel [0.59] Concerto for Strings and Basso Continuo No 1 in A Major John Hebden Daniel Moult organ e Adagio [1.59] r Fuga [1.55] Organ Concerto Op. 4 No. 2 in B flat Major, HWV 290 G. F. Handel t Largo [1.33] 3 Sinfonia: A tempo ordinario e staccato [0.49] y Allegro [3.33] 4 Allegro [4.56] 5 Adagio e staccato [0.48] u As steals the morn upon the night G. F. Handel [6.12] 6 Allegro ma non presto [3.07] from L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato, HWV 55 Daniel Moult organ Eleanor Dennis soprano Greg Tassell tenor 7 Accompagnato: Ye verdant plains and woody mountains G. F. Handel [0.42] 8 [Air] Hush, ye pretty warbling choir! [5.43] Total timings: [48.18] from Acis and Galatea, HWV 49 Kirsty Hopkins soprano 9 Colin and Phoebe A Pastoral Thomas Arne [3.34] Eleanor Dennis soprano Greg Tassell tenor LONDON EARLY OPERA Benjamin Bevan baritone BRIDGET CUNNINGHAM CONDUCTOR 0 Dead March from Saul, HWV 53 G. F. Handel [3.06] DANIEL MOULT ORGAN SOPHIE BEVAN • ELEANOR DENNIS • KIRSTY HOPKINS q The Advice G. F. Handel [2.10] CHARLES MACDOUGALL • GREG TASSELL • BENJAMIN BEVAN Sophie Bevan soprano www.signumrecords.com HANDEL AT VAUXHALL Vauxhall though, was never a simple pleasure unfortunately memorable phrase, Dr Johnson time. Much of it was written specifically for David E. Coke park. It began under the Stuarts as a common tells us that the music there was “not too performance at the pleasure gardens, and tavern garden, but with the Georgians it was refined for the general ear”, and for a long time, almost all of it was very new; some, indeed, Vauxhall Gardens, on the south bank of the turned into a real force for good in the the phrase ‘pleasure garden music’ has evoked would certainly have been too sophisticated ‘for River Thames just upstream from Lambeth transformation and modernisation of London, the 18th century equivalent of ‘easy listening’. the general ear’, while some of the rest would 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 have had a broad appeal. Despite the rival of Georgian England. It was the largest, the capital city in Europe. Part of the reason for and others, this CD will come as a revelation, attractions of the artworks, the food, the most commercially successful, and the most this cultural impact was the artistic patronage maybe even a shock. Vauxhall’s music was displays, and the company, it was always music influential of all the sixty or more such places in of its remarkable proprietor, Jonathan Tyers the best and most original that England had that was the centre of attention at Vauxhall London. ‘Pleasure gardens’ were private commercial (1702-1767), who played such an important to offer, not just as regards composition, but Gardens, at least from the mid 1730s until resorts where visitors could expect, for a small role in the development of English art and also in terms of its performance, executed by the second decade of the 19th century, when admission charge, to be entertained with music in the 18th century. Under his management, some of the outstanding musicians of the other more spectacular attractions began to music, refreshments, and a pleasurable rural Vauxhall became a hot-bed of artistic creativity atmosphere; most had little or no horticultural right at the centre of the cultural and social interest. Vauxhall attracted some 100,000 life of London, where a success would advance visits each Summer season, and it thrived a career, and a failure hardly mattered. William as a business for nearly two centuries, from Hogarth helped Tyers to turn it into the first 1661 until 1859. great public gallery for contemporary British art, and George Frideric Handel found there The gardens became internationally famous, the ideal outlet for his secular music, in spawning many imitators not only in London particular his grand ceremonial pieces, performed and the British Isles, but throughout the World, there to an entirely new audience, amongst from Charleston in the USA to Dunedin in whom his fame would quickly spread. New Zealand. Vauxhall Gardens featured in the drama and fiction of its time, ensuring its For a long time, we have been authoritatively literary immortality, and it is still used by persuaded that the music performed at Vauxhall romantic novelists today, as it was in the Gardens in the 18th century is hardly worth 18th century, as a shorthand for sexual adventure our notice – mere background noise to the and intrigue. main entertainments of the gardens. In an T. Bowles after Samuel Wale, A View of the Chinese Pavilions and Boxes in Vaux Hall Gardens, engraving, hand-coloured, detail (1751). - 4 - - 5 - monopolise public wonder. Jonathan Tyers, ‘There was a concert, in the course of which, a of assignation, approached by boat across internationally known. Having great vision the developer and sole proprietor of Vauxhall hautbois concerto was so charmingly played, the river Thames. It had a large garden of and being inspired by many things including Gardens from 1729 until his death, consistently that I could have thought myself upon enchanted avenues, flowerbeds and private arbours. the concept of John Milton’s L’Allegro and Il invested heavily in music, not only in the fees ground, had I had spirits more gentle to associate The refreshments were basic and often Penseroso, Tyers went on to commission and salaries of performers and composers, but with. The Hautboy in the open air is heavenly’. supplemented by visitors’ own provisions. architects, painters and sculptors to decorate also in the design and erection of high quality The entertainments, such as they were, were and furnish the gardens, and he employed specialist permanent buildings; these were Vauxhall was an outdoor entertainment, which generated by strolling performers or by the professional musicians to entertain his guests. some of the first such buildings in Europe, came into its own after dark under artificial visitors themselves. This was not yet a classic Among the works of art was the remarkable intended to present the performers to the lighting. This novel convivial diversion was pleasure garden, but the great appeal of the series of fifty or more modern genre paintings greatest advantage for their new audience, open every day from May to September, usually place was that the sexes could meet freely designed by Francis Hayman, a close many of whom would never have been exposed from 5 or 6 o’clock in the evening until the there, without the constraints that circumscribed colleague of William Hogarth, to decorate the to music of this quality before. early hours of the morning. For the charge of the tricky process of socialising among young supper-boxes which surrounded the Grove, the just one shilling, the equivalent cost of men and women in polite society; dozens of central gathering place of the gardens, and What is clear is that part of the fascination admission to a major art exhibition today, Tyers’s the visitors on any one evening would the remarkable life-sized marble statue of of Vauxhall was the experience of listening to visitors, drawn from a huge cross-section of certainly be working girls from the streets Handel, the presiding musical genius of Tyers’s music in the open air, with the opportunity of the public, could, for the first time, freely of London, looking out for new clients. Pepys Vauxhall, designed and created by Louis trying all sorts of different places to listen from; enjoy top quality music alongside original himself, though married at the time, would François Roubiliac. To Tyers, though, the art this was quite new to an audience more used contemporary architecture decorated with some regularly take lady-friends to the gardens for and music at Vauxhall were never just to sitting in a relatively fixed position in a of the best available contemporary visual art. some amorous dalliance after dark. decoration or entertainment – as far as he was concert room or theatre. Music heard while If they wanted, they could also purchase some concerned all the arts were morally redemptive, drinking in a supper-box or strolling in a very expensive refreshments, but this was When Jonathan Tyers took over the New Spring the civilising influence in a chaotic world, so distant point of the garden would have entirely voluntary, even though it was the sale Gardens, Vauxhall, in 1729, he could see that it his investment in the arts was as much produced entirely different experiences from of food and drink that produced the bulk of was ripe for a complete transformation; he had idealistic as commercial. that of standing in front of the Orchestra itself, Tyers’s profits. ambitious ideas for the place, and a mission or on the balcony around the organ. On her visit to impose apparent moral order and civility on Tyers re-launched his garden with a grand to Vauxhall, Fanny Burney’s heroine Evelina is We know from Samuel Pepys and others that this suburban tavern. As part of his plan to re-opening, called a Ridotto al Fresco, on 7 impressed by the al fresco music, despite her seventeenth century Vauxhall, then known as re-brand and civilise the site, Jonathan Tyers June 1732, for which the steep admission ungracious companions: the New Spring Gardens, had been little more dropped the old name in favour of the simpler charge of one guinea was demanded, so as to than a popular country ale-house and place ‘Vauxhall Gardens’, by which it soon became keep the ‘company’ as select and fashionable - 6 - - 7 - as possible.