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