When did Handel write his Water Music Suite?
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The Water Music composed by George Frideric Handel premiered on 17 July 1717, when King George I requested a concert on the River Thames. The concert was performed for King George I on his barge and he is said to have enjoyed it so much that he ordered the 50 exhausted musicians to play the suites three times on the trip.
River Thames
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The Water Music is a collection of orchestral movements, often published as three suites, composed by George Frideric Handel. It premiered on 17 July 1717, in response to King George I's request for a concert on the River Thames.
Water Music
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For the fourth season in 1723, for which his first opera was "Ottone", Handel assembled a cast of star singers including the internationally famous castrato, Senesino, beginning a long and sometimes stormy association with Handel that included creating seventeen leading roles in his operas for London, at a vast salary. The star soprano Margherita Durastanti, who had sung in many of Handel's early works in Italy as well as his previous operas in London, joined the cast, as did English soprano Anastasia Robinson, who was unhappy about much of the music Handel had written for her to sing in "Ottone", feeling that she could not portray, as he desired, scorn and anger, and appealed in a letter to one of the patrons of the Royal Academy to intervene with Handel to write gentler music for her to suit her abilities. Also in the cast was another internationally renowned castrato, Gaetano Berenstadt, in the first of three roles he created in Handel operas.
Ottone
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At the end of his manuscript Handel wrote the letters "SDG"—', "To God alone the glory". This inscription, taken with the speed of composition, has encouraged belief in the apocryphal story that Handel wrote the music in a fervour of divine inspiration in which, as he wrote the "Hallelujah" chorus, "he saw all heaven before him". Burrows points out that many of Handel's operas, of comparable length and structure to "Messiah", were composed within similar timescales between theatrical seasons. The effort of writing so much music in so short a time was not unusual for Handel and his contemporaries; Handel commenced his next oratorio, "Samson", within a week of finishing "Messiah", and completed his draft of this new work in a month. In accordance with his frequent practice when writing new works, Handel adapted existing compositions for use in "Messiah", in this case drawing on two recently completed Italian duets and one written twenty years previously. Thus, ' from 1722 became the basis of "O Death, where is thy sting?"; "His yoke is easy" and "And he shall purify" were drawn from ' (July 1741), "Unto us a child is born" and "All we like sheep" from ' (July 1741). Handel's instrumentation in the score is often imprecise, again in line with contemporary convention, where the use of certain instruments and combinations was assumed and did not need to be written down by the composer; later copyists would fill in the details.
Messiah (Handel)
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As with "Nero", it is possible that music from "Florindo" or "Daphne" was recycled by Handel for use in later works. The overture to the opera "Rodrigo" consists of eight French-style dances, which Cudworth believes might have begun life as ballet music in one or other of the lost Hamburg operas. In 1709–10 Handel composed the cantata "Apollo e Dafne", which has common ground with the earlier operas. Harris makes the point that when writing the cantata, Handel would have recalled his earlier setting, and perhaps borrowed from it. Dean and Knapp provide further example of works in which the "Florinda" and "Daphne" music may have re-emerged: the oratorio "Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno" (1707); the opera "Radamisto" (1720); and the overture in B flat, HWV336, which Baselt conjectures might have been written as the overture to "Florindo". This last-named has been combined with HWV352–354 and HWV356 to form the "Suite from the operas Florindo and Daphne", which in 2012 was adapted and recorded by The Parley of Instruments under Peter Holman.
Handel's lost Hamburg operas
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Greenaway was one of the composers commissioned to write music for the Thames Diamond Jubilee Pageant in 2012 in honour of the Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II. The piece, entitled "The New Water Music", was inspired by the George Frederic Handel's Water Music and contained movements by several modern British composers working under the direction of Greenaway. After the pageant, Greenaway was critical of the BBC coverage of the pageant as the live broadcast did not feature the performance at all. In his personal blog, he expressed the view that the presenters had focused on interviewing celebrities while ignoring the musicians completely.
Gavin Greenaway
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In 1735 Handel received the text for a new oratorio named "Saul" from its librettist Charles Jennens, a wealthy landowner with musical and literary interests. Because Handel's main creative concern was still with opera, he did not write the music for "Saul" until 1738, in preparation for his 1738–39 theatrical season. The work, after opening at the King's Theatre in January 1739 to a warm reception, was quickly followed by the less successful oratorio "Israel in Egypt" (which may also have come from Jennens). Although Handel continued to write operas, the trend towards English-language productions became irresistible as the decade ended. After three performances of his last Italian opera "Deidamia" in January and February 1741, he abandoned the genre. In July 1741 Jennens sent him a new libretto for an oratorio; in a letter dated 10 July to his friend Edward Holdsworth, Jennens wrote: "I hope [Handel] will lay out his whole Genius & Skill upon it, that the Composition may excell all his former Compositions, as the Subject excells every other subject. The Subject is Messiah".
Messiah (Handel)
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The theme of the "Handel Variations" is taken from an aria in the third movement of Handel's Harpsichord Suite No. 1 in B Major, HWV 434 ("Suites de pièces pour le clavecin," published by J. Walsh, London 1733 with five variations). Brahms himself owned a copy of the 1733 First Edition. The appeal of the aria for Brahms might have been its simplicity: its range is restricted to one octave; the harmony is plain, with every note taken from the B-flat major scale; it "made an admirably neutral starting-place". While Handel had written only five variations on his theme, Brahms, with the piano as his instrument rather than the more limited harpsichord, enlarged the scope of his opus to 25 variations ending with an extended fugue. Brahms's use of Handel exemplifies his love of the music of the past and his tendency to incorporate it and transform it in his own compositions.
Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel
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Among the eight suites published for harpsichord in 1720, G. F. Handel published his Suite no. 5 in E Major, HWV 430. This suite consists of four movements: The Prelude, Allemande, Courante and Air and Variations; the first three movements having stylized dance rhythms. This suite was promulgated a year after Handel became Master of the Orchestra at the Royal Academy of Music, also known as the first Italian opera company in London. Handel lived the remainder of his life in London after leaving Germany to work as resident composer for Earl of Carnarvon.
The Harmonious Blacksmith
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In 1733 the Earl of Essex received a letter with the following sentence: "Handel became so arbitrary a prince, that the Town murmurs". The board of chief investors expected Handel to retire when his contract ended, but Handel immediately looked for another theatre. In cooperation with John Rich he started his third company at Covent Garden Theatre. Rich was renowned for his spectacular productions. He suggested Handel use his small chorus and introduce the dancing of Marie Sallé, for whom Handel composed "Terpsicore". In 1735 he introduced organ concertos between the acts. For the first time Handel allowed Gioacchino Conti, who had no time to learn his part, to substitute arias. Financially, "Ariodante" was a failure, although he introduced ballet suites at the end of each act. "Alcina", his last opera with a magic content, and "Alexander's Feast or the Power of Music" based on John Dryden's "Alexander's Feast" starred Anna Maria Strada del Pò and John Beard.
George Frideric Handel