After 300 years, the music of Handel continues to draw us in with richly expressive melodies and a vivid sense of drama. Both are apparent in the Sonata in D Major, HWV 371 for violin and basso continuo. In the opening of the first movement (Affettuoso), the violin line appears to outline an ascending D major triad, only to arrive on an E, one pitch too far. The next phrase extends even …
On the afternoon of April 21, 1749, an estimated twelve thousand people, each paying two shillings and six pence, descended on London’s Vauxhall Gardens to take in an open-air rehearsal of Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks. The ensuing traffic jam resulted in a three-hour backup of carriages across London Bridge, and incidences of road rage. Handel was commissioned to write the festive five-movement suite for a lavish public celebration which occurred a week …
Eternal Source of Light Divine forms the majestic opening statement of Handel’s secular cantata, Ode for the Birthday of Queen Anne, HWV 74. The aria is a kind of ceremonial call to order. The angelic vocal line is echoed by the trumpet, which seems to emerge from timeless, celestial expanses. Occasionally, the two voices weave together in near canonic counterpoint. Handel composed this music in January of 1713. It was intended to celebrate …
Handel’s 1735 opera, Alcina, tells a fantastic story of sorcery, harrowing adventure, and heartbreak. The beautiful and treacherous Alcina seduces all of the men who land on her enchanted island. Eventually growing tired of each of her lovers, she transforms them into animals, plants, or stones. When the dashing knight, Ruggiero, falls under Alcina’s spell, his fiancée, Bradamante, seeks to rescue him. Bradamante is disguised as her brother, Ricciardo. Her plan is …
Before television, internet, movies, and rock and roll, there was the secular cantata. During the late Baroque period in Italy, these dramatic vocal works were popular entertainment in wealthy, aristocratic circles. Made up of a brief sequence of recitatives and arias, the secular cantata amounted to a kind of highly condensed opera. Between 1706 and 1709, the young George Frideric Handel traveled throughout Italy and produced at least 40 solo cantatas, most …
Handel’s six Trio Sonatas, Op. 2 (HWV 386-391) were written between 1717 and 1719 and circulated in a bootleg edition until their official publication in 1733. Following the “slow-fast-slow-fast” model of the Italian Sonata da chiesa (“church sonata”), these Sonatas represent the culmination of a form popularized by Arcangelo Corelli in the 1680s. Handel’s Trio Sonatas were scored for “two violins, two oboes, or two flutes and basso continuo.” In the Baroque period, composers …
Saint Cecilia, one of the most famous martyrs of the early church, is the patron saint of music and musicians. Beginning in 1683, musicians in London celebrated Saint Cecilia’s Feast Day, which is November 22 on the Roman Catholic calendar. It was for this occasion that George Frederich Handel composed his cantata, Ode for St. Cecilia’s Day in 1739. The work, which was premiered at London’s Theatre in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, is a setting of a …