G F Handel

Henry Burgess, Junior, published in 1743 the earliest known set of organ concertos by an English composer. These show strongly the influence of George Frideric Handel, whose organ concertos published as Op. 4 in 1738 invented the genre, but also reveal that of Antonio Vivaldi and-more surprisingly-the English song tradition. Though still little known, Burgess is a capable and inventive composer, whose sparkling concertos, performable either with or without orchestra, deserve a place in the repertoire.

The Music Libel Against the Jews is a wide-ranging study of the historical Christian exclusion of the Jews, accused as producers of noise in a musical universe dominated by harmonious sounds.  Associating harmonies with divine grace, Christians interpreted "Jewish noise" they heard in medieval synagogues as a sign of divine abandonment. Ruth HaCohen traces the manifestations and roots of the noise accusation to a variation on the famous blood libel that spread in Europe during the Crusades, alleging that Jews kill singing Christian boys in order to silence their “intolerable” hymns and canticles. Stemming from two diametrically opposed performing practices of handling sound in ritual space, the book argues that the noise accusation records the two adversarial communities’ reciprocal rejection of each other’s sonic world.

Surprisingly, a focused study of the subject from historical, musical, aesthetic or theological perspectives has never been undertaken. Nor was it even diagnosed as a pervasive cultural phenomenon that may account for a host of texts, contexts, and subtexts addressing the mutual perceptions of Jews and Christians, in various domains and periods. Thus the book examines the dissemination and impact of this music libel from  medieval through modern times, in a variety of artistic and political contexts. Transcending the confines of church and synagogue, this study investigates the opening up of the musical sphere towards the Jews' inclusion in the wake of the Enlightenment. Acculturated Jews indeed made great efforts to integrate in that sphere, but as it turned out, they were not actually so welcomed, as old libels began to resurface. Pivotal to the Jews' struggle for aural accession are certain art works—musical, literary and pictorial—created by both "invaders" into that common audial space and by those considered its privileged "inhabitants. “ From Bach through Lessing, Handel,  Mendelssohn, and Heinrich Heine, to Richard Wagner, George Eliot, and many others, expressions and rebuttals of the noise accusation are traced and compared.  No less crucial to the story of the “noisy Jews” are modern ethnographic records of synagogues’ vocalities, by both Jews and Christians.  These records are analyzed against the massive reshaping of synagogal practices in both reform and traditional communities, all through the 19th century, in Germany and beyond. Simultaneously, the often intuitive Jewish project to emancipate noise and dissonance in the sphere of art, is viewed in this study as an integral part of European literature and music, consummated by Arnold Schoenberg, Franz Kafka and other creators of Jewish origin. The noise accusation reached a peak in Nazi propaganda films which also marks its final historical stage. The book exposes the often neglected, however crucial, role of the sonic in shaping modes of religious, communal and ethnic experience, self-perception and perception of the Other, which reinforce, if not determine, major political trends in human culture.

Recent musicological discourse, while frequently considering issues of historiography and canonicity, has seldom critically engaged with biography as a genre of documentary significance to reception history for its attempts to shape public opinion of its subjects. In consequence, modern musicology has often taken for granted many tendencies and preoccupations that accumulated in musical biography in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This thesis presents a historiographical examination of the precedents for and accretions of these assumptions, in terms of the role played by biography both in the establishment and maintenance of ideological canons and in the resultant ‘top-down’ conception of music history as dominated by an elite handful of exalted composers. Exploration of the ways in which biographies constructed their subjects as ‘great’ and ‘exemplary’ – insofar as these concepts were idealized within the communities of readers for whom they were originally written – is conducted through two major studies of the published texts to c.1950 on canonical composers including J. S. Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Schumann, Wagner, Brahms, and Tchaikovsky. The first investigates the elaboration and distortion of a set of some twenty-five of the most famous myths of musical biography, from their origins in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Continental European texts to their fullest development (and, in many cases, their refutation) in English-language biographies up to the mid-twentieth century. In contrast, the second critically analyzes the twelve volumes of the original ‘Master Musicians’ series (1899-1906) as exemplars of the biographical and musical paradigms of composer life-writing, and as late Victorian period pieces of significance to canon formation for their conception as a closed set of monographs of historically-important subjects appropriated to English ends. The conclusion provides a preliminary assessment of the implications to modern musicology of the findings of this thesis through re-evaluation of elements of recent biographical and hermeneutical scholarship, and proposes that the discipline might usefully adopt a more inclusive, self-reflexive approach to the study of musical biography in the future.

"The transformation of Handel's oratorios from commercial entertainment to national heritage in 18th-century Britain is an extraordinary cultural phenomenon and the earliest of its kind in music history.  A genre that was single-handedly established by Handel turned in the space of half-a-century into a musical affirmation of the British people.  Describing and evaluating this process forms the subject of the present dissertation.

This is the first detailed study of the early reception of Handelian oratorio in Britain.  Drawing entirely on primary sources, the dissertation has three objectives: to offer a collection of hitherto unpublished references on Handel and English oratorio; to provide a continuous narrative on the reception of the genre in the 1732-1784 period; and to initiate a critical response to its cultural evolution within this half-a-century.

The Narrative part, structured around theatrical seasons, provides a detailed survey of oratorio performances in London, from the première of Esther to the Handel Commemoration Festival.  A number of exceptional moments in the history of the genre receive individual discussions in part two as Studies.  These culminate in a comprehensive account of factors that facilitated the cultural mutation of the oratorio.  The 870-page collection of contemporary sources provides documentary support to the other two parts and supplements Otto Erich Deutsch's documentary biography of the composer from 1955."

This article gives a detailed description of Bergamo, Biblioteca Musicale Gaetano Donizetti, Ms. xiv 8751 h.1, proposing that it is an important collection of music by William Babell (1688–1723), an English composer of German birth. Additionally, it discusses Babell’s borrowings from the French organist Jean-François Dandrieu (1681–1734), among them one of the movements from the harpsichord suite hwv441. This suite was published at the end of John Walsh’s unauthorized ‘Second Volume’ of Handel’s harpsichord music (1733), but is included in the Bergamo manuscript. The article also sheds light on Babell’s relationship with Handel’s music.

The Musical Archive of the Cathedrals of Zaragoza possesses an interesting early source for
the study of the music of Georg Friedrich Händel (*1685; †1759). It is a manuscript volume,
carefully copied and professionally and luxuriously bound in parchment, containing
a copy of the Suites de pièces pour le clavecin, which the Anglo-German musician would
print for the first time in London in 1720. This copy, made in Rome on 26 March 1727,
only seven years after his editio princeps, and owned by Francisco Xavier Nebra, bears witness
to the early knowledge of the best European music of the time in Spain as well as the
fluid musical connections between Italy and Spain.

In his 1961 song "Nuvole barocche" (Baroque Clouds), Italian songwriter Fabrizio De Andr e commented on the fascination exerted by colorful clouds at sunset and their artistic representation as canonized by the visual culture of the baroque, fittingly emblematized by the transience of clouds themselves. The domain of the visual is turned into that of the acoustic, triggering the synesthetic interaction of forms of sense perception, which are usually conceived as separate from one another. The song thus reminds us that the polysemous nature of clouds makes them particularly suitable for forms of artistic representation that, moving across mediums, blur the boundaries of sense perception. This essay looks at how such interplay of sensory layers actually works and to what extent it fits the rhetoric and poetics of the Baroque. In order to do so, I chase the sound of baroque clouds through arias and songs that play with the ambiguous semantics of meteorology and make the singing voice convey anxieties about topics as diverse as the course of time, the volatility of love, devotional and spiritual concerns. After framing the discussion in rhetorical terms, with a focus on metaphors and similes, the essay examines works by John Dowland, Francesca Caccini, Sigimsondo D'India, and George Frideric Handel in order to assess some of the ways in which the unstable nature of clouds lends itself to a kind of metaphoric code that is best described in synesthetic terms.

The tendency of today’s historiography to portray early 18th-century Italian opera as a dichotomy between opera seria and opera buffa takes too little account of the existence of genera mixta. However, contemporary composers and authors sometimes referred to a tripartiton. In his treatise Der vollkommene Capellmeister (1739), Johann Mattheson distinguishes between tragedy, comedy and satire. His description of the melodies from a satirical opera is limited to the statement that they are “ridiculous, poseuristic and prickly”. This definition can be applied to the analysis of dramatic vocal works with the help of Gérard Genette’s category of “burlesque travesty” which describes the stylistic degradation of a tragic-heroic subject as a
satirical function. This stylistic mixture is achieved by the use of specific musical devices, which are shown in this article on the basis of case studies on music by Francesco Bartolomeo Conti, Johann Sebastian Bach and Georg Friedrich Händel.

Giuseppe Paolucci's Arte pratica di contrappunto (1765-72) is a collection of analyses of forty-two compositions from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. It offers insights into eighteenth-century practices of music analysis as well as into historical concepts of counterpoint and fugue. Two analytical readings by Paolucci are translated and commented upon in this essay. Paolucci's analysis of Antonio Caldara's motet Peccavi super numerum is valuable for its references to rhetoric and the visual arts. The analysis of Handel's fugue "Then shall I teach thy ways" (from the Chandos Anthem HWV 248) exemplifies the high esteem in which contemporary writers and composers held Handel's compositional techniques, which Paolucci describes meticulously, bar by bar. Paolucci's reading of Handel's fugue, which is similar to Italian partimento fugues of that time, also provides material for the still-unwritten history of eighteenth-century Italian fugal theory.

It is known that George Frederic Handel often reworked own compositions or works of contemporary or earlier composers. In his oratorios, the oldest reworked composition seems to be the final chorus of Giacomo Carissimi’s Jephte from the middle of the 17th century. A well-known work, it was praised by Athanasius Kircher in his Musurgia universalis (1650) as an outstanding example for the „affectus doloris”. Handel reworked it in his Samson as „Hear Jacob’s God”.
With his reworking, Handel took recourse to an early period of the genre; he went back to an older style in order to obtain archaic moments with which to characterize the Israelites. He transferred the music of the Roman and Catholic oratorio to the modern English oratorio which was established by him, and that was aimed at a nationally conscious Anglican audience. Handel did not just copy his model. Rather he rearranged Carissmi’s composition, orchestrated it and employed a different text, putting it into a completely different context. He thus transformed not only the musical but the rhetoric, semantic and expressive construction of the chorus.

Baroque opera was invented on a deathly premise: reviving a tradition of sung ancient tragedy that had in fact never existed. Modern historiography has struggled with the notion of origins, focusing on relationships among the surviving textual sources to make sense of the proliferation of theatrical subjects. These relationships remain important—but there is also reason to delve deeper into the “haunted” status of early opera. With respect to three central works on the subject of Agrippina and her son Nero (Nerone fatto Cesare, Noris-Perti, Venice 1693; Agrippina, Noris-Magni, Milan 1703; and L’Agrippina, Handel-[Grimani], Venice 1709), the haunted status of performances was made explicit, both in the drama and in contemporary poems dedicated to the main singers.
Using terminology associated with the “spectral turn” in the humanities, this essay argues for rethinking operatic genealogies through the lens of hauntological intertextualities. In contrast to traditional theories of compositional influence, this study adopts a non-linear historiographical approach to performance genealogies, embracing text, music, and discourse about opera itself. Contesting the use of the concept of “origins” with respect to both the birth and subject matter of baroque opera, I argue that the genre developed as an already haunted narration.

I ritratti capodistriani di Gavardo de Gavardo

Il Museo regionale di Capodistria conserva due immagini di Gavardo de Gavardo (Capodistria 1701 – Parigi 1736) schedate da Alberto Cra- ievich nel volume Istria. Città maggiori. Partendo dalla biografia del ritrattato, è il caso di ritornare sul soggiorno inglese di de Gavardo e sulla sua attività di librettista di melodrammi per la compagnia operistica di Nicolò Porpora. Figura del cosmopolitismo settecentesco, l’istriano volle ricordare il successo riscosso con la propria effigie “dipinta a pastello da celebre pittore suo amico” (riconosciuto da Baccio Ziliotto con Giacomo Fabris veneziano “birraio e pittore delle scene” del teatro di Haymarket) verso il 1736 a Londra, poco tempo prima dell’improv- visa morte, sulla via del ritorno a casa, a Parigi: nelle stesse parole di Gavardo, “il mio ritratto tal e quale vado vestito, acciò possa servir di memoria a tutti di casa, ed ai miei amici che ci verranno, d’un uomo che con risoluto coraggio per mille pericoli e rischi andò nelle ultime parti d’Europa a ritrovare con infinita paciencia e sofferenza la sua for- tuna”. Si tratta dell’opera già attribuita, a causa della peculiare tecnica esecutiva, a Rosalba Carriera, di cui vanno, invece, rilevate – come in- dicato da Craievich, cui spetta aver collegato il pastello di Capodistria a Gavardo e alla sua storia, in virtù delle rassomiglianze con il Ritratto di Gavardo de Gavardo su tela dello stesso museo, probabile immagine commemorativa – “alcune finezze pittoriche proprie della ritrattistica di ‘gusto moderno’ divulgata in quegli anni a Londra da Jacopo Amigoni”, argomento degno di approfondimento filologico.

«Роделинда» (1725) – одна из наименее часто исполняемых опер Генделя; российскому исследователю доступно для изучения 9 разных сценических версий оперы, включая постановку Большого театра 2015 года. Все эти версии рассмотрены в настоящем докладе с точки зрения режиссерской интерпретации музыкального материала, либретто и общей структуры, типичной для оперы-сериа. Систематизированы типы режиссерских подходов к постановке оперы на основе таких параметров, как работа с местом и временем действия, работа с второстепенными персонажами, работа с параллельным нарративом, работа с психологизмом и абстракцией. Проанализирована взаимосвязь музыкальных редакций, применяемых в постановках, и режиссерских решений.

Was Händel da im Herbst 1738 in nur einem Monat zu Papier brachte, war ein Oratorium, wie es die Welt noch nicht gehört hatte. Vertraute Elemente wie der Wechsel zwischen Rezitativen und virtuosen Da-Capo-Arien fehlten völlig; nicht die Solisten, sondern der Chor ergriff ständig das Wort. Fülle und Vielfalt der Klangmittel legen dabei nahe, dass Händel hier wie in einem musikalischen Labor mit Formen und Techniken für das Oratorium experimentierte.

Sin duda alguna, nos hallamos ante una de las composiciones más interpretadas y celebradas
de toda la historia de la música culta occidental. Del mismo modo, también
es una de las más conocidas: al menos algunas de sus secciones, sobre todo una y por
méritos propios, se han situado en el núcleo de obras que podíamos englobar en el
apartado de ‘clásicos populares’, ya que es ampliamente reconocida, tarareada y empleada
en televisión, cine y publicidad en todo el mundo.
Incluso, si añadimos que The Messiah (El Mesías), de George Friedrich Haendel (música)
y Charles Hennes (libreto) hace referencia a una de las historias de mayor importancia
en la vida y devenir de la humanidad, la de Jesús de Nazaret, nos encontramos, en global,
ante una composición sobresaliente en todos los sentidos. Desde la órbita protestante,
no solo aborda el nacimiento de Cristo, sino que también alude a otros momentos
clave en el cristianismo como la profecía de Isaías, la pasión, muerte, resurrección,
ascensión y recepción en los cielos de Cristo, la posterior predicación del evangelio,
sus enseñanzas y el día del juicio. Por todo ello, El Mesías es una partitura clave para
acercarnos a la vida y obra de su compositor, del género del oratorio, la Inglaterra de
la primera mitad del siglo XVIII y las formas del aria, el recitativo y el coro tanto desde
el punto de vista del investigador, intérprete o director, melómano o aficionado y del
docente en cualquiera de las etapas educativas.
En definitiva, en este artículo nos acercaremos a la vida y obra de Haendel, su vinculación
con Bach y la génesis y características de El Mesías. Además, incluiremos un poema
que Dubosq escribió sobre Haendel, una discografía y filmografía recomendada
sobre la obra, el índice de la misma y los textos en inglés y español. Tampoco olvidaremos
citar algunas curiosidades, como la relación que le unió dos siglos después con
Jimi Hendrix o un nuevo éxito del alemán nacionalizado inglés en el siglo XXI: el himno
de la Champions League.
Palabras clave
Haendel · Oratorio · El Mesías · Jesús de Nazaret · Inglaterra · Época barroca · Bach
· Mozart · Farinelli · Hasse · Ópera · Royal Academy of Music · Ópera de la Nobleza ·
Porpora · Champions League · Jimi Hendrix

This paper examines, for the first time as a whole, the twenty-plus instrumental variation sets that Vivaldi wrote, focusing on issues of genre, chronology, formal structure, and melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic detail.  The research finds that Vivaldi’s variation sets draw elements from both concerto and variation traditions but they combine them in ways that are rare, and perhaps unique, among variation sets of the early eighteenth century. Whereas many of his contemporaries emphasized the aesthetic value of individual variations, Vivaldi’s sets signal a shift towards a firmer conception of the set as a whole.
Contrast on the foreground level (between the individual variations) is
carefully arranged to enhance coherence on the background level (the set taken as a whole).  Of particular interest, also, is Vivaldi's use of variation-rondo hybrid structures and codettas featuring an independent part for a soloist before a final ritornello.  Finally, the cataloging of these works demonstrates the remarkable range of contexts where Vivaldi used variation technique as a rigorous formal device.  Published in Studi vivaldiani 6 (2006): 53-75; reprinted in Vivaldi, edited by Michael Talbot. Farnham (UK): Ashgate, 2010. pp. 365-386.

ABSTRACT: Allegorical and emblematic images do not appear exclusively in visual literature: Genres such as the Italian or the Italian-inspired Counter-Reformation oratorios, cantatas and sacred or moral operas often contain images quite similar in form and function to those published in the Seventeenth and early Eighteenth-century European collections of emblems. This article analyses some of these parallelisms in the particular case of Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno (c. 1707), by the librettist and patron of the arts Cardinal Benedetto Pamphilj and the composer Georg Friedrich Handel.

KEYWORDS: Emblem, Opera, Oratorio, Academy, Discourse, Allegory, Rhetoric, Aural, Visual, Pamphilj, Handel, Time, Affects, Passions.



RESUMEN: Las imágenes alegóricas o emblemáticas no resultan exclusivas de la literatura visual: géneros como el oratorio, la cantata y la ópera moral o sacra contrarreformista italiana o de inspiración italiana contienen a menudo imágenes muy similares en su forma y función a las que aparecen publicadas en las colecciones europeas de emblemas en los siglos XVII y XVIII. Este artículo analiza algunos de estos paralelismos en el caso de la obra Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno (c. 1707), compuesta por Georg Friedrich Handel a partir de un libretto del poeta y mecenas Cardenal Benedetto Pamphilj.

PALABRAS CLAVE: Emblema, ópera, oratorio, accademia, discurso, alegoría, retórica, auditivo, visual, Pamphilj, Handel, tiempo, afectos, pasiones.

"Ausgehend von einer Anekdote, laut welcher der junge Mattheson und Händel auf der Fahrt nach Lübeck "da mente, non da penna" Fugen improvisierten, wird das Verhältnis von Improvisation und Komposition im Werk Händels thematisiert. Händels Italienaufenthalt ermöglichte ihm vermutlich auch Einblicke in die in Italien vorherrschende Partimentotradition. Den Einfluss dieser Improvisationspraxis kann man in späteren Kompositionen erkennen. Anhand ausgewählter Analysen wird gezeigt, auf welche Weise Händel mit verbreiteten Modellen arbeitet. Indem er den ünprovisatorischen Charakter deutlich spürbar werden lässt, erzeugt er einen flüssigen und lässigen Duktus, welcher dem altitalienischen Ideal der "sprezzatura" verpflichtet ist.
Based on an anecdote according to which the young Mattheson and Händel improvized fugues "da mente, non da penna" while travelling to Lübeck, this paper will deal with the relationship between improvization and composition in Händel's works. Händel's sojourn in Italy probably gave him a perspective into the "partimento" tradition which prevailed at the time. The influence of this improvization practice is recognizable in his later compositions. On the basis of selected analyses, Händel's way of dealing with prevalent models will be shown. While the improvizational character is clearly perceptible, at the same time he creates a fluid and easy-going ductus which is bound to the old Italian ideal of "sprezzatura"."

Oratorios in Britain, 1732-1784" Ilias Chrissochoidis I am grateful to Carolyn Brown and the Scholar's Council for granting me this unique opportunity to work in a real temple of knowledge. After many months of continuous residence at the Kluge Center, I begin to feel like a Library of Congressman. My working life here has been smooth and productive thanks to excellent administrative support from

These extracts on music from the correspondence between Charles Jennens (1700–73) and Edward Holdsworth (1684–1746) reflect the authors' shared interests and (prohibited) political views. Though commonly known as the librettist of Messiah, Jennens was also a collector of music and art, and as such capitalized on Holdworth's travels as a tutor of young gentlemen on the Grand Tour. Many of the letters detail musical commissions and their fulfilment by a willing Holdsworth. In return, Jennens acted as Holdsworth's financial advisor, editorial consultant and publication adviser. Other discussions centre around the public and personal rating of singers and operas, in London and abroad, and include discussions of Handel's fortunes, his borrowing of music from Jennens's collection and his health. Mentions of personnel are not restricted to musicians but also encompass members of Jennens's family and of his and Holdsworth's social circles, many of whom were supporters of Handel.

John Baillie, the obscure author of "An Essay on the Sublime" (1747), was the first to apply this aesthetic category to music. However elementary and simplistic his remarks on this art may be, they could be of potential use in addressing the Handelian sublime in the years preceding Burke's celebrated "Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful". Indeed, two of Baillie's suggested sources of the sublime, lasting fame and philanthropy, touch directly on the reception of Handel and his oratorios.

This essay explores the first attempt to reform Handelian oratorio, by the Reverend John Brown, in 1763. Concerned about the waning popularity and literary flaws of Handel’s works, Brown launched a reform campaign through his own oratorio The Cure of Saul, performed at Covent Garden Theatre, and the publication of A Dissertation ... on the Union of Poetry and Music. He also produced the first monograph of oratorio criticism, An Examination of the Oratorios which have been performed this Season, at Covent-Garden Theatre (1763). Published within weeks from one another, the three works shaped an intellectual offensive with aesthetic and moral goals mounted on an educational platform. Although a failure, Brown’s attempt reflected Britain’s national anxiety in the wake of the Seven Years’ War.