Ulrike Fulde, soprano
Albrecht Sack, tenor
Felix Plock, bass
The English Concert
Conductor: Howard Arman Marktkirche in Halle, the church where Handel was baptized
2009
The opening concert of the Handel Special Day,
a collaboration of 40 broadcasters.
Four choirs and two orchestras reconstructed a memorial concert,
held for the composer in 1784 in Westminster Abbey.
The text for the Israel in Egypt excerpt:
35. Doubled Chorus
The Lord shall reign for ever and ever.
(Exodus xv: 18)
0:40 36. Recitative (tenor)
For the horse of Pharaoh went in with his chariots and with his horsemen into the sea,
and the Lord brought again the waters of the sea upon them;
but the children of Israel went on dry land in the midst of the sea.
(Exodus xv: 19)
1:04 37. Double Chorus
The Lord shall reign for ever and ever.
(Exodus xv: 18)
1:45 38. Recitative (tenor)
And Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a timbrel in her hand;
and all the women went out after her with timbrels and with dances.
And Miriam answered them:
(Exodus xv: 20, 21)
2:05 39. Solo and Double Chorus
Soprano:
Sing ye to the Lord, for He hath triumphed gloriously;
Choir:
The Lord shall reign for ever and ever.
Soprano:
The horse and his rider hath He thrown into the sea.
Choir:
The Lord shall reign for ever and ever.
For He hath triumphed gloriously.
The horse and his rider hath He thrown into the sea.
The 2009 BBC Proms concert commemorating the 250th anniversary of Handel’s death:
• Solomon: Arrival of the Queen of Sheba
• Coronation anthem: Let thy hand be strengthened
• Semele: Endless pleasure, endless love
• Semele: My racking thoughts
• Semele: O ecstasy of happiness! Myself I shall adore
• Coronation Anthem: The king shall rejoice
• Concerto for organ in F major
• Coronation Anthem: Zadok the priest
We praise thee, O God :
we acknowledge thee to be the Lord.
All the earth doth worship thee :
the Father everlasting.
To thee all Angels cry aloud :
the Heavens, and all the Powers therein.
To thee Cherubim and Seraphim :
continually do cry,
Holy, Holy, Holy :
Lord God of Sabaoth;
Heaven and earth are full of the Majesty :
of thy glory.
The glorious company of the Apostles : praise thee.
The goodly fellowship of the Prophets : praise thee.
The noble army of Martyrs : praise thee.
The holy Church throughout all the world :
doth acknowledge thee;
The Father : of an infinite Majesty;
Thine honourable, true : and only Son;
Also the Holy Ghost : the Comforter.
Thou art the King of Glory : O Christ.
Thou art the everlasting Son : of the Father.
When thou tookest upon thee to deliver man :
thou didst not abhor the Virgin's womb.
When thou hadst overcome the sharpness of death :
thou didst open the Kingdom of Heaven to all believers.
Thou sittest at the right hand of God : in the glory of the Father.
We believe that thou shalt come : to be our Judge.
We therefore pray thee, help thy servants :
whom thou hast redeemed with thy precious blood.
Make them to be numbered with thy Saints : in glory everlasting.
[added later, mainly from Psalm verses:] O Lord, save thy people :
and bless thine heritage.
Govern them : and lift them up for ever.
Day by day : we magnify thee;
And we worship thy Name : ever world without end.
Vouchsafe, O Lord : to keep us this day without sin.
O Lord, have mercy upon us : have mercy upon us.
O Lord, let thy mercy lighten upon us :
as our trust is in thee.
O Lord, in thee have I trusted :
let me never be confounded.
Coronation Anthems, St. Cecilia : Paul Agnew (1:21:28 video)
Movement 2.
“From harmony …
Through all the compass of the notes it ran …”
Movements 4-6, including
“The trumpet’s loud clangor excites us to arms …
The double double double beat of the thundering drum …”
Movements 9-11. The best part is highlighted by the memorable rhythmic beat of “The dead shall live, the living die.”
Also:
Handel: Ode for St Cecilia's Day
Les Musiciens du Louvre
Conducted by Marc Minkowski
Dixit Dominus Corboz video timings:
1 Dixit (00:00) 00:45 ,, 2 Virgam virtutuis (6:11) 6:30 ,, 3 Tecum principium (9:00) 9:15 ,, 4 Juravit Dominus 12:05 ,, 5 Tu es sacerdos in aeternum 14:16 ,, 6 Dominus a dextris (15:55) 16:20 ,, 7 Judicabit 19:48 ,, 8 Conquassabit 22:11 ,, 9 De torrente (23:35) 24:04 ,, 10 Gloria Patri (28:04) 28:15
Dixit Dominus Gardiner video timings:
2 Virgam virtutis tuae 5:40, 3 Tecum principium 8:45, 4 Juravit DOMINUS 11:55, 5 Tu es sacerdos 14:35, 6 Dominus a dextris tuis 16:01, 7 Judicabit in nationibus 19:07, 8 Conquassabit 21:35, 9 De torrente 23:04, 10 Gloria Patri 27:20 ;;; Encore "De torrente" 37:35; final ovation 42:00
HWV 263 "Sing unto God" Wedding Anthem for Prince Frederick 1736
Nonesuch H-71294A
Handel "Sing unto God" (HWV 263, 1736) (Glad your vinyl still sounds so good! All my vinyls (and I had many, including Nonesuch, from that period) suffered from inner-groove distortion after frequent playings.)
00:48
(Alto Soloist, Full Chorus, Orchestra including timpani and solo trumpeter)
Sing unto God, ye Kingdoms of the Earth
O sing Praises unto the Lord.
(3:52) 4:17
(Soprano soloist, orchestra)
Blessed are all they that fear the Lord:
O well is thee, and happy shalt thou be.
(6:30) 6:55
(Bass soloist, obbligato cello and orchestra)
Thy wife shall be as the fruitful vine
Upon the walls of thine house
Thy children like the olive branches
Round about thy table.
10:18
(Fugal chorus with orchestra)
Lo, thus shall the man be blessed
That feareth the Lord
Blessed shall he be
He shall be blessed.
12:33
(Tenor soloist, recitative with continuo instruments)
Blessed be the Lord God of Israel
13:21
From everlasting to everlasting.
(13:42) 13:59
(Tenor Soloist, Full Chorus, Orchestra including timpani and solo trumpeter)
And let all the people say
Hallelujah, amen.
15:25
Blessed be the lord, Hallelujah, amen.
15:42 , 16:08
Praise ye the Lord, Hallelujah, amen.
17:11
Blessed be the Lord
17:14
From everlasting to everlasting.
Amen, Hallelujah, amen.
Here is the chapter on Handel’s operas from the book version of
the article (by Winton Dean) on Handel in the first, 1980, edition of The New Grove.
[1]
It is only [since 1920] that Handel’s operas have been rediscovered;
apart from a fragment of Almira reduced to one short act (1878),
none was staged anywhere between 1754 and 1920.
They were regarded as dead along with the opera seria convention
to which they subscribed.
It is true that Handel did not reform or break out of that convention,
with its concentration on recitative and da capo aria,
an occasional duet, and a happy end expressed in an ensemble or coro,
to the extent that Gluck did.
The way he made it work in the theatre could not be demonstrated
until modern producers discovered how the 18th-century stage operated:
it worked by exploiting its peculiarities and limitations,
such as the single rise and fall of the curtain
at beginning and end of the opera
and the quick scene changes executed in full view of the audience,
and relating them to the musical structure in such a way
as to play on and defeat the listener’s expectation.
[2]
In a narrowly circumscribed convention
a slight deviation can achieve a disproportionate effect.
By manipulating the shape of the da capo aria
and in particular
varying the incidence, length, texture and regularity of the ritornellos
at the beginning and end of the main sections (and in the middle),
and by associating such strokes with a point of drama or character,
he turned the most static of forms into something potentially dynamic.
The number of different designs he created by this means,
with the aid of contrasts in tempo, metre, rhythm and key,
is almost beyond counting;
in extreme cases, such as ‘Deggio dunque’ in Radamisto,
he could deceive the ear into thinking that
the da capo form had been abandoned altogether.
The next step was to give a cumulative dynamic thrust to a scene,
an act and whole opera by so placing the arias
that they build up the characters facet by facet
and at the same time draw taut the dramatic conflict.
Handel did this partly by long-term contrasts of mood and pace
and partly by tonality.
When a slow chromatic aria in the minor
follows several quick pieces in the major,
perhaps with a radical change of scoring,
its impact is greatly enhanced,
especially if it occurs at the point of maximum weight at the end of an act.
Handel sometimes built a whole opera round one tonal centre (Imeno)
and associated characters with particular keys (Cleopatra, Antigone in Admeto);
he regularly pointed a switch of dramatic emphasis by a shift in tonal direction.
That was his almost invariable method of marking a change of scene;
the visual transformation of the sets is reflected in the music.
Such a method depends for success on a coherent and workmanlike libretto
(there is evidence that, at least in the Royal Academy years,
Handel exercised firm control over this)
and on the composer’s ability to deploy an exceptional fund of musical invention
in the arias themselves.
It does not take many weak links to break the chain.
Handel’s greatest operas contain so few inferior or superfluous arias
that they are difficult to cut without damage to the structure.
[3]
In some respects Handel did loosen the convention.
He carried the accompanied recitative
to an elaboration and an intensity of emotion
it had never attained before [Really?
More intense than the plea and lament of Orpheus in Monteverdi’s Orfeo?]
and was not to reach again until Mozart or even later.
In the remarkable episodes of Bajazet’s suicide in Tamerlano and Orlando’s madness,
where simple and accompanied recitative, arioso and aria are intermingled,
the forward drive of the drama takes control and dictates new musical forms.
Elsewhere Handel allowed a character to interrupt another’s aria
or quote it back at him ironically in a different context.
Act 1 of Metastasio’s Poro libretto ends with
a scene in which two estranged lovers do this simultaneously,
each in a mood of disillusionment citing the other’s earlier vow of constancy.
Handel’s setting works the two arias together as an extended duet
that marvelously combines irony, deft counterpoint and lyrical beauty.
Handel exploited the conventional exit after an aria by building up to it:
beginning a scene with a slow or pensive one-part aria (arioso),
followed by a recitative that transforms the dramatic situation
and a full aria for the same character discharging the accumulated emotion,
he evolved the cavatina-cabaletta design of Romantic opera.
He sometimes defeated an unconvincing happy end
by setting the coro to tragic music, regardless of the words,
where the losing cause won his sympathy
(for example in Amadigi, Tamerlano and Imeneo).
With increasing frequency, especially after 1725,
he linked the coro with one or more preceding movements,
whether arias, dances or ensembles, by means of common thematic material,
an anticipation of the extended finales of subsequent practice.
In some of the later operas
(Ariodante, Alcina, the third version of Il pastor fido)
he used a genuine chorus and a ballet;
his integration of these resources and the important element of spectacle
in the dramatic action should, in a sensitive production,
make an immediate appeal to a modern audience.
[4]
Once he had achieved maturity in Agrippina
Handel’s operatic style changed little in 30 years,
apart from the assimilation of new influences already mentioned.
At all periods he wrote operas of different types.
The commonest, as in all 18th-century opera seria,
is heroic in temper with a plot taken from
Roman or Greek history or occasionally from mythology or the Dark Ages.
The characters are concerned with
love, jealousy, dynastic rivalry and the grasp of power;
though they often utter lofty sentiments, their politics are purely personal
(no representative of the common people appears).
This type of libretto became standardized in the work of Metastasio,
a great poet whose artificial symmetry and literary refinement,
though immensely popular with composers (and singers)
who did not look beyond the confines of the aria,
eventually blocked the progress of opera as an art and demanded the surgery of Gluck.
Handel’s three Metastasio operas (Siroe, Poro and Ezio)
show him inspired by the poetry
but inhibited by the stiffness of the characters.
In his finest heroic operas
plot, characters and musical invention are perfectly matched;
the three masterpieces of 1724-5, Giulio Cesare, Tamerlano and Rodelinda,
far surpass the work of any contemporary.
The ‘magic operas’, though only five in number,
are an important and distinctive class;
two of them, Orlando and Alcina,
are among the supreme examples of the form,
and the other three (Rinaldo, Teseo and Amadigi)
contain much superb music, especially in the scenes of sorcery and witchcraft.
The supernatural element reduced the need for the plot to assume a rational course,
admitted the poetic symbolism of the fairy tale,
and released the romantic strain on Handel’s imagination.
The much prized machinery of the Baroque theatre came into its own
in the spectacular transformation scenes.
[5]
A third type of opera embraces serious emotion,
comic or even farcical situations and an element of parody,
mocking the conventions of opera seria (including the castrato hero);
these anti-heroic works,
especially Agrippina, Flavio, Partenope and Serse,
distil a characteristic and individual flavor.
The ability to suggest the profound, the commonplace
and the ridiculous aspects of human behavior,
not only in the same opera but in the same scene and situation,
places Handel beside Monteverdi and Mozart
as a master of dramatic irony on many levels.
The spirit of playful comedy is not absent from Handel’s most serious operas:
Asteria twits her lover’s apparent faithlessness in Tamerlano,
Cleopatra turns her brutal and lascivious brother into a figure of fun,
and Alexander the Great’s duplicity is hilariously exposed
when each of the two women he is courting, having overheard his advances to the other,
quotes back at him in a different key the love music he addressed to her rival.
This comprehensiveness of mood and dramatic approach
gives his operas a depth seldom attained in the history of the art.
But their quality can emerge only from productions based
on a complete understanding of the convention.
[The following sentence is not from the book quoted from above,
but is from the introduction (page 7) by Donald Burrows of
The Cambridge Companion to Handel:]
A good preparation for attendance
at a performance of one of Handel’s operas written for London
is to read through the dual-language libretto
that was printed for the work’s first performance.
[Endnote: The original printed wordbooks have been re-published in facsimile in
Ellen T. Harris (ed.), The Librettos of Handel’s Operas,
fascimilie edition with introductions
(13 vols., New York and London, 1989).]
[That 13 volume edition is hardly easily accessible to most people.
I have tried, rather assiduously, to find on the Internet (as of 2013-08)
English translations of the librettos for
the various Handel operas that I have included in this blog.
The Italian original librettos are generally available in an excellent edition from www.haendel.it,
but as far as I can find there is no source for the English translations.
I would think that a nation as wealthy as the United States could somehow find the money
to put English translations of this cultural treasure on the Internet,
where it could be available for all,
but evidently that does not fit within the budgets of those who fund America's cultural scene
(e.g., the National Endowment for the Arts and
the various foundations and institutions which promote American culture).
The following table started as a copy of the one at Wikipedia as of 2013-02-19,
but was expanded by adding links to my posts on various operas,
and with embeds of videos
when those were available but I had no dedicated post on the subject.
Several videos of Handel operas which were once available on YouTube, but have now been deleted, were ones I particularly admired.
Here are some of them:
Ariodante London 1996, Ivor Bolton with the E.N.O.
Alcina Aix-en-Provence 2015, Andrea Marcon with the Freiburger Barockorchester
Here is the chapter on Handel’s oratorios from the book version of
the article (by Winton Dean) on Handel in the first, 1980, edition of The New Grove.
[1]
Handel’s final achievement, which contributed more than anything else to his lasting fame, was the creation of the English oratorio.
It was a new form, only remotely connected with any of the continental varieties, and his single major innovation.
He evolved it by accident, thanks to his reluctance to abandon the theatre, the Bishop of London [Bishop Gibson]’s intervention against stage performances and the middle-class English public’s appreciation of familiar Bible stories treated in an epic style that combined entertainment with edification.
The evolution was gradual, though some of the advantages were obvious from the first:
Handel was freed from the expense of scenery and costumes, and later from dependence on costly virtuoso singers, and he could make much greater use of the chorus to extend the musical and dramatic range and vary the texture.
His chorus, all male, was small in numbers
(probably not more than 20, including six boys for the treble part), but they were professionals from the Chapel Royal and Westminster Abbey, and the soloists were expected to sing with them.
[2]
Handel carried into the oratorio many structural devices from opera, especially articulation by tonality, but could afford to relax such conventions as the da capo aria since there were no exits.
Nevertheless, especially in the first important oratorios, Athalia (HWV 52) and Saul (HWV 53), the da capo remained valuable as a threat; by leading the ear to expect it, and either breaking off or continuing with something else,
Handel could make dramatic points musically explicit.
In Athalia (based, like Esther, on Racine) he linked airs and choruses in a remarkable profusion of new compound forms; in Saul he used five orchestral symphonies, all in the key of the overture and final chorus, to mark changes of scene and the passage of time and to unify the musical structure.
Their strong mimetic quality
(each depicts an important event in the story) suggest that Handel thought of them a a musical equivalent of the spectacular scene changes in the opera house; they lend themselves easily to modern stage production.
[3]
Most of the oratorios are dramas
(‘oratorio or sacred drama’ was the regular description in the librettos), with the chorus, representing the Israelite nation and sometimes their opponents as well, playing a central part in the action and on occasion drawing a moral.
This double posture is a product of their descent from Greek tragedy through Racine’s Esther and Athalia, a link carefully preserved inmost of the later oratorios.
The moral is dramatic, arising from the conflict presented in the plot, not religious.
All the major dramatic oratorios have a central them derived from the facts of human experience: the undermining of judgment and sanity by envy or sexual jealousy, the clash of opposed cultures, the enfeeblement of the rulers’ will as an empire decays, the choice between betrayal of principle and martyrdom, man’s enforced submission to a higher destiny and the limitations of mortality.
These conflicts are enacted by individuals to whom Handel extended the profound sympathy for every human weakness that informs his operas.
If the oratorios are grander in scale, it is because the chorus adds an extra dimension.
Their national survival or rehabilitation depends on the fate of their leaders; they are personally involved in the struggles that engage Saul, Samson, Belshazzar, Theodora and Jephtha.
The greatest of the dramatic oratorios thus possess a double plot held together by a single theme.
To the intricate skill with which this is achieved Handel added an unusual power of characterizing nations as well as individuals.
In Athalia, Samson, Alexander Balus and Theodora, and in one scene in Deborah, he depicted two peoples in sharply differentiated music; in Belshazzar, the grandest of all the oratorios, there are three [Babylonian, Persian and Hebrew].
He did not load the dice; he gave the heathen races of the most ravishing music, especially in Athalia and Theodora.
This refusal to make the righteous more sympathetic than the unrighteous, evidence of his dramatic detachment and freedom from sectarian bias, has been a constant stumbling block to those who sought to turn him into a pillar of the moral establishment.
[4]
Not all the oratorios belong to this type.
The choral epic Israel in Egypt and Messiah stand apart.
Neither has a plot in the ordinary sense, and they ae the only oratorios whose words are taken exclusively from the Bible.
For this reason they became the most popular, ousting works of at least comparable merit, and distorted the image of the form.
Israel in Egypt is justly renowned for the grandeur of its choruses; but apart from the unevenness caused by the wholesale borrowings, it is not a well-balanced work owing to the slight proportion of solo music.
The greatness of Messiah—Handel’s only sacred oratorio in the true sense and therefore untypical—derives on one level from its unique fusion of the traditions of Italian opera, English anthem and German Passion, and on another from the coincidence of Handel’s personal faith and creative genius to express, more fully than in any other work of art, the deepest aspirations of the Anglican religious spirit.
It remains nonetheless an ‘entertainment’ (Jennens’s word), on however lofty a level, not an act of worship.
[5[
The classical dramas Semele and Hercules, though performed in the manner of oratorios, were not so called by Handel.
Like Acis and Galatea they are closer to opera, with the chorus playing a smaller part than in the Old Testament works.
In Semele, where the moral is implicit in the action and never openly stated,
Handel’s affinity with Homer breaks free in one of the most perfect artistic re-creations of the classical spirit; gods and heroes operate on the same level and are subject to the same weaknesses and temptations as the man in the street.
Hercules re-creates the dramatic and moral force of Sophoclean tragedy in terms that underlie Handel’s whole conception of the oratorio.
In freshness of invention and imaginative scope the two have few rivals in Handel’s work and none in English musical drama outside it.
Some of the later oratorios, especially those with texts by Morell, are hampered by perfunctory plots, flabby diction and an excess of abstract moralizing. [Evidently Dean considers the four “victory oratorios”, celebrating the defeat of the pretender in the 1745 uprising, of which the best known is Judas Maccabaeus, in that judgment.]
While this should not be regarded as automatically inhibiting Handel’s response, a certain weakening becomes apparent, and a greater resort to borrowing.
However, he recovered his powers in Solomon, whose hieratical double choruses are balanced by the casting of the principal soloists (including the hero) for women’s voices and the vivid treatment of the personal drama in Act 2.
In Susanna the balance is less successful; but the idyllic setting and the interplay of innocence and menace in the plot, comedy and tragedy in the characterizations, and opera, oratorio and pastoral masque in the style give the work a peculiar fascination.
The last two oratorios strike the profoundest note of all, inspired no doubt by the aging composer’s consciousness of infirmity and approaching death.
The mawkishness of the text of Theodora is entirely belied by the music, which draws a strong and subtle portrait of the Christian martyrs and makes the tragic end all the more moving by portraying the Romans (apart from Valens) as puzzled sensualists impressed despite themselves by the steadfast courage of the victims.
In Jephtha the mighty chromatic choruses, full of agony and despair, seem to identify the composer with the central figure’s enforced submission to an inexorable fate.
The contrived deux ex machina solves nothing; what remains in the mind is Jephtha’s heroic suffering [??] and the sonderfully tender portrait of his daughter Iphis.
If these two oratorios have a stronger Christian content than any earlier work except Messiah,
Handel celebrates to the last the precarious joys and sorrows of humanity.
The following table started as a copy of the one at Wikipedia as of 2013-02-15,
but was expanded by adding links to my posts on various oratorios,
and with embeds of videos when those were available but I had no dedicated post on the subject.
It is followed by a table of Handel’s odes and masques, closely related to the oratorios.
Oratorios by George Frideric Handel
HWV
Title
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Premiere
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Venue
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Libretto
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Text
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Notes
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Videos or a link to my web page dedicated to this particular work (which contains links to videos)
