Program notes by Eric Bromberger

Suite No. 2 in D Major from Water Music, HWV 349
GEORG FRIEDRICH HANDEL
Born February 23, 1685, Halle
Died April 14, 1759, London

In 1714 Georg Ludwig, the Elector of Hanover (and Handel‘s employer in Germany) became King George I of England. Though he spoke no English, the new king quickly learned that one of the forms of opulent recreation in London was a boating trip on the Thames and that these excursions were sometimes accompanied by music. In the first years of his tenure, King George made several such trips, and they were grand occasions indeed. One of the most famous took place on July 15, 1717, and two days later the London Courant ran a lengthy (and oft-quoted) description of the festivities:

On Wednesday Evening, at about 8, the King took Water at Whitehall in an open Barge...and went up the River towards Chelsea...A City Company‘s Barge was employ‘d for the Musick, wherein were 50 instruments of all sorts, who play‘d all the way from Lambeth (while the Barges drove with the Tide without rowing, as far as Chelsea) the finest Symphonies, compos‘d express for this occasion, by Mr. Haendel; which his Majesty liked so well, that he caus‘d it to be plaid over three times in going and returning. At Eleven his Majesty went a-shore at Chelsea, where a supper was prepar‘d, and there was another very fine Consort of Musick, which lasted till 2; after which, his Majesty came again into his Barge, and return‘d the same way, the Musick continuing to play till he landed.

Friedrich Bonet, a Prussian diplomat serving in London, wrote an account that provides details of the instrumentation and differs slightly on the times that things happened:

. . . Next to the King‘s barge was that of the musicians, about 50 in number, who played on all kinds of instruments, to wit trumpets, horns, hautboys, bassoons, German flutes, French flutes, violins and basses; but there were no singers. The music had been composed specially by the famous Handel, native of Halle, and His Majesty‘s principal Court Composer. His Majesty approved of it so greatly that he caused it to be repeated three times in all, although each performance lasted an hour–namely twice before and once after supper...In order to make this entertainment the more exquisite, Mad. De Kilmaseck had arranged a choice supper in the Late Lord Ranelagh‘s villa at Chelsea on the river, where the King went at one in the morning. He left at three o‘clock and returned to St. James‘s about half past four.

This river excursion began in Whitehall, near the Houses of Parliament and still the center of British government –i t is home to 10 Downing Street, the Foreign Office, and the Treasury. The musicians began to play at Lambeth, across the river from Whitehall – it is the residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury. The royal party, surrounded by hundreds of boats full of people who wished to hear Handel‘s music, then was borne by the evening tide to Chelsea, about four miles upriver from Whitehall and today a posh shopping area. The tide on the Thames that evening must have been slow if the first half of the trip allowed two performances of Handel‘s hour-long music over a four-mile span.

Handel‘s manuscript to the Water Music has disappeared, but numerous copies and arrangements have survived, and it has been possible to recreate fairly accurately the music he composed to accompany the king‘s river excursions. That music has been divided into three separate suites of varying instrumentation, and this concert opens with the Suite No. 2 in D Major. The key of D major is a particularly bright one, well-suited to festive music, and the five movements of this suite are (for the most part) in dance forms. The Allegro gets the suite off to a festive start on the sound of ringing brass and racing violins. Longest of the movements, the Hornpipe is also one of the most famous, with its opening brass fanfares and spirited writing for strings in the central episode. The Minuet, brief and propulsive, is followed by a Lentement with a particularly solemn central section. The suite is rounded off by a lively Bourrée whose main theme is nicely varied as it proceeds.

Concerto in B Minor for Four Violins and Strings, Opus 3, No. 10, RV 580
ANTONIO VIVALDI
Born March 4, 1678, Venice
Died July 26/27, 1741, Vienna

In the early years of the eighteenth century, Vivaldi held the rather modest position of director of a conservatory for homeless girls in Venice, but his compositions were carrying his name throughout Europe. In 1711, he published a collection of twelve violin concertos under the title L‘Estro armonico, translated variously as “The Spirit of Harmony” or “Harmonious Inspiration.” Significantly, Vivaldi chose to have this set published in Amsterdam, and for two good reasons – printing techniques there were superior to any available in Italy and, perhaps more important, his music was extremely popular in northern Europe.

Each of the concertos of L‘Estro armonico is a concerto grosso, in which one or more violin soloists is set against a main body of strings and harpsichord continuo. The intent in these concertos is not so much virtuoso display (though they are difficult enough, certainly) as in making contrast between the sound of the solo instruments and the main body of strings. The twelve concertos of L‘Estro armonico quickly became popular and influential in northern Europe.

Four of the concertos in L‘Estro armonico are for four violins, and of these the Concerto in B Minor has become the best known. A concerto for four soloists, particularly for four soloists playing the same instrument, is a difficult matter: the composer must find enough for all four to do without burying anyone or allowing the same sonority to become tedious. Vivaldi brings this off with the rapid exchange of passages between soloists, an ingenious contrapuntal texture, and a great deal of rhythmic variety. In the opening Allegro the main theme is being varied and ornamented almost before it has been completely stated, and Vivaldi quickly has that vigorous main idea leaping between soloists. The slow movement opens with an even slower introduction; the main section has the four soloists playing over quiet continuo accompaniment – Vivaldi assigns an important part of the continuo to a solo cello throughout the concerto. The powerful ritornello that opens the last movement will return throughout; in this movement the soloists play in various combinations with the solo cello as the concerto drives to its close on an energetic tutti.

Oboe Concerto in C Minor
ALESSANDRO MARCELLO
Born 1684, Venice
Died 1750, Venice

The son of a wealthy Venetian senator, Alessandro Marcello grew up in a cultivated household. As a boy he learned to sing and play the violin, and his passion for the arts and the life of the mind shaped his career. Marcello was a dilettante in the best sense of that word: a gentleman of ease and learning, he painted, wrote poetry in Latin and Italian, and studied philosophy and mathematics. His home in Venice was the scene of weekly concerts at which his own music was sometimes performed.

Marcello, however, wrote very little music, perhaps because music was only one part of his very active artistic life. He composed cantatas, violin sonatas, and a small amount of orchestral music, of which the Oboe Concerto in C Minor has become the most famous example. For many years, this concerto was attributed to Marcello‘s younger brother Benedetto, also a composer in Venice (and a wicked satirist as well), but it is clear that this concerto is the work of Alessandro: it was published under his name in Amsterdam in about 1716. That publication attracted the attention of Johann Sebastian Bach, then an organist in Weimar. Bach made keyboard transcriptions of a number of Italian orchestral concertos during these years, perhaps as a way of mastering that unfamiliar style, and Marcello‘s oboe concerto was one of these; this transcription is listed in the Bach catalog as BWV 974.

Scored for soloist with an orchestra of strings and continuo, Marcello‘s Oboe Concerto is in three brief movements, and the sequence of those movements is somewhat unusual: a moderately-paced opening movement is followed by a slow central movement; only the finale of this concerto is fast. Marcello specifies that the first movement should be played spiccato, and the accompaniment is almost pointilistic as the soloist sustains the melodic line above it. The central Adagio belongs to the oboist, who has a long and complex line above a steady chordal accompaniment. The binary-form finale, marked Presto, engages all the forces more fully.

Overture in C Major, “Water Music”
GEORG PHILLIPP TELEMANN
Born March 14, 1681, Magdeburg
Died June 25, 1767, Hamburg

Telemann became music director for the city of Hamburg in 1721, and for the next forty years he was the dominant figure in that city‘s musical life. Telemann‘s primary duty was to compose liturgical music for the city‘s five main churches, but he also wrote operas, orchestral music and chamber works, and was asked to supply music for civic occasions.

Hamburg was then the most important port in Germany (it still is), and the city owed much of its economy and livelihood to its sea-trade. In 1623 the city had established an Admiralty to regulate shipping, protect sea lanes, provide navigational aids and to supply harbor pilots. On April 6, 1723, the Admiralty celebrated its hundredth anniversary with a huge civic banquet attended by all the city‘s dignitaries and by a number of sea captains. In addition to the meal and speeches, there was music. Telemann was asked to write a piece for orchestra to help celebrate this occasion, and his Overture in C Major (sometimes known as his Water Music and sometimes as the Hamburger Ebb‘ und Flut: “Hamburg‘s Ebb and Flood”)was performed as part of the festivities.

Telemann understood the word “overture” to refer not to a single movement but to a suite of movements, usually an introductory movement followed by a sequence of short dance movements. The Overture in C Major is a suite of ten movements: its introductory movement is followed by nine dance movements, each of which has a descriptive title inspired by the ocean, mythic gods associated with the sea, the Elbe River, or the sailors who made their life on the water. Telemann‘s Ouverture preserves the spirit if not the exact form of the French ouverture. It opens with a stately beginning full of dotted rhythms, but when the music zips ahead it is not in fugal form, and Telemann further varies the form by alternating slow and fast sections across the remainder of the movement. Nine brief dance movements follow. The first two depict the sea-goddess Thetis, who was mother of Achilles: we first see her asleep in the Sarabande, then waking in the spirited Bourrée. The slow Loure depicts Neptune, the Roman god of the sea, while the spirited Gavotte pictures the naiads (sea-nymphs) at play; in the Harlequinade we see Triton, a merman. The next two movements are portraits of the wind. In “Stormy Aeolus” the wind blows tentatively at first, then builds to a gale, while the “agreeable Zephyr” depicts a friendlier wind in a Menuet. Finally, two dances us show us contemporary portraits of Hamburg. The gigue “Ebb and Flood” depicts the city‘s tides rising up and falling away, while the concluding Canarie (originally a stamping dance from the Canary Islands) is a portrait of the city‘s happy sailors.

Music for the Royal Fireworks, HWV 351
GEORG FRIEDRICH HANDEL

The English and the French signed the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle on October 27, 1748, bringing to a close the War of Austrian Succession. Both sides immediately began planning victory celebrations, and the English plans were elaborate indeed. George II‘s staff brought in the designer Florentine Servandoni, who the following April erected what was called a “Machine” in Green Park, directly across from Buckingham Palace. This structure, over four hundred feet long and a hundred feet high, took the form of a Doric-style pavilion with elaborate wings and a viewing stand. The royal “victory” celebration on April 27, 1749, was to be a real show in every sense of that term: over a hundred cannons would fire a thunderous salute, followed by a massive fireworks show, and Handel was commissioned to write music to accompany all this.

George II, whose family had had music lessons from Handel, took an active interest in the music to be performed, and he made clear that he preferred the strident sound of martial instruments; specifically, his staff told Handel, the king “hoped there would be no fidles.” Handel was loathe to do without stringed instruments, but he tried to satisfy the king‘s tastes by writing for a massive military band of 18 brass instruments, 37 woodwinds and three timpani. Contemporary accounts speak of over a hundred musicians at the celebration, so perhaps Handel was able to sneak a few “fidles” into his orchestra. News of the upcoming spectacle spread through London, and Handel‘s open-air rehearsal of the music in Vauxhall Gardens on April 21 attracted a crowd of 12,000. Traffic to this rehearsal was so heavy that it took some carriages three hours just to make it across London Bridge, and there were reports of scuffles and injuries among the footmen of these carriages (commuter gridlock and road rage are not strictly modern phenomena, apparently).

The actual celebration on April 27 turned into a wonderful fiasco. Things began as planned, but the fireworks went awry, setting the “Machine” on fire. A stiff wind blowing across the park quickly turned this into a conflagration, the crowd panicked and fled and the gaudy pavilion burned to the ground. Servandoni was so outraged that he drew his sword on one of the king‘s representatives and was promptly arrested; he was released the next day only after an apology. There is no record of Handel‘s reaction to all this, but the following month he performed this music – with the number of winds reduced and “fidles” increased – at a benefit concert for his favorite charity, the Foundling Hospital of London, and that occasion produced a profit of 2575 pounds for the orphanage. Since that time, the Music for the Royal Fireworks, as it has come to be known, has remained one of Handel‘s most popular works.

That popularity is no mystery. This is wonderful music – festive, bright and strong – and it continues to excite audiences long after the occasion for which it was composed has faded into history. Handel opens with a grand Ouverture, somewhat in the French manner but without the fugal writing of the normal French overture. The music begins with a ringing slow introduction, full of dotted rhythms and fanfares that must have been particularly pleasing to George II‘s desire for a martial sound; the overture then rushes ahead on rapid exchanges between brass and strings that overflow with energy. Handel pauses for a brief slow interlude, then returns to the fast music to rush the overture to its close. At this point in the original celebration came the salute by a hundred cannons, and Handel then offered a series of dance movements that were separated by fireworks. First comes an agile Bourrée, and Handel specifies that the oboes are to have the first statement here, then they are to drop out and allow the strings the second. There follow two movements with titles appropriate to the occasion. Le Paix (“Peace”) takes the form of a slow Siciliana, which rocks gently and gracefully along its 12/8 meter, while La Réjouissance (“Rejoycing”) returns to the manner of the opening Ouverture with racing fanfare-like figures for brass and timpani. Handel rounds matters off with a pair of minuets, varying their instrumentation as they repeat until they conclude with the sound of rolling drums and resounding brass.