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Off the Handel: Blogging the Art of the Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra IV

An introduction to Handel whose "Water Music" is on the Illinois Philharmonic's January Program

Mark Twain said something like, “Do not put off until tomorrow what can be put off till day-after-tomorrow just as well.”  I guess that goes for this blog.  I wanted to blog each week on a piece from the Illinois Philharmonic’s upcoming season.  If you search this site, you find the blogs for the first concert on November 10th which holds Walter Piston’s The Incredible Flutist, Joaquin Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez for guitar and orchestra, and the Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 5.  So, my next target (for this week—yikes!) was to be The Water Music by George Fredrick Handel which is scheduled to be performed by the IPO on the 19th of January 2013.   But I became too interested in one of my sources (as well as the Olympics) to be diligent on this.

 

I have been reading the chapters on the “Class of 1685” in Richard Taruskin’s volume on the 17th and 18th centuries in his five-volume, The Oxford History of Western Music.  No one really has the right to be as brilliant as Taruskin.  (Yes, five volumes, ONE author.)  More important, there are insights on every page, though there really is not much that directly relates to The Water Music.  (Taruskin is the prickly fellow that wrote a famous, penetrating essay that almost makes it a crime to enjoy Orff’s Carmina Burana.  He is also famous for feuding with composer John Adams.)

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The class of 1685 includes Handel as well as J. S. Bach and Domenico Scarlatti.  (They were born that year; they were not school chums at a class ceremony.)  I can’t say that I took notes in my reading.  Often times, I read something to get the overall gist and then go back.  But with Taruskin, I just kept reading--Bach then Handel then back to Bach again.  And I still haven’t gotten to the books on Handel that I have in my library by Paul Henry Lang and Christopher Hogwood.

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The IPO January concert was originally set up to have pieces related to the sea.  That The Water Music was included as a bit of a joke because unlike Debussy’s, La Mer (“The Sea”) and Benjamin Britten’s Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes, the Handel piece doesn’t describe the water.   It happened to be played on a barge in 1717 while King George I of England listened on a pleasure ship floating on the river Thames (now famous for the route that David Beckham took bringing the 2012 Olympic torch on a power boat to the stadium).  Originally there was another sea-related piece on the program but that was changed to Ralph Vaughn William’s The Lark Ascending.  So instead of a sea concert, this has become more of “an outdoor concert,” which is still of great contrast to the usual concert fare.

 

Every program note on The Water Music recounts a legend that seems somewhat preposterous, though I’ll be eager to research this.  Handel was employed by the Elector of Hanover in 1710.  Georg Ludwig, Handel’s boss, allowed him to go to England to produce an opera.  Handel returned afterward, but was allowed another leave of absence to London which he overstayed because he was very much a favorite of Queen Anne of England and had great prospects there in opera which he didn’t have in Hanover.  However, Queen Anne died, and next in succession to the British thrown was none other than the Elector of Hanover who became George I in 1714.  When George arrived in England, Handel was still there (wow! This could have been as bad as Kristen Stewart getting caught cheating on boyfriend Robert Pattinson.) The legend goes that in order to get back into George’s good graces, Handel composed the Water Music which so pleased the king that he had the music played three times with such great success that Handel was no longer in the dog house.  (Does Kristen compose?) 

 

But really, I doubt that George was going to be as much the enforcer of his rights as employer as was Mozart’s patron, the Archbishop Colloredo, who had Mozart kicked in the arse and thrown out of his residence for insubordination.  Also, I find it hard to believe that Handel didn’t know how the wind was blowing in terms of Anne’s health status and George’s prospects (she was ill and an act of Parliament over ten years earlier had picked George’s elderly mother, who subsequently died, as the closest Protestant heir for succession to the English throne).  And maybe it enhanced George’s prestige to have a person of his household so prominent in England and would have looked a bit churlish to his future subjects (and Queen Anne) to have snatched him back.  It boggles the mind that a canny operator like Handel would be in some sort of “OMG, the boss is here! And he’s even King!” dilemma. So, there could have been some understanding regarding Handel’s status far before George’s arrival in England.  In any event, Handel stayed in London for life as the successful independent capitalist composer-entrepreneur that Mozart never fully was, while the German-speaking George didn’t hang out in England all that much—only about 80% of his rule.  So I’m guessing—though I’ll report in the real Handel blog—that Handel’s employment was not a big deal to George, and The Water Music was not essential to Handel’s status with the King.

 

Here are a few things on my mind regarding Handel.  First, I have always loved The Water Music.  Its brilliant dances, airs and fanfares somehow reminded me of Christmas, and that’s even independent of Handel’s Messiah that I learned years after I heard the Water Music.  Taruskin makes the point that Messiah is the first piece of classical music to be continuously within the classical music canon meaning that from its premiere in 1742, it has been performed every year since.  On the other hand, I have never heard The Water Music live.  It usually is relegated to ensembles that only perform baroque music, though now the standard symphony orchestras will perform it in a style that is informed by the original instrumentation and performance practices even if played on modern instruments.  There is an arrangement by Sir Hamilton Harty for modern orchestra which, Carmon DeLeone, the previous music director of the IPO for 25 years, (he is succeeded by the young Austrian conductor David Danzmayr) used in IPO concerts in 2001.  I’ll have to ask Maestro Danzmayr what score he will use and report back to you.

 

Still, I can’t say that I haven’t heard at least some of the Water music live.  My bride, Marie, came down the aisle to the “Air,” and we left the church with the “Hornpipe” blazing away as her friend Lorraine played the trumpet and the late Michael Cook played the organ.  It will be 33 years this August 18th.  More next week.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7U8YVsW9I8U

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRNmXwNnB9w

 

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