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EARLY MUSIC

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Donald Burrows

Handel oratorios (and VAllegro)

The welcome activity in restaging and recording Handel's
operas in the last quarter of the 20th century (see EM,
xxvi/2 (May 1998), pp.361-2) has tended to leave the oratorios in the shade, perhaps accompanied by the impression
that there was little left to be said after Winton Dean's
Handel's dramatic oratorios and masques (1959, 1988), at
least until Ruth Smith's Handel's oratorios and eighteenthcentury thought (1995) approached the works from a new
perspective. The oratorios should still have a place in our
performing repertory in their own right and, as with Handel's operas, there are still a few gaps to fill in the record
catalogue, though the spaces are closing fast. Even after
Dean and Smith there is still work to be done on the music
of the oratorios. Given that, compared with Messiah, performances of the other English oratorio-type works
remain few and far between, the 'lesser-known' category is
quite broad and the significance of recordings is accordingly greater.
Solomon could hardly be described as an unknown
oratorio. Beecham's engagingly performed travesty, while
doing little for the recognition of the work as a whole, had
the positive effect of planting the 'Arrival of the Queen of
Sheba' in the public (and even the popular) mind, at least
in Britain. A significant step forward came with John Eliot
Gardiner's recording, which is still worth hearing for the
sheer musicianship of some of the movements. However,
the new recording directed by Paul McCreesh, Handel:
Solomon (Archiv 459 688-2, rec 1998), remedies most of
the problems that I identified in my review of Gardiner's
version {EM, xxiv/3 (Aug 1986), pp.457-8). It is complete as
to musical content, including those movements which,
although they do not help the plot along much, are essential to the overall design of the work, and it takes seriously
Handel's scheme for the closing movements. It also has a
correct understanding of Handel's 'npieno' markings,
which in his 1749 oratorios referred to players additional to
his normal body of strings. The opulent scoring of the
work is well captured on the recording, and the technical
quality of the players and singers is excellent, with a particularly fine performance from Andreas Scholl in the
name part (originally written by Handel for Caterina
Galli). This will be the definitive recording for some time
to come, though this does not mean that it needs to be the
last. There are movements in which McCreesh has taken to

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Petrarch referring to 'harsh speech' and 'changing style'.

The ineluctably plangent Solo epensoso, i ptit deserti campi
and Crudele, acerba, inesorabil' morte set the tone of a
dying age, and the singers of La Venexiana do them perfect
justice. This recording has the remarkable effect of making
these madrigals sound ever so easy to perform (they are
not) and yet hugely difficult to listen to, demanding our
total concentration on every nuance of text and music.
Here we catch a glimpse of precisely what such musica
reservata entailed for its performers and courtly audiences.
This is an acquired taste, but one most definitely worth the
trouble, and that, for me, is high praise indeed

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Robert King presents basically the 1740 performing

version with additional movements from 1741 in Handel's
English-language, soprano-voice versions For continuous
listening I think that the insertions make both parts 1 and
2 too long, and 'May at last my weary age' particularly gets
in the way of the flow of the music For someone listening
to VAllegro for the first time I suggest that the discs should
be programmed to the leaner 1740 version aficianados of
the work can enjoy the luxury of the extra movements.
There's a more particular problem, however, in that the
additions as recorded here multiply the soprano contribution, with three soprano soloists that are much less distinguishable than they would be in the concert hall. At the
beginning it's not difficult to separate L'Allegro (tenor)
from II Penseroso (soprano), but the immediately following Allegro is given to another soprano. Keep a firm hold
of the libretto if you are listening to this work for the first
time. In 1743 Mrs Cibber gained a fair amount of the
Penseroso music and I imagine that she was type-cast in
the role, the contralto may be the ideal Penseroso voice
on the origins of L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderate
anyway, but it is not possible, alas, to reconstruct Handel's
Harris drafted the original libretto (in the hope that Han1743 performing version completely and it would mean
del would take it on) by alternating sections of Milton's
twin poems L 'Allegro and // Penseroso: Jennens then acted sacrificing part 3 with its wonderful duet 'As steals the
morn'
as midwife to the scheme by revising the text according to
Given that this performance has a number of excellent
Handel's wishes and providing a third part (// Moderate)
sopranos bumping into each other, it nevertheless has to
which resolved the conflict between the allegorical characbe said that one of the treasures is Lorna Anderson's conters with a 'reasonable' golden mean. The score is firsttribution. Over the years the ana 'Sweet bird' has been
class Handel, with memorable musical representations of
heard in various truncated forms, but here is the full 14'laughter holding both his sides', the 'busy hum of men',
minute version (17 bars longer than Handel actually perthe hunting horn, the curfew and murmuring streams, but
formed, but no matter), a lasting tribute to both singer and
it has to be admitted that the story as a whole makes
flautist. But O, sad organ, that should not have been there.
unusual demands on the listener, while the performance
Apart from this solecism in the continuo, players and
history of the work at the composer's hands has left some
singers deliver a performance of the work to the high stanunusually difficult riddles for modern performers.
dard that we have come to expect from King, though there
'Penseroso' and 'Allegro' characters were clearly distinis a tendency towards leisurely over-indulgence in the
guished in Handel's original (1740) performances, the sopPenseroso music that sometimes comes dangerously close
rano Francesina representing all of the former and Allegro
to the somnolent
being divided between a boy treble, a tenor and a bass.
Subsequent revivals under the composer had different patI listened to the performances in the order reviewed
terns in the casts of soloists, but also introduced new
here and I turned with some trepidation from two wellmusic in English and Italian (some of it very attractive and
acknowledged works to an oratorio that has dwelt in the
cogent to the story). Eventually Handel recast the work in
penumbra of reception history. Alexander Balus The
two parts, omitting // Moderate and rearranging the other indifferent fate of this work has been attributed to its libmovements radically in part 2 As Anthony Hicks says in
retto, but really this is good enough to get by. It seems to
his note to Handel: L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato
me more relevant that Alexander Balus does not contain
(Hyperion CDA 67283/4, rec 1999) 'there is no version actu- the sort of melodically attractive movement (the 'Ah1' facally performed by the composer which is wholly in Engtor) that Handel wrote a year later with 'Golden columns',
lish, and which includes the Moderato section and the
'Beneath the vine' or 'With thee th'unsheltered moor'
additions of 1741'
in Solomon. Nevertheless, the arias in Balus are well
extremes speeds and dynamics that would have been better left alone. The singers sometimes sound as if they are
being bullied along: I don't envy Paul Agnew's task in dealing with Handel's tongue-twister 'on Jordan's sedgy side'.
At the beginning of 'With pious heart' (for example) the
tone of the chorus has been sacrificed to an unnecessarily
muted interpretation. When Handel is left to play himself
(as in 'From the east unto the west') the effect is magnificent with these performers In two general areas both Gardiner's and McCreesh's recordings leave some daffodils
still to be picked. Modern recording technology has not
yet managed to reproduce the effect of the double
choruses that you 'hear' from the page or can experience in
live performance, and all available performances of the
judgment scene in part 2 are rather lugubrious, for reasons
that seem to be connected with overall pacing rather than
the interpretation of any particular movement.
Recent work in which I have been involved concerning
the papers of James ('Hermes') Harris has shed new light

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sense) and that in the 1748 performing version the ana

should have included its second section. I'm not sure
whether the editor came to grips with the problem of
Chrysander's pizzicato cello part for the ana 'Here amid
the shady woods', combined with bowing slurs, or
whether any attention was paid to the harp part among
Handel's autographs relating to the exotically accompanied ana 'Hark! hark! he strikes the golden lyre'. More
subtle are matters relating to the integrity of melodic lines
in recitatives. Chrysander reproduced the image from the
conducting score, in which alternative pitches were added
by Handel for different singers: it must be possible to
ascertain which of these alternatives did not exist in 1748,
thus revealing the intended contours of the music at various stages. These matters are not the pedant's idle claim:
they immediately affect matters of performance.

James Parsons

The Lied before Schubert

In his Uber naive und sentimentale Dichtung ('On naive
and sentimental poetry', 1800), Friednch Schiller reflected'
'As soon as we begin to experience the burdens of civilization we long with painful yearning to be back, and hear in
the far country of art the moving voice of our mother.' For
a great many of Schiller's German-speaking contemporaries that 'moving voice' was nowhere to be heard with
greater clarity than in the kind of song under review here.
Unfettered by the later 19th century's teleological fascination (obsession?) with 'progress', those drawn to the Lied
in the 60 years or so before Schiller's pronouncement
responded to the genre in entirely different ways than do
most critics nowadays. Comments typical of the latter
include 'tuneful trifles', 'blanched tunes' eked out by
'anaemic chords and arpeggios'. In contrast, observe what
E. T A. Hoffmann wrote one week before Schubert composed Gretchen am Spinnrade on 19 October 1814the one
Lied repeatedly said to 'annihilate all that precedes'. For
Hoffmann, no slouch when it came to approaching a
musical work for what it is rather that what it is not, the
18th-century Lied was of value because it stirred 'the innermost soul by means of the simplest melody and the simplest modulation, without affectation or straining for
effect and originality: therem lies the mysterious power of
true genius.'
If Hoffmann's assessment surprises, stay tunedthere

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composed (more evenly so, if anything), the pastoral and

amorous themes are treated in an equally interesting way,
and Cleopatra's final scene is, however you look at it, good
music and drama. Robert King's performance on Handel:
Alexander Balus (Hyperion CDA67241/2, rec 1997) is a winner' whatever went on during the eight days of the recording period, the result is one of those experiences where you
know almost from the first chord that an enjoyable and
rewarding evening lies ahead of you. The cast is on top
form (particularly Catherine Denley, Charles Daniels and
Lynne Dawson), the New College Choir add considerable
lustre and the orchestra plays well, but this is only half of
the story: everyone seems to have a grasp of the movement
of the drama and the lyrical potential of Handel's music.
The overall experience is so powerful that the very occasional moments of impatience or misplaced caution are of
little significance. It's grim having to put up with the organ
continuo again, though, and the crematorium effect in 'or
cold death a kind release' is particularly anachronistic The
Hyperion engineers have recorded the sound in a pleasing
way, though the drama of the final scenes is not helped by
the pauses before 'Ungrateful child' and 'Calm thou, my
soul' All three of the recordings under review pose questions about how present-day British performing practice
stands on the interpretation of appoggiaturas and notated
rests in the recitatives of Handel's English works.
Something must be said about the 'new performing edition' which, the liner notes inform us, was prepared for
King's performance and recording of Alexander Balus.
What follows is not intended in any partisan spirit, for I
believe that many of the best results in the past have been
the consequence of interactions of 'scholarship' and 'performance', though it is difficult to keep Dartmanship alive
when professional pressures tend to push musicians into
separate camps. It would be nice to see some performers
becoming more seriously involved with music editions As
far as I can tell, the edition of Alexander Balus used for the
recording was based more or less directly on Chrysander's
(1870), but enlightened by the chapter in Winton Dean's
book. The Chrysander derivation seems to account for the
inclusion of two movements from the 1751/1754 version of
Balus. These seem to me rather to get in the way, though
again this can be solved by some nifty use of the remote
control for the CD player; more serious is the underlying
question about what understanding the editor had of
Handel's performing versions. Reference to the primary
sources for the oratorio would have revealed that the ana
'Mighty love' should have come before the recitative
'There is no greatness in mortality' (where it makes textual