Programme note
George Frideric Handel (1685-1759)
Water Music Suite (1717)
Ouverture (D major)
Alla Hornpipe; Sarabande (G major)
Rigaudons I and II (G major)
Lentement (D major)
Bourree (D major)
Menuet (G major)
Gigue I and II; Minuet with trumpets (D major)
Though Handel is traditionally bracketed with Bach, they were very different German composers who went very different ways – Handel to settle in London at the age of 25, becoming a great public figure whose ultimate honour was a grave in Westminster Abbey; Bach to remain in Germany as a far more private composer, not widely appreciated until long after his death. It would be hard to imagine Bach writing music for performance on a Thames barge, but Handel revelled in such opportunities, as the gusto of his Water Music confirms.
Like some of his other works, the Water Music has collected legends the way a ship collects barnacles, but not all of them have stuck. There is, for instance, no evidence to support the belief that it was composed to patch up a quarrel between Handel and King George I who, in his previous role as Elector of Hanover, had been Handel’s employer in Germany and had resented, or so it was said, the composer’s decision to settle in England. It remains,at any rate, one of Handel’s most jubilant works, longer and more varied than was implied by the handful of movements arranged for full orchestra by Sir Hamilton Harty which popularised it - and distorted it - early in the twentieth century.
In its original form, as we now know, there is not one Water Music suite but three, each written for a different portion of an excursion by the king along the Thames from Westminster to Chelsea in 1717. The outward journey (Suite 1} proceeds buoyantly in F major. The gentler, more dancing supper scene (Suite 2) takes place in G, and the voyage home (Suite 3) follows in D. While it is a nice idea to respect Handel’s original intentions and observe his original key-scheme, a complete Water Music is inevitably a luxury which few performers today have time for. Except for special occasions, a well-chosen selection of movements is considered sufficient.
Tonight’s choice, listed above, interweaves dances from the supper scene with music designed for the journey home. Dance music, in fact, is pervasive, with robust tunes, fine airs and and rhythms which suggest Handel the German to have already acquired, in his music, a hint of an English accent, just as, during his period in Italy, he had previously developed an Italian one. As a London newspaper commented after the river trip: “So great was the number of boats that the whole river in a manner was covered. A city company’s barge was employed for the musick, where there were instruments of all sorts....the finest symphonies, composed for the occasion by Mr Handel, which His Majesty liked so well that he caused it to be played over three times in going and returning.”
© Conrad Wilson
