This Da Vinci Classics double CD opens an ambitious project, featuring a total of 21 disks divided into eleven volumes (each comprising one or two CDs). The result of this monumental enterprise will be the publication of Handel’s complete works for the harpsichord.
The first two volumes, focus on a compilation of individual works; the Suites included here do not include the best known of Handel’s Suites, i.e. those printed in 1720 and which will be issued as vol. 6 of this series.
A singular fate surrounds Handel’s keyboard works, whose impressive quantity is self-evident from the number of CDs needed to record them. Handel is certainly among the most beloved classical composers, and some of his works are known even by people who would never set foot into a concert hall. And Handel was best known, in his lifetime, as a prodigious keyboard player – even more than as a composer. His virtuosity attracted the masses, who were enthralled by his bravura and his sensitivity.
From what has been just said, it would seem straightforward that Handel’s keyboard works be frequently played, deeply known and thoroughly appreciated by musicians, audiences and critics alike. This, however, is far from being the case. There is a kind of neglect surrounding these works, and this is a reason why a daring project like this one is particularly welcome and timely.
He had been familiar with keyboard instruments since his early childhood. Among his notable teachers were some of the greatest keyboardists of the era: Pachelbel, Kuhnau, and, most particularly, Zachow, in Handel’s city of Halle. Zachow was Handel’s unforgettable teacher and also an extremely expert organist. The variety of suggestions from which the boy would draw the first elements of his own musical language can be observed by studying a 1698 music book compiled by a thirteen-y.o. Handel. Here, the young man included works by his own teacher, but also by other coeval German composers whose specific traits he was keen to absorb.
Five years later, when Handel was eighteen, he travelled from Hamburg to Lübeck on August 17th, together with Johan Mattheson, who was his senior by three years. During the journey, as related by Mattheson, “in the coach we composed many double fugues – in our heads, not written down… There we played almost all the organs and harpsichords and we arrived at a particular conclusion with respect to our playing… namely, that he wanted to play only the organ and I the harpsichord”.
In fact, Handel’s fame as a performer would mainly come from his feats as an organist, even though he by no means eschewed other keyboard instruments and achieved extraordinary renown on them all.
Centuries later, however, Handel is remembered mainly for his oratorios, his opera, and his orchestral suites (Water Music and Music for the Royal Fireworks). Indeed, other kinds of music seem to have absorbed his imagination and his creative power to a much higher degree than harpsichord playing and writing. Moreover (and here lies an important difference with his contemporary Bach), Handel did not have the plethora of children and school students Bach had at the Thomasschule; a substantial portion of Bach’s keyboard catalogue is in fact bound to pedagogical aims and goals, and its systematization frequently reveals criteria of order and progressiveness which are rather typical for Bach.
No such order is discernible in the great majority of Handel’s keyboard works. Moreover (and here the two composers born in 1685 are most distant from each other), Bach kept writing for the harpsichord until his very last years, while Handel, who outlived him, is known to have composed most of his harpsichord works before his mid-thirties. The date by which most of Handel’s keyboard works seem to have been completed is 1720, while, to make just one comparison, the first volume of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier would be finished in 1722 and the second volume was to follow two decades later!
The works collected in this first volume comprise some Suites and some individual works, which in some cases are self-standing, in others seem to have been “dropped” from larger works (perhaps never realized).
The C-major Sonata HWV 577 is a short and not too demanding work, whose compositional structure is reminiscent of the sonatas composed by the third great musician who was born in 1685, i.e. Domenico Scarlatti. It is unpretentious in style and technique, and this, along with its “easy” key of C major, seems to suggest as its intended readership that of aristocratic dilettantes.
Another typical musical form, the A-B-A form, characterizes the F-major Capriccio HWV 481. It is certainly more daring, as concerns harmony and writing, than the straightforward C-major Sonata, although it does not venture into uncharted tonal territories as other pieces by the same name used to do.
The pair constituted by the G-minor Prelude and Allegro HWV 574 opens with a short, eight-bar Prelude, with which Handel seems to be intending to catch the listener’s attention: it is regular without being predictable, and its suggestive three-part writing seems to allude to the world of strict counterpoint. The ensuing Allegro is lively and brisk thanks to its jumpy pace with the rhythm of 3/8. It displays an interesting imitative writing whereby the bass line interacts beautifully with the soprano and the occasional middle voice.
The C-major Fantasia HWV 490 appears to find its identity as a Fantasia only halfway through the piece. The first page, in fact, seem to belong in a more regular Sonata, whilst the improvisatory style of the genuine Fantasias emerges only later. The “fantastic” element, however, is clearly discernible in Handel’s masterly handling of the spectacular and of the unexpected.
The short Suite in D minor HWV 447 is as intense and touching as it is concise. It comprises only the “compulsory” movements of the traditional Suite (Allemande, Courante, Sarabande and Gigue), all of which are remarkably compact in their length and expression. However, this does not prevent both Allemande and Courante from displaying a rich counterpoint, and the Sarabande and gigue from being highly characterized in their opposing traits.
Among the other works recorded in this first volume, a particularly remarkable one is the C-major Sonata HWV 578, probably dating from the 1740s. As suggested by Terence Best, this piece was not primarily conceived for the harpsichord. Firstly, it is unusual for a keyboard sonata to be written on two staves both of which employ the treble clef. This corresponds to the piece’s tessitura, whose lowest note is the middle C – thus leaving the entire lower half of the harpsichord’s keyboard unexplored. A second version of this Sonata, instead, does go below that note and reaches a G, a fourth below; though this remains an unusual choice for a harpsichord work, yet it may represent an original transcription intended for this instrument.
Another noteworthy work in this collection is Sonata HWV 579. About it, Terence Best wrote that it is “really a fantasia on the air ‘Vo’ far guerra’ in Rinaldo”. This famous Handel scholar continues by explaining that, in the original version, “this air had an obbligato part for harpsichord, and Handel’s playing of it was one of the great attractions of the opera. In the third edition of the opera in June 1711 Walsh published the air with ‘The Harpsicord Peice [sic] perform’d by Mr Handel’, and the Sonata, which has only a slight relationship with the obbligato, is conceivably Handel’s elaboration of the idea into a virtuoso solo piece”.
CD 2 of this first volume comprises some other major works, including Suite HWV 443. Its majestic and extended Präludium is in an improvisatory style, but with rich polyphony and imitation, almost in the fashion of a concerto grosso. The Allemande is short but dense with meaning and exhibits, in turn, a deep polyphonic style. The flowing Courante is followed by a touching, expressive Sarabande with a Double, and the usual, brilliant Gigue is not the last piece: it is followed (with a new HWV number, i.e. 484) by a Chaconne on a bass line reminiscent (but in the major mode) of the Folias ground. It is furnished with 49 (!) Variations and a reprise of the initial theme.
The above features are mainly shared by Partita HWV 450, whose Prelude, however, is more improvisational in style, and whose Sarabande has a much more pronounced rhythmical identity. Unusually, the quick Gigue is followed by a concluding (and extremely simple) Minuet.
The other work on which a few words should be said is Suite HWV 453, which, in musicologist Bernd Baselt’s opinion, might contain material from (or even be a straightforward arrangement of) Handel’s lost opera, Nero – in detail, of its Overture. Nero had been staged in 1705 in Hamburg, just after the enormously successful Agrippina. Nero did not enjoy comparable fame, but still contributed to the establishment of the twenty-y.o. composer’s public figure, prior to his leaving for Italy.
Together, these pieces and all others which could not be discussed here for space limits, offer a magnificent hors d’oeuvre to the ambitious recording project they open. From the symphony of these twenty disks, the full portrait of Handel the harpsichordist will emerge in total clarity.
Chiara Bertoglio © 2023