George Frideric Handel: Complete Harpsichord Music Vol. 4

Description

This fourth volume of the complete Handel works for harpsichord stands at the very centre of the large-scale recording enterprise outlined in the first three discs: the systematic restitution of Handel’s keyboard output, following the cartography provided by the Hallische Händel-Ausgabe and the HWV catalogue. In place of the more expansive suites, concertos or fugues, the focus is here refined upon an ostensibly marginal domain – minuets and arias from operas transcribed for keyboard – which proves, however, to be one of the most eloquent vantage points from which to apprehend the relationship between Handel’s theatre and the cultivated domestic practice of the harpsichord.
The earlier volumes have already drawn attention to a paradox well known to historiography: a composer acclaimed in his own lifetime as an exceptional keyboard virtuoso and today universally esteemed for oratorios and operas, yet whose pieces for harpsichord remain largely confined to a narrow élite of specialists. The research of Terence Best and of the editors of the Hallische Händel-Ausgabe confirms that most of the keyboard pieces were in all likelihood conceived for the harpsichord and, for the most part, composed before 1720, often at the intersection of pedagogical activity, private cultivation and the reflection of Handel’s great London theatrical undertakings.
The first disc assembles the series of 37 Menuets HWV A151-37, together with the five keyboard arias HWV 482 drawn from Rinaldo, Floridante, Radamisto and Muzio Scevola. The collection of Menuets A151, now available in a critical Bärenreiter edition within the Hallische Händel-Ausgabe, is rooted in manuscript traditions and eighteenth-century prints that lack autograph authority yet converge in attributing to Handel this compact corpus of dances, conceived expressly for a keyboard instrument. The form, invariably concise and symmetrical, becomes a testing ground for a striking variety of affects: the Menuets in E minor and in B minor incline the dance towards an elegiac tone; those in G major and D major display a more ceremonial and overtly theatrical profile; the pieces in A minor and G minor offer a more introverted and almost chamber-like colouring.
These miniatures do not arise in a void. The thematic catalogue by Bernd Baselt, taken up in recent syntheses of the Händel-Werke-Verzeichnis, shows that many among the 62 Minuets HWV 497-558 derive from overtures, dance scenes or orchestral numbers in operas and melodramas by Handel, and were subsequently fixed on two staves for keyboard use, often with discreet idiomatic adjustments. A similar logic would appear to govern the A151 series: even in the absence of explicit indications in the score, the ear discerns rhythmic formulas, melodic contours and cadences that belong to the lexicon of Italian theatre and courtly dance, transplanted onto the harpsichord in a concentrated and almost aphoristic guise.
Within this framework the five arias HWV 482 find their natural place, constituting a small autonomous cycle of keyboard transcriptions from Italian operas. The HWV catalogue clarifies the origin of the individual numbers: Molto voglio from Rinaldo, an aria of energetic and virtuosic impetus; Sventurato, godi, o core abbandonato from Floridante, pervaded by a noble and restrained melancholy; Ombra cara di mia sposa from Radamisto, one of Handel’s great conjugal pages, centred on mourning and fidelity; and two arias from Muzio Scevola, Pupille sdegnose sareste pietose and Come, se ti vedrò, drawn from the third act, the only one entirely composed by Handel in the celebrated pasticcio shared with Amadei and Bononcini.
The practice of transcribing theatre arias for solo instrument belongs to a broader English tradition of songs without words, in which entire operatic repertories were distilled into harpsichord pieces intended for a cultivated, though not necessarily professional, public. In this passage from the stage to the keyboard, the poetic text and scenic action vanish, yet the underlying rhetorical framework remains recognisable: singable lines supported by simple basses, modulations that mirror the character’s affective turns, points of climax highlighted by trills, mordents and ascending scales. In the absence of the voice, the harpsichord assumes the task of keeping the memory of the theatre alive with the most economical of means, transferring it into the intimate space of the domestic drawing room.
The second disc penetrates to the very core of this phenomenon of theatrical transposition by presenting the extended sequence of Minuets HWV 497-558. Modern cataloguing identifies within this group 62 dances for keyboard, almost all notated on two staves, which historiography regards as intended for the harpsichord and conceived also as pedagogical material for accomplished amateurs, often derived from orchestral pieces or operatic numbers. The aforementioned catalogue by Baselt specifies, for example, that the Menuet in C major HWV 497 originates from the overture to Rodelinda, that the Menuet in C minor HWV 499 is associated with Tamerlano, that the Menuet in D major HWV 504 reuses material from Radamisto, while the Menuet in A minor HWV 548 and the Menuet in B minor HWV 558 are connected respectively with Siroe and Poro re dell’Indie.
It is, therefore, not an abstract sequence of dances, but a genuine repertory of miniaturised theatrical gestures. In many instances, what in the opera had constituted a choreographic episode or an intermediate section of the overture is here distilled into a handful of periodic phrases, regularised so as to adapt to the keyboard page. Yet Handel’s writing almost invariably eschews mere reduction: ostinato basses are enriched with delicate imitations, the low register at times assumes a thematic role, and painstaking right-hand figurations transmute into keyboard virtuosity what had previously been entrusted, in the orchestra, to the wind or string sections.
A central role in the transmission of many of these dances is played by the London manuscript known as Drexel 5856, now preserved at the New York Public Library. This codex, copied by the trusted John Christopher Smith around the 1720s, brings together numerous Handel keyboard pieces, among them several Menuets connected with operas and suites, at times accompanied by marginal annotations that reveal their provenance or subsequent reception. It is here, for example, that a version of the Menuet in G minor HWV 535 appears with the heading The Princess Sophia’s favourite Minuet, a sign of a courtly reception linking the piece to the taste of a Hanoverian princess; in the same manuscript the Menuet in G minor HWV 540b is also recorded as the basis of a popular song entitled Who to win a woman’s favour, a telling indication of how Handel’s lexicon could migrate from the opera house to the tavern song without forfeiting its recognisability.
On the strictly musical plane, the series of Menuets HWV 497-558 allows one to observe at close quarters the grammar of dance according to Handel. The brighter keys (C, D, G major) tend to favour a syllabic melodic design, square phrases and a predominantly homorhythmic texture, often close to the style of the French overture or of the great concluding choruses. The Menuets in minor keys (G, E, B minor, but also A minor and certain examples in C minor) dwell instead upon sighs, chromatic appoggiaturas and descending figures that evoke the sphere of lament, as occurs in the tragic affetti of Radamisto or Floridante. The writing almost always remains in two parts, but not infrequently the bass assumes an autonomous contrapuntal function, establishing a close dialogue with the upper line and distancing the piece from the simple function of dance accompaniment.
Placed within the broader arc of the complete edition, this volume thus presents the miniature reverse side of the world already evoked by the expansive capriccios, chaconnes and keyboard concertos introduced in the first three discs. The suites and large-scale forms bring to the fore Handel the architect of complex cycles and dense contrapuntal textures; the Menuets and arias gathered here, by contrast, disclose the more quotidian and, in certain respects, more intimate aspect of his invention: that which brings the language of opera seria, of choruses and of court music into the confined space of the room, into the hands of those who play for pleasure or for study. In the interplay of these brief dances the listener may discern, as though in filigree, the same interweaving of elegance, theatricality and affective depth that renders Handel one of the undisputed protagonists of the European eighteenth century.
Giuliano Marco Mattioli © 2025