Handel’s Fireworks

16-05-31 MUS Fireworks

Well, I have no short­age of record­ings of this, one of the most pop­u­lar works of baroque music. I have per­for­mances con­duct­ed by Fen­nell, Gar­diner, Hog­wood, Mar­riner, Maier, Pin­nock, Savall, Stokows­ki, and War­chal, and I’ve prob­a­bly heard a dozen oth­ers. Most lis­ten­ers divide them into two cat­e­gories: 1) record­ings using orig­i­nal peri­od instru­ments, or an approx­i­ma­tion there­of; 2) record­ings using twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry instru­ments in a stan­dard con­cert for­mat. I’m not going to sneer at the lat­ter group. Han­del was as prag­mat­ic a show­man as music ever pro­duced, and he would have been per­fect­ly hap­py hear­ing Stokowski’s won­der­ful and total­ly inau­then­tic ver­sion, though he might have told Mar­riner to give his per­for­mance a lit­tle more zetz. But on the whole, I pre­fer the peri­od instru­ment ver­sions, and of those, I’d pick Jor­di Saval­l’s for my desert island music col­lec­tion. This ver­sion has zetz-aplenty.

Han­del actu­al­ly pro­duced two very spe­cif­ic ver­sions. One was for 24 oboes, 12 bas­soons and a con­tra­bas­soon, nine nat­ur­al trum­pets, nine nat­ur­al horns, three pairs of ket­tle­drums, and side drums play­ing ad libi­tum. This was the one intend­ed for the orig­i­nal out­door per­for­mance on April 27, 1749, in a Lon­don park south of the Thames, to accom­pa­ny the fire­works cel­e­brat­ing the end of the War of Aus­tri­an Suc­ces­sion and the sign­ing of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle. Despite the rain, and the damp­ened fire­works set­ting fire to part of the pavil­ion, it was a pop­u­lar suc­cess, and caused a three hour traf­fic jam on the Lon­don Bridge. This was the noisy, dirty, exu­ber­ant Lon­don of which Samuel John­son said “You find no man, at all intel­lec­tu­al, who is will­ing to leave Lon­don. No, Sir, when a man is tired of Lon­don, he is tired of life; for there is in Lon­don all that life can afford.” The music cap­tures this mood exact­ly. The pro­duc­ers had cau­tioned Han­del that the King did not like stringed instru­ments, so he grudg­ing­ly omit­ted them. For a lat­er, indoor per­for­mance, Han­del changed the arrange­ment to add vio­lins, vio­las, cel­los and dou­ble bass­es. Mod­ern per­for­mances, whether on “authen­tic” instru­ments or not, usu­al­ly use this ver­sion. But Han­del sel­dom had to kow­tow, as most com­posers did, to the demands of aris­to­crat­ic patron­age. He was the first com­pos­er to build a gen­uine­ly com­mer­cial and pop­u­lar music busi­ness, answer­ing to the tastes of Lon­don’s cos­mopoli­tan pub­lic and not to church and court. His operas and ora­to­rios, for exam­ple, where often on Old Tes­ta­ment themes because they could appeal to both Chris­t­ian and Jew­ish audiences.

This was one of the first works of baroque music that I heard as a child, and I was mes­mer­ized by the catchy melodies, and the way the var­i­ous instru­men­tal parts called and answered each oth­er, and wove togeth­er like the snakes in a celtic orm. After count­less hear­ings, it still gives me pleasure.

If you would like to see a rather quaint trib­ute to Han­del, dig up the 1942 Rank Stu­dios biopic The Great Mr. Han­del, direct­ed by Nor­man Walk­er and star­ring William Lawson.

Handel (center left) on the Thames with King George and entourage.

Han­del (cen­ter left) on the Thames with King George and entourage.

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