Curious Coronations

Handel Zadok the Priest

Handel’s Coronation Anthems were written for the coronation of King George II at Westminster Abbey on 11 October 1727. The ceremony was arranged at short notice and both the commissioning of the music and the actual performance seem to have been beset by difficulties and complications. George I died on 11 June. George II was proclaimed King a few days afterwards and the Privy Council met on 11 August to discuss the arrangements for his coronation. New music for the service would normally be composed by the Organist and Composer to the Chapel Royal, William Croft. But Croft inconveniently died three days after the meeting. On 4 September his successor was named as Maurice Greene, the Organist of St Paul’s Cathedral. And then it was announced that Greene’s services would not be required, as the King had already commissioned the new coronation music from his own favourite composer, Handel. As always, Handel insisted on doing things his own way; when he was sent the official texts that he was required to set, he responded, ‘I have read my Bible very well, and shall choose for myself!’  Greene and Handel had previously been close friends, but it was around this time that their friendship turned sour; Dr Burney tells us that in later life Handel never referred to Greene ‘without some injurious epithet’…

The coronation was arranged for 4 October, but the Thames was threatening to break its banks that autumn and the service had to be postponed for a week for fear of flooding in the streets around the Abbey. There are conflicting reports of the precise order of service, but Handel’s four new pieces were interspersed with six other anthems performed at previous coronations, and a number of other choral items. The musicians (47 singers, according to Handel’s own record and 160 instrumentalists, according to a possibly exaggerated newspaper report) were placed on specially built galleries on either side of the altar and this unusual layout seems to have resulted in some communication problems. There was a public rehearsal on 7 October, at which ‘both the Music and the Performers were the Admiration of all the Audience’, but on the big day things didn’t run quite so smoothly. The Archbishop of Canterbury made some notes on his Order of Service, which still survives: apparently two of the choral pieces were accidentally omitted and as for The King shall rejoice… ‘The Anthem in Confusion: All irregular in the Music’!

These anxious moments are now long forgotten and the Four Coronation Anthems stand with the Water and Fireworks Music as supreme examples of Handel’s genius in composing music for grand ceremonial occasions. The words, mostly from the Book of Psalms, might appear quite awkward to set to music, but the most remarkable feature of Handel’s anthems is the apparent ease with which he finds a memorable musical phrase to suit the varying rhythms of every sentence.

Zadok the Priest was sung during the King’s Anointing. Previous coronations had included a rather dull setting of this text by Henry Lawes, but Handel’s soul-stirring music has raised the obscure Zadok to immortality and this anthem has been performed at every subsequent coronation for the past 280 years.

Beethoven Fanfare from Wellington’s Victory

On 21 June 1813 the troops of Sir Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, defeated those of French field-marshal Jean-Baptiste Count Jourdan and King Joseph of Spain, Napoleon’s older brother, on the plains of Vittoria. The news of the victory reached Vienna on 27 July, when Beethoven happened to be in the city (he spent the rest of the summer in Baden).

Johann Nepomuk Mälzel, an inventor and musical mechanic who was then a friend of Beethoven (he built ear-trumpets for the composer), lit on the idea of turning the French defeat into a composition. He convinced Beethoven to write a victory symphony for his mechanical orchestra, the ‘Panharmonikon’. Mälzel probably noticed the wide musical scope of Beethoven’s piece when he transferred it to the machine’s barrel. Thus, the composition was far too long for a mechanical orchestra with automated barrels. He suggested that Beethoven adapt the piece for full orchestra, adding battle music and an introduction.

By modern standards Wellington’s Victory is not one of Beethoven’s masterpieces, being far too trivial. In 1813-14, however, it was in line with the prevailing taste and tradition and proved a great success for Beethoven and Mälzel. Together with the Seventh Symphony, it was premièred on 8 and 12 December 1813 at a charity concert for disabled soldiers.

But success also led to problems: Beethoven and Mälzel entered a copyright dispute because both wanted to market the highly popular piece. When Mälzel travelled to England and took the score with him, Beethoven initiated legal action (unsuccessfully) and published an appeal in London newspapers, calling himself the rightful owner. It took several years before the two men settled their dispute. (J.R.)

from Beethoven-Haus Bonn

Handel ‘Battaglia’ from Rinaldo

Since the death of Purcell the fount of English music had dried up. Foreign elements submerged it. A renewal of Puritanical opposition which attacked the English stage contributed to the discouragement and abdication of the national artists. The last master of the great epoch, John Blow, an estimable artist, famous in his time, whose personality is a little grey and faded, was not wanting in distinction or in expressive feeling—but he had then withdrawn himself into his religious thoughts.

In the absence of English composers, the Italians took possession of the field. An old musician of the Chapel Royal, Thomas Clayton, brought from Italy some opera libretti, scores, and singers. He took an old libretto from Boulogne, caused it to be translated into English by a Frenchman, and clumsily adapted it to music of little worth; and, such as it was, he proudly called it “The first musical drama which has been entirely composed and produced in England in the Italian style, Arsinoé, Queen of Cyprus.” This nullity, played at Drury Lane in 1705, had a great success, which even exceeded the authentic Italian opera given in the following year in London, Camilla, regina de’ Volsci, by Marc Antonio Bononcini. Vainly Addison tried to battle against the Italian invasion. By writing skits on the snobbism of the public with pleasant irony, he endeavoured to oppose the Italian Opera with a national English one. He was defeated, and with him the entire English theatre collapsed. “Thomyris” in 1707 inaugurated the representations half in Italian and half in English, and after the Almahade in January, 1710, all was in Italian. No English musician attempted to continue the struggle.

When Handel arrived then, at the end of 1710, national art was dead. It would be absurd to say, as some have often done, that he killed English music. There was nothing left to kill. London had not a single composer. On the other hand, she was rich in excellent players. Above all she possessed one of the best troupes of Italian singers which could be found in Europe. Having been presented to the Queen Anne, who loved music, and played the clavier well, Handel was received with open arms by the Director of the Opera, Aaron Hill. He was an extraordinary person, who travelled in the East, wrote a history of the Ottoman Empire, composed tragedies, translated Voltaire, founded the “Beech Oil Company” for extracting the oil from the wood of the beech, mixing it with chemicals and using it for the construction of ships. This orchestral man composed during a meeting the plan of an opera, after Jerusalem Delivered. It was Rinaldo, which was written, poem and music, in fourteen days, and played for the first time on February 24, 1711, at the Haymarket.

Its success was immense. It decided the victory of the Italian Opera in London, and when the singer, Nicolini, who took the rôle of Renaud, left England he carried the score to Naples, where he had it produced in 1718, with the aid of young Leonardo Leo. The Rinaldo marked a turning-point in musical history. The Italian Opera, which had conquered Europe, began to be conquered in its turn by foreign musicians, who had been formed by it—the Italianised Germans. After Handel it was Hasse, then Gluck, and finally Mozart; but Handel is the first of the conquerors. After Rinaldo, and until the time when Handel had settled definitely in London, that is to say, between 1711 and the end of 1716, was an indecisive period which oscillated between Germany and England, and between religious music and the Opera.

(c) Romain Rolland

Hildegard von Bingen (arr. Pfau) O Virtus Sapientiae

The figure of Sapientia (Divine Wisdom), personified at several points in some of the Old Testament’s more poetical books (e.g. Proverbs 8-9, Ecclesiasticus/Sirach 24, and Wisdom of Solomon 7-8), is one of Hildegard’s most constant visionary companions. Like Caritas (Divine Love), who appears in similar ways in others of Hildegard’s visions, she represents “the ultimate mystery of creation, the bond between Creator and creature” (Newman, Sister of Wisdom, p. 44). Hildegard’s thought often works within the platonizing mirror of emanation and return, the cycle at the center of which is the Incarnation. That cyclical process is, for Hildegard, the place in which the feminine side of God is most clearly revealed. The hallmark of both her theology and her poetic style is that the feminine is the place where God stoops to human weakness and human weakness can, in turn, reach out to touch the face of God.

The triple-winged figure in this piece is often thought to recall an image that appears in the third part of the Rupertsberg Scivias manuscript, though in the context of that vision, the grotesque, “terrible” face affixed to the Edifice of Salvation signifies the Zeal or Jealousy of God, each wing representing the Holy Trinity’s “ineffable power”, beating like mighty wings against the Devil (Scivias III.5.14-15). The antiphon above is a much lighter image, full of wonder not terrifying, but elevating and edifying. It recalls the six-winged Seraph of Isaiah 6, together with the omnipresent Wisdom as the agent of creation in Ecclesiasticus/Sirach 24; as well as the two great wings of Caritas in the opening vision of the Liber Divinorum Operum, representing love of God and love of neighbor.

Fundamentally, however, it is the Trinitarian imagery that comes to the fore: the one wing soaring in the heavens like the Father, the second upon the earth like the Incarnate Son, the third sweeping everywhere, the vital force of the Holy Spirit. Furthermore, the “exuding” of the second wing from the earth grounds the Incarnation within a fertile, organic image: the verb sudat literally means “sweats”, but for Hildegard, it “has the associations not of the sweat of effort but of the distillation of a perfume, a heavenly quality, out of anything that is fertile or beautiful on earth” (Dronke, Poetic Individuality, p. 157). It thus latently evokes one of Hildegard’s favorite and expansive symbols of God’s fertile, creative goodness: viriditas, “viridity”, the overflowing, vibrant, fresh greenness of health and life. This Sapientia “creates the cosmos by existing within it, (…) an ambience enfolding it and quickening it from within” (Newman, Sister of Wisdom, pp. 64-5).

Moreover, in the movement of these trinitarian wings, Hildegard engages in one of her rare instances of clear musical word painting. The phrase quarum una in altum volat, et altera de terra sudat, contains a high point on G on altum (“high”). The lowest pitch of the piece, D, is found on et, which links the two segments of the phrase and leads to the word terra. The word painting would be more obvious here if the D appeared on terra, but it does not.

However, the musical architecture also serves to set those first two movements apart from Sapientia’s omnipresent third wing, because those first two segments are linked by the musical conjunction of the low D on et (since D is not a tonal focus in this mode, its function can be understood as connective). That leaves et tercia undique volat on its own, so to speak. Musically, it is outlined by neither of the two primary tones, but rather, begins on E and ends on B. If the third wing is understood as a representation of the Holy Spirit, perhaps the unique melodic and grammatical setting is intended to set it apart from the Father-and-Son relationship articulated by the high G and low D of the previous two phrases. Moreover, it flows directly into the next phrase of praise and thus has heightened significance as a blending of the Holy Spirit with Sapientia. Such an intent would be consistent with Hildegard’s allegorical representations of the divinity’s fertile creativity and interaction with creation with female figures like Sapientia and Caritas (cf. Karitas habundat).

The glory of this piece, which Peter Dronke describes as “an image of surrealist fantasy, but weighty with meaning,” (Poetic Individuality, p. 156), is that it is never bogged down by the complexity of these interactive images, but rather urged with a divine lightness of touch into the playful, joyous, and yet full-bodied twirling movement of God’s provident, creative, and life-giving Wisdom.

(c) Nathaniel M. Campbell and Beverly Lomer, International Society of Hildegard von Bingen Studies

Handel ‘Arrival of the Queen of Sheba’ from Solomon

The popularity of oratorio in England owes much to the nation’s choral singing tradition and the patronage by the Elector of Hanover, later George I, of George Frederick Handel. In his oratorios, Handel sought both to educate and entertain, and provided a foil to the more restrained and devotional religious music of Byrd and JS Bach.

Handel composed “Solomon” between 5 May and 13 June, 1748. The librettist, as with his next work “Susanna”, is unknown. The plot is simple with Act 1 dealing with the inauguration of the newly completed temple, and ends with Solomon beckoning his Queen toward the cedar grove, where one suspects it is not just the ‘amorous turtles’ that ‘love beneath the pleasing gloom’. Act II is based around the well known story of two women arguing over who is the mother of the new-born baby, and Solomon’s sharp thinking to find a solution and Act III portrays the visit of the Queen of Sheba (also known as the Queen of Egypt and Ethiopia), and her amazement at the glory and splendour of Solomon’s court.

With a relatively small and diverse cast of characters (Solomon, Queen of Sheba, two Harlots, Zadok the Priest and a Levite) it falls to the chorus, as builders and inhabitants of this ‘golden’ city, to emphasis the grandeur and splendour of Solomon’s kingdom and to literarily provide the pillars of the whole piece. These grand choruses, seven of which are in eight voice parts, add to the texture and opulence of the oratorio mirroring the glory of the court and religious intensity.

Always an astute business man Handel praised and paid homage to his patron by highlighting the perceived parallels, for the eighteen century audience, between Solomon and George II. The qualities of Solomon, as portrayed by Handel, his piety (Act 1), wisdom (Act II) and splendour (Act III), were also attributable to the reigning English King, and Handel duly praised the establishment virtues of happy marriage, rural contentment and a national religion.

(c) British Choirs on the Net

Dowland Lachrimae Antiquae

Given John Dowland’s gifts as an exceptional songsmith, it comes as no surprise that the collection he entitled Lachrimae (1604) is by any reasonable estimation the most sensuously tuneful hour of music ever written. The sing-along quality of so many of these pieces seems so self-evident that it’s worth focussing not just on the extraordinary set of seven opening Lachrimae pavans – each named for different sorts of tears – but also on the fourteen ‘other pavans, galiards and almands’ – many of which are arranged from songs – so as to measure an artistic achievement which has cast such a remarkable spell on early music and beyond.

Much ink has been spilt trying to divine the secret meaning behind Dowland’s Lachrimae, which invokes no known genre but rather invents a new one, a collection of dance music for five bowed instruments and a lute. Together they collaborate in seven ‘passionate’ pavans based on a lyrical musical snippet of four descending notes. These Lachrimae pavans are followed by fourteen further dances which see the composer fashioning a self-portrait – Semper Dowland semper Dolens – as well as naming a wide variety of dedicatees: there is the dashing and popular military hero, the Earl of Essex – beheaded for treason a few years before –, Sir Henry Umpton (or Unton), an aristocratic viol consort player, Captain Digorie Piper, a convicted pirate of the high seas, and many others.

Though the blend of a viol (or violin) consort with a lute part in tablature was new, Dowland’s ‘Seven Tears’ is indebted to some favoured and famous models: first, a penitential psalm (Ps. 6) by Orlando di Lasso (as identified by David Pinto) where the falling ‘Lachrimae’ motive can be heard next to the text: ‘all the night long I make my bed to swim; I water my couch with tears’; and second, the madrigal ‘Parto da voi mio sole’ by Dowland’s Italian idol, Luca Marenzio (as noted by Peter Holman), in which the entire first phrase of the tune of Lachrimae Antiquae is hidden away in the alto part. So while some of Dowland’s tears are his own, others are indeed ‘old’, shed in two venerable musical works from the Continent.

Rather than the dry and shrivelled temperament of melancholy, tears are a fluid expression of grief and sorrow in the sixteenth century. Perhaps that’s why Dowland makes a point of figuring them as ‘passionate’ pavans, in the same way that Elizabethan poetry revels in passionate and gushing floods of tears. The ‘passion’ in the Lachrimae pavans indulges in outpourings of emotion which can become vehement, for example, as in the third strain of Lachrimae Gementes (track 3, 2:20). ‘Passionate’ grief and ‘tears’ also figure as a trope in a contemporary Elizabethan translation of the Homer’s Iliad (begun in 1598) by George Chapman: describing how even Achilles’s horses grieved the death of Patroclus, the translation notes that ‘so unremoved stood these steeds; their heads to earth let fall, and warm tears gushing from their eyes, with passionate desire, of their kind manager’. The contrasting temper of melancholy shows up in the autobiographical pavan which puns on the composer’s name: Semper Dowland semper Dolens (Dowland ever doleful). Identifying himself with depressive sadness, the striking silences that end each strain bring the music to a standstill marked by a dismal gloom.

Dowland dedicated Lachrimae to Anne of Denmark – Queen of England and Scotland – whom he praises as an ideal amalgam of three pagan goddesses: Juno, Pallas Athena and Venus. Having invoked a female trinity, Dowland can scarcely have intended a reference to Christianity. Perhaps what he reveals about himself in the dedication provides the most accurate account of why he composed Lachrimae. ‘Forced back’ to England and ‘of necessity compelled to winter here in your most happy kingdom’ Dowland ‘endeavoured by [his] poor labour and study to manifest his humbleness and duty’, because he was ‘one of your most affectionate subjects’ but ‘also servant to your most princely brother, the only patron and sunshine of my else unhappy fortunes’. Dowland plays on his own made-up Latin epigram – ‘one whom fortune has not blessed either rages or sheds tears (‘lacrimat’). Dowland thus highlights his own investment in Lachrimae, also mirrored in the person of his dedicatee, who, like himself, was a Roman Catholic who lived in both Denmark and Britain.

Lachrimae has therefore two sides. The first is a stylised self-portrait of a man bereft of good fortune, giving rise to music embodying tears, anger and melancholy. The second side softens the unrelenting negativity by invoking an exalted dedicatee who will know that tears are not ‘always in sorrow but sometime in joy and gladness’, someone who may offer Dowland comfort in the form of ‘protection’ over his ‘showers of harmony’. Crafted by arduous study, the collection embraces a personal world of sadness, grief, anger and melancholy mollified by moments of joy and gladness.

Even though Dowland names his seven tears, it is probably a mistake to take the names too literally. Called ‘antique’, ‘new antique’, ‘sighing’, ‘sad’, ‘forced’, ‘of a lover’, and finally, ‘true’ tears, there are so many musical overlaps that bind the seven together that it seems faithful to the musical experience to hear them as an extended process of reflection on a poetic-musical theme. In some fascinating ways, each also exhibits a distinct emotional complexion by virtue of what it borrows and excludes from the others.

The ‘labour and study’ Dowland has invested give rise to some striking musical patterns. The tear motif itself which begins each Lachrimae pavan is ultimately heard singly in all five polyphonic parts. (The tenor part lacks a mention at the original pitch, but has a transposed version at the opening of Lachrimae Amantis.)

And whereas the ‘air’ of the first and third strains of each pavan stay in the home key – A minor leading to A major in the 1st strain, and in the 3rd strain E major (or E minor in Coactae!) leading to A major – the 2nd strain immediately journeys ‘abroad’ via one of three different chords: C major, B major or G major. This constant reconfiguring of the tear motif and the contrasting patterns of wandering in the 2nd strain imprint a sense of a musical journey on the Lachrimae pavans. It is a fundamental paradox of such a perception that it doesn’t arise from constant novelty but rather – to the contrary – forms nuanced musical repetitions and new synergies between known bits of musical material. As a result, one gains an experiential knowledge of a coherent journey where depth and grasp are valued over coverage and breadth. By the time one reaches the final Lachrimae, the true tears, the ubiquitous citations of the tear motif – sometimes clear, sometimes hidden away – bring a kind of ‘joy and gladness’, not to mention comfort – which is really unparalleled. In a similar vein Dowland has an uncanny way of repeating certain passages with just the slightest variation that delivers the most heart-wrenching affective charge. My favourite example is the progression in the 2nd strain of Amantis (track 6, 1:36-1:53) almost repeated verbatim in the 3rd strain of Verae (track 7, 3:24-3:56). Composed of a deceptively simple harmonic progression – and devoid for a moment of any clear melody – the music temporarily sights the home key but then, like a head that droops in sadness, descends to a slightly lower realm via a flattened leading tone. It’s a most magical moment, almost motionless, and yet arousing the most delicate sorrow and sympathy.

As Elizabeth Kenny writes in her notes, there are several pieces in Lachrimae which are instrumental versions of Dowland songs. In all the dances, though, the composer revels in vivid gestures of changeable pulses and groups of beats, often a generous play of cheeky accents whose variety furnishes excitement and pleasure. Just like theatrical dancers who might toy with conventional accents in the music, we too have sought out some interesting accentuated patterns in the galliards. Sometimes the music does this for us, and at other times Dowland has left the accents ‘unmarked’, which extends an open invitation to jump in the air and land on the floor at unexpected times. A graceful collaboration between singing and dancing is almost always in evidence in each piece: In the opening of the 3rd strain of Henry Noell, for example (track 16, 1:26-1:32), Dowland quotes a sensuous passage from William Byrd’s Italian consort song, ‘La Virginella’ [sic], based on a famous bit (canto I, ottave 42–43) of Ariosto’s Orlando furioso. At the words ‘ne gregge ne pastor se la avvicina’ (neither flock nor shepherd approaches her), Dowland flatters Byrd’s delightful Italian declamation by reconfiguring the lyrical moment as a choreography of flirtatious springs and bounces. (We’ve recorded the song with Geraldine McGreevy on Simax Classics PSC 1191, track 1, 0:41-0:48.)

Dowland’s Lachrimae quickly became a source to quote in English consort music, even many years afterwards. William Lawes did so some 30 years later most overtly in his C minor Organ Consort a5 (Linn CKD 399, track 9), but he also beautifully incorporates the tear motif into his Royal Consort (Linn CKD 470) in Sett No. 2 (track 41) and in Sett No. 4 (track 6). Beyond pavans and into the world of fantasies, John Jenkins is likewise seduced into Dowland’s world in the opening section of his Fantasy 5 a6 (Linn BDK 556, track 12) but, like Lawes, expands Dowland’s tonal and emotional range while continuing to pay the most courteous homage. Finally, Orlando Gibbons pays his own respects by lifting a passage from Lachrimae Tristes which contains multiple iterations of the tear motif (track 4, 2:46-2:56) into his In Nomine No. 1 a5 (Linn CKD 486, Track 7, 2:27-2:38). What Dowland attained in this slim volume is nothing short of miraculous.

© Laurence Dreyfus, 2016

Trad. (arr. Bantock) Greensleeves

It is generally agreed that the melody we know as Greensleeves is probably the second oldest piece of secular music in our Western culture, its origins having been traced back to about 1360. While we are not certain this was the original title, it is known that in the latter 14th century, English ladies wore gowns with great billowing sleeves, and the lyrics that have come down to us speak of a lover’s lament over his lady’s cruel treatment of him by a lady clad in a dress of green sleeves.

By the time of William Shakespeare, this song had already become a classic and he made use of it in two of his plays, most notably in the Merry Wives of Windsor. Over 300 years later, the English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams used this melody as an intermezzo between two acts of his opera Sir John in Love, which was based on the same play. Since then the tune has been adapted as the basis for at least one Christmas carol (What Child Is This?), several popular songs, and even by the Swingle Singers on one of their albums. In addition, it has been performed instrumentally by groups of all sizes and styles from full symphony orchestra to small jazz and rock groups.

Handel Extracts from Water Music

GEORGE FRIDERIC HANDEL  (1685-1759)

Suite No. 1 from the Water Music

I             Overture
II            Allegro – Andante – Allegro
III           Minuet and Trio
IV           Air
V            Minuet and Trio
VI           Bourrée
VII         Hornpipe

The famous occasion on which Handel’s Water Music was first performed in the summer of 1717 was not the first of its kind.  Another, less spectacular one, probably took place two years earlier, and most of the music Handel had composed for this or a similar river party eventually became the First Suite of the Water Music as it was performed in 1717.  Handel transposed two movements of the First Suite so that he could use trumpets in the key in which they normally played at that time, and he added other movements in this same key of D to form a Second Suite.  The Third Suite featured flutes and recorders, and though it forms part of the complete Water Music, it is assumed that this Third Suite was performed on land, during or after the King’s supper.

The Daily Courant gave the following splendid account of the first and twice repeated performances of Handel’s Water Music:

“On Wednesday Evening (17 July), at about 8, the King took Water at Whitehall in an open Barge and went up the River towards Chelsea.  Many other Barges with Persons of Quality attended.  A City Company’s Barge was employ’d for the Musick, wherein were 50 Instruments of all sorts, who play’d all the way from Lambeth (while the Barges drove with the Tide without rowing, as far as Chelsea) the finest Symphonies, comps’d express for this Occasion by Mr Hendel; which his Majesty liked so well, that he caus’d it to be plaid over three times in going and returning.  At Eleven his Majesty went a-shore at Chelsea, where a Supper was prepar’d, and then there was another fine Consort of Musick, which lasted till 2; after which, his Majesty came again into his Barge, and return’d the same way, the Musick continuing to play till he lande

©  Stefan de Haan