Most music lovers have encountered Georg Friedrich
Händel (1685 – 1759) through holiday-time renditions
of the Messiah's "Hallelujah" chorus. And many of them
know and love that oratorio on Christ's life, death,
and resurrection, as well as a few other greatest hits
like the orchestral Water Music and Royal Fireworks
Music, and perhaps Judas Maccabeus or one of the other
English oratorios. Yet his operas, for which he was
widely known in his own time, are the province mainly
of specialists in...(+)
Most music lovers have encountered Georg Friedrich
Händel (1685 – 1759) through holiday-time renditions
of the Messiah's "Hallelujah" chorus. And many of them
know and love that oratorio on Christ's life, death,
and resurrection, as well as a few other greatest hits
like the orchestral Water Music and Royal Fireworks
Music, and perhaps Judas Maccabeus or one of the other
English oratorios. Yet his operas, for which he was
widely known in his own time, are the province mainly
of specialists in Baroque music, and the events of his
life, even though they reflected some of the most
important musical issues of the day, have never become
as familiar as the careers of Bach or Mozart. Perhaps
the single word that best describes his life and music
is "cosmopolitan": he was a German composer, trained in
Italy, who spent most of his life in England.
Although he was a music composer not a music publisher,
Handel undertook to issue his first volume of keyboard
suites himself in London in 1720. He did so because as
he wrote in the preface, "surrepticious [sic] and
incorrect Copies of them had got Abroad" or, to put it
more bluntly, Jeanne Roger of Amsterdam had pirated the
scores and was making money off of them without paying
Handel any royalties. Many of the suites were intended
to be didactic pieces, teaching students keyboard
technique while amusing them with cheerful melodies and
pleasant harmonies. The Suite in F sharp minor is not
one of those suites. Rather, it is a darkly tragic
piece in four intense movements: an opening Prelude of
enormous range and power, a brooding Largo in
triple-time with huge chords and demonic trills, and a
gigantic Fuga marked Allegro that simply starts with a
descending theme but adds voice after voice of
counterpoint to culminate in a stark Adagio cadence in
seven voices. The closing Gigue, marked Presto, twists
and winds through tightly argued modulations to a
final, bleak cadence.
SHEET MUSIC