ERIC HARRISON, HOST:
Good afternoon and thanks for tuning in to Little Rock Public Radio and Classical
KLRE-FM, 90.5. I’m Eric Harrison, I write about arts and culture at the Arkansas
Democrat-Gazette and I’ll be your host for the next two hours.
You’re listening to “Major and Minor Masterpieces,” where we focus each week on a
broad range of classical music, from chamber music to choral works to full symphonies
and maybe even a touch or two of opera.
Today’s theme is “Fire and Water.” You’ll get the picture as we proceed.
George Frideric Handel was born Feb. 23, 1685, a vintage year for Baroque composers
(also born that year: Johann Sebastian Bach and Domenico Scarlatti), in Halle, Germany.
He started his musical career as a violinist in an opera orchestra in Hamburg in 1703 and
it’s no surprise that many of his early compositions were operas.
In 1706 he traveled to Italy, where in the three years he spent there he became acquainted
with the Italian style of Baroque music, especially that of Arcangelo Corelli, with whom
he studied (and whose Concerti Grossi Handel later emulated).
Italy was in the early 1700s the musical center of Europe, and Handel also made a
number of useful contacts there with several British luminaries, as well as with Prince
Ernst August, the brother of the Elector of Hanover. And when Handel left Italy early in
1710, that’s where he went, earning an appointment as Capellmeister to that Elector,
George Louis, who through a complicated set of circumstances was also the heir to the
British throne.
The Elector immediately packed him off on a 12 months’ visit to England, where Handel
became a big hit in the court of Queen Anne (who granted Handel a pension of £200 a
year for life) and also with the opera-going public in London.
George Louis became King George I of England in 1714 (initiating the Royal House of
Hanover, now Windsor, which still reigns today) and he appointed Handel as his court
composer and also music master to his daughters.
In the summer of 1717 the king planned a trip with an assemblage of nobles on a set of
open barges down the River Thames, from Whitehall to Chelsea and back, and
commissioned Handel to write music for the occasion. The party lasted until 3 in the
morning, and the music — well, a contemporary commentator called it “the finest
Symphonies … which His Majesty liked so well, that he caus’d it to be plaid over three
times in going and returning.”
The original score is lost and the copies that survive group the movements into three
suites, in F major, G major and D major.
Most people encounter this music in a six-movement suite that Hamilton Harty put
together in 1922. But today you will hear it in its entirety, performed by the Academy of
Ancient Music on authentic period instruments, conducted by Christopher Hogwood.
(GEORGE FRIDERIC HANDEL’S “WATER MUSIC”)
ERIC: You heard the Academy of Ancient Music with conductor Christopher Hogwood
perform the “Water Music” by George Frideric Handel on today’s edition of “Major and
Minor Masterpieces” on Little Rock Public Radio and KLRE-FM, 90.5.
(SOUNDBITE OF WOJCIECH “BOITEG” CIESLIŃSKI’S “FIRST VIOLIN”)
---PROGRAM BREAK---
(SOUNDBITE OF WOJCIECH “BOITEG” CIESLIŃSKI’S “FIRST VIOLIN”)
Handel became a British subject in 1727, shortly before the death of King George I, and
he retained his position as composer to the Chapel Royal, composing four large-scale
anthems for the coronation of George II and his consort, Queen Caroline, at Westminster
Abbey that October (one of them, “Zadok the Priest,” has been part of every British
coronation since).
However, the new king didn’t have quite the same affection for music as his predecessor,
and there were fewer occasions for royal music-making. So Handel turned more and
more to writing music for public performance. At the same time, the Londoners’ appetite
for Italian opera, which had been Handel’s specialty, was waning. So Handel, partly
impelled by a ban by the Bishop of London on theatrical productions of biblical subjects,
began composing oratorios. Thus we have from Handel’s pen such “unstaged” biblical
epics in English as “Alexander’s Feast,” “Saul,” “Israel in Egypt” and eventually
“Messiah.”
Meanwhile, Handel also started writing more instrumental music, including a collection
of organ concertos, a set of Concerti Grossi and, in 1749, the “Music for the Royal
Fireworks,” to accompany the festivities in celebration of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle,
which marked the end of the War of Austrian Succession. Originally composed to
accompany the fireworks display, Handel initially wrote it for a large band of wind
instruments (including 24 oboes, nine horns and nine trumpets, plus kettledrums).
However, the music was actually performed before the fireworks and with the addition of
strings.
That’s the version we’ll play for you today, again by the Academy of Ancient Music with
conductor Christopher Hogwood.
(GEORGE FRIDERIC HANDEL’S “MUSIC FOR THE ROYAL FIREWORKS”)
ERIC: Christopher Hogwood conducted the Academy of Ancient Music, on authentic
period instruments, in the “Music for the Royal Fireworks” by George Frideric Handel.
Let’s leave the Baroque era and travel to the 20th century for the remainder of today’s
show, and back to the water for our next piece: “La Mer” (“The Sea”) by Claude
Debussy.
Debussy took visual inspiration for his 1905 orchestral triptych from paintings by British
artist J.M.W. Turner, known for his sometimes violent seascapes — and whom Debussy
lauded as the “finest creator of mystery in art” — and Japanese artist Katsushika
Hokusai, whose “The Great Wave off Kanagawa” the composer chose to adorn the title
page of the score.
Debussy himself had once thought to become a sailor and kept a lifelong attachment to
“my old friend, the sea; it is always endless and beautiful. It is really the thing in nature
which best puts you in your place.”
The piece has three movements: “From Dawn to Noon on the Sea,” “Play of the Waves”
and “Dialogue of the Wind and the Sea.”
Herbert von Karajan conducts the Berlin Philharmonic in this performance of “La Mer”
by Claude Debussy.
(CLAUDE DEBUSSY’S “LA MER”)
ERIC: Herbert von Karajan conducted the Berlin Philharmonic in “La Mer” by Claude
Debussy.
And a short but properly thematic lagniappe to wrap up today’s show: Igor Stravinsky’s
“Fireworks.” Stravinsky wrote it as a wedding present for the daughter of his teacher,
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. It’s a short piece but with an outsized influence: It’s the work
that inspired the attention of the Ballet Russe’s Sergei Diaghilev to commission a full-
length ballet from Stravinsky — “The Firebird,” which, of course, was Stravinsky’s
breakthrough success.
Let’s hear it performed by the Seattle Symphony Orchestra with Gerard Schwarz
conducting.
(IGOR STRAVINSKY’S “FIREWORKS”)
ERIC: Gerard Schwarz conducted the Seattle Symphony Orchestra in “Fireworks” by
Igor Stravinsky to wrap up this week’s edition of “Major and Minor Masterpieces.”
(SOUNDBITE OF WOJCIECH “BOITEG” CIESLIŃSKI’S “FIRST VIOLIN”)
Thanks for tuning in this week. I’ve been your host, Eric Harrison, of the Arkansas
Democrat-Gazette. Our producer is Sarah Buford. Our transition and credit music is by
our friend Wojciech Chiselinski.
Tune in again next week for Major and Minor Masterpieces on Little Rock Public Radio
and Classical KLRE-FM, 90.5.
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The recordings:
George Frideric Handel: Water Music; Music for the Royal Fireworks. Academy of
Ancient Music, Christopher Hogwood conductor. L’Oiseau-Lyre 455 709-2
Claude Debussy: La Mer. Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Herbert von Karajan, Deutsche
Grammophon E4474262
Igor Stravinsky: Fireworks. Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Gerard Schwarz, Naxos
8571221