Winter 2010 - Program Notes

To purchase tickets for Handel: Israel in Egypt, please visit this page.

The following are the program notes for our upcoming performance of Israel in Egypt, which will be held on Saturday, March 13th, at 8:00pm, in Sanders Theatre.

Immediately prior to the concert, Donald Teeters, music director of the Boston Cecilia will present a pre-concert lecture, at 7:00pm in Sanders.

Musings on Handel
By Donald Teeters

Handel’s years in Italy (1706-10) were a fertile and essential period in his development. He was drawn there through his rapidly growing passion for opera, and Italy was the center of that particular universe at the time. Italian composers—beginning a century earlier with Monteverdi—and performers set the standard; their influence had become pervasive throughout Europe. While in Italy, Handel came into contact with all of the major musicians of the day and from them, especially Corelli, learned not just the vocal skills but also and importantly the instrumental ones upon which virtually all his later music was stylistically based. A few years later, in London, his audiences eagerly awaited his newest concertos, which, in the case of the ones for organ, he happily performed with himself at the keyboard, sometimes with improvised solo movements, to great acclaim. His two sets of concerti grossi, comprising the six of opus 3, and the twelve of opus 6, contain movements based almost exclusively on earlier works. These works filled the same overture or entr’acte function as the organ concertos in the opera house and oratorio theaters. The Concerto Grosso performed at this concert, Opus 3, No. 4, HWV 315, was composed as a second overture, i.e. to be played before one of the later acts of the opera Amadigi at a benefit performance in June 1716. In 1734, this concerto and likely others were performed by Handel at a royal wedding, after which they were published for the first time.

The following note on Israel in Egypt is an edited version of the original note, written for a period instrument performance with The Boston Cecilia, which was held in Jordan Hall at New England Conservatory, on 26 October 1991, conducted by the writer.

Handel brought Israel in Egypt to performance on 4 April 1739. Public response was unenthusiastic. Later in the season he revived it for three additional performances, but with the entire first third of the oratorio expunged and a miscellany of arias strewn about for the previously under-utilized soloists. Again, reaction was tepid. It was not until 1756 that Handel mounted another London production, this time with bits and pieces of other oratorios pasted together to form a new first part. Still unsuccessful, the work was not taken up again by him.

Why such contemporary coolness towards a work that in the nineteenth century attained popularity second only to Messiah?

The preponderance of choruses over arias surely was a factor; nearly thirty of the former, a mere four of the latter plus three duets; Handel’s audiences were, after all, largely made up of opera lovers. Some religious folks were uncomfortable with the idea of a secular work performed in a secular venue sung to an entirely scriptural text. That issue came even more forcefully forward with the introduction of Messiah a few years later. London was still very conservative in this regard. The absence of flesh and blood characters and plot development, particularly in a season that saw the first performances of Saul, a work overwhelmingly abundant in both qualities, probably disappointed not only Handel’s longtime opera fans, but the newly acquired oratorio enthusiasts as well.

Whatever the reasons for its lack of acceptance during Handel’s life, later generations have come to honor Israel in Egypt as a milestone in his emergence as the consummate master of non-liturgical choral drama. Here, the chorus, virtually without respite, assumes the central role in a fervent cataloging of Jewish travail, trial, and triumph. Israel in Egypt is the most luxuriantly choral of all Handel’s dramatic choral works.

Of the original three parts, only the second and third survive, generally speaking, in performance today. For details about what became of Part One, an adaptation of the Funeral Anthem for Queen Caroline, see below.

The new (in this and most performances) Part One, Exodus, draws its texts from Psalms 105 and 106, from one verse of Psalm 78, and from various passages in the Book of Exodus. In it the story of Jewish bondage is recounted and a vivid detailing of the plagues inspired some of Handel’s most powerful examples of word/picture painting. A final sequence of six choruses portrays the escape form Egypt (hair-raisingly!), and the first part ends with noble understatement (and a collective sigh of relief): “…And (they) believed the Lord and his servant Moses.”

Part Two, Moses’ Song, is, in effect, a gigantic song of praise and triumph, not a sequel to Exodus. Its style is ceremonial, the narrative choral role now subsumed in the direct expression of buoyant jubilation by the Israelites. The excited dotted note rhythms of the beginning of the Introitus invite one into the world of coronation anthems and Zadok the Priest. Indeed, the double chorus, I will sing unto the Lord, with its trumpets, drums, and trombones, is one of Handel’s most splendid creations of this type. Obviously, he thought so too, for he repeats the great anthem to conclude the whole oratorio. In this part, Handel deploys his forces in somewhat more varied arrangement than in the first. Three duets and three arias add diversity of texture, although the chorus still carries the lion’s share of action. Throughout Moses’ Song, Gabrielian sonorities and choral ornamentation abound.

This writer’s own personal experience has repeatedly confirmed the idea that Handel’s intentions about a work, as evidenced by his first performances, usually provide the best examples of its musical and dramatic merit. Handel scholars, however, sometimes roll their eyes heavenward when confronted by the atrocities Handel himself (one assumes voluntarily) committed upon his own works in revivals. New juxtapositions and odd excisions sometimes transformed narrative continuity into chaos. Arias were added to accommodate this new singer or to equalize exposure for that one. Movements, were deleted, or transposed, or recomposed to conceal the deficiencies of Mrs. X, or to exploit the strengths of Signor Z. Italian singers singing in Italian sometimes got dropped into the middle of nice-mannered English works with impunity, with apparent indifference to dramatic or musical consequences.

Whatever factors conspired to persuade Handel to make many of his radical alterations—and that matter has been, and continues to be investigated by scholars and performers—one can, nevertheless, usually rely on his first intentions. Even when he was in conflict with his librettists over awkward or excessively lengthy or undramatic or simply unmusical language, Handel’s surefire instincts about the constraints of drama, character delineation, and structural balance rarely deserted him—that is, in the original creative process.

And—IF, that is, a work evolved through a logical and coherent process. Israel in Egypt seems to have developed through circumstances that were different from those surrounding the creation of most of Handel’s other dramatic works. In 1737, he wrote an extended, multi-movement work, a funeral anthem on the death of Queen Caroline, whom he knew well and mourned sincerely. Later, perhaps at the suggestion of Charles Jennens, who chose and organized the Messiah texts for him a couple of years later, he set about the writing of Moses’ Song, and later, Exodus, the third and second parts, respectively, of an oratorio dealing with the Egyptian exile. The first part of the oratorio (Was this part of the original intention?) would be the funeral anthem, adapted slightly in text and music and retitled Lamentation on the Death of Joseph.

Thus, the three-part work that was brought to performance in April 1739 as Israel in Egypt. In that form it has been revived in a number of performances in recent years, notably in a recording conducted by Andrew Parrott for EMI a decade or so ago, and by others in various cities in the United States and Great Britain.

While some of us think there is no such thing as too much Handel, a reasoned argument can be made, it seems to me, that removal of the Lamentations section can be  justified on both historical and dramatic/musical terms, especially so since Handel’s own views about it were equivocal. In no other oratorio did Handel abandon an entire act after a single performance. Perhaps the failure of the first performance prompted the cut, but Handel faced a hostile public more than once in his career without succumbing to doubts about the value of his Muse—surgery, yes, but amputation? One suspects that, fine as the music of the Lamentation is (after all, there is hardly a note of mature Handel that needs anyone’s defense), a serious doubt may have arisen in him as to whether the transferred funeral anthem really made a suitable fit with the two brilliant, purpose-built movements with which he had coupled it. In any event, Exodus and Moses’ Song seem to have got used to standing together, and together make quite a nice eveningful of wonderful music.

And, no apologies need be offered for the libretto either!

(c) Donald Teeters