Handel's Carmelite Vespers
Intended by a pragmatic father for a career in law, George Frideric Handel, by means of great talent, discipline, and a small clavichord smuggled into the attic, won for himself the reputation as one of the world’s foremost composers. At what point, though, did the young theatrical composer begin to burst into greatness? Many scholars point to Handel’s Italian sojourn of 1707 and the creation of the pieces that would come to be known as the Carmelite Vespers as the first sparks of what became a sustained creative fire.
While engaged in writing opera in Hamburg, Handel was fortunate enough to encounter Prince Ferdinand de Medici, the son of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, who was sufficiently impressed with the young musician to invite him to Florence. Handel accepted the invitation and made his first visit in the fall of 1706. January of 1707 found him in Rome, where his virtuosity on the harpsichord brought him attention from several important patrons, including the Marquis Franscesco Rupoli and Cardinal Carlo Colonna, a long-time patron of the Carmelite order. This connection brought Handel a commission to compose pieces for the annual celebration of the feast of the Madonna del Carmine (Our Lady of Mount Carmel) at the church of Monte Santo on July 16, 1707, a celebration of such import that the pope granted the choir of the Sistine Chapel leave to attend. The celebration comprised at least three services: Vespers were sung the night before, and the day itself featured both a mass and another set of Vespers. Handel, therefore, created a number of settings of psalms antiphons, canticles and hymns to be performed in the course of the several services. Opinions vary on which work might have appeared in which service; scholars are certain, however, that all of the works in today’s concert were performed at some point during the Carmelite’s 1707 celebration.
Dixit Dominus, which musicologists see as Handel’s “explosion into genius,” opens today’s concert. Its manuscript, dated April 1707, is the composer’s earliest surviving autograph. Written for five choral voices with solists, it is, according to John Eliot Gardner, “pitiless of the demands he makes of his musicians in the piece’s eight segments” and requiring “energy and precision, declamatory vigor and a lyrical expressiveness.” In its first movement, Handel blends plainsong and rapid polyphonic motifs. In Juravit Dominus , he uses strident chromaticism, another fugue, and diminishing dynamics to create drama, then sets one of the most awkward sentences in scripture – “Tu es sacerdos in aeternum secundum ordinem Melchisedech” – “Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Mechisedech” – to a cascade of quick, agile, contrapuntal melismas that fit the words like a glove. The final Gloria is an exercise in spectacle – a contrapuntal display as powerful as anything in Bach’s B Minor Mass. Handel later reworked the enormous fugal amen at the end for the coronation anthem The King Shall Rejoice.
Dixit Dominus is written for five-part mixed chorus, soprano and alto soloists, organ continuo and strings with divided violas. It was last performed by the Chattanooga Bach Choir on November 14, 1993, with Dr. J. James Greasby conducting.
Haec est Regina Virginum, whose manuscript was lost until quite recently, is another piece from the Carmelite observance. In its simultaneously simple and grand composition, it clearly shows the influence of Archangelo Corelli on the young Handel. Thoughtful and serene, this antiphon let Handel display the same virtuosity for solo voice that characterizes his choral pieces.
Handel wrote this piece for soprano soloist, organ continuo and string instruments with the exception of violas. These April performances mark the work’s first performance by the Bach Choir Orchestra.
Salve Regina, one of the earliest surviving works of Handel, was very likely written at first for a private performance at the Ruspoli villa before being included in the Carmelite rites. Financial records show that its violin and cello parts were duplicated by a paid copyist on June 30, 1707, and the original score went to Berlin sometime later and was then published by Friedrich Chrysander in the 19th century. Based on a non-Biblical anthem of supplication, the cantata offers many moods, beginning in slow reflection and then moving to an energetic allegro (Eia ergo). For Ad te clamamus, Handel, ever the enthusiastic recycler who used and reused his own and other people’s material, borrowed a melody from Janus, an opera by a colleague from Hamburg. After further but more cheerful supplication, Handel lets the darkness return through a slower tempo and chromaticism during the final movement.
Like Haec est Regina Virginum, Salve Regina was composed for soprano soloist, organ continuo and all the strings but viola. It too is being performed for the first time by the Bach Choir Orchestra.
Laudate Pueri Dominus, which Handel finished only eight days before its debut, began as a modest solo cantata for soprano, two violins and continuo, dated 1703. Comparison of the earlier and later versions provides graphic evidence of quantum leaps in Handel’s musicianship in a very short time. The later version adds oboe, viola and cello, bass and bassoon to the instrumentation but retains the soprano voice, known to be especially favored by Handel for its ethereal and soaring characteristics. The first movement features florid coloratura writing for the solo voice with choir responding; subsequent segments offer an oboe obbligato and a rarely heard progression of diminished sevenths, a five-part fugue, dance-like play between oboe and soprano, text-painting, and a return to the themes of the first movement to bring his musical circle to a close. One of the primary gifts Handel took from his Italian experience was a finesse for combining soloists and choir into a seamless artistic unity.
Scored for soprano soloist, mixed chorus, two oboes, organ continuo and strings with divided violas, Laudate Pueri is also being performed for the first time by the choir.