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Sources, Resources and Handel Studies

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Handel

Abstract

In his inaugural lecture for the Handel Tercentenary Conference, Winton Dean surveyed the progress of Handel scholarship in the half-century since the Handel Festival of 1935.1 In this article I want to present some observations on the present ‘state of the art’ and to reflect on the nature of some of the tasks that lie ahead. I plan to deal principally with matters of source philology and source interpretation, drawing examples from areas that I consider to be of especial interest at the moment. The selection will inevitably be influenced by my own particular field of work, but I hope nevertheless to deal in general terms with some of the issues that are currently being brought to the surface by the work of British, American, German and Japanese scholars. If this suggests a rather narrow definition of Handel scholarship (what about musical analysis, or reception history, for example?) my title should be taken as reflecting my opinion not of relative values but of priorities: most of Handel’s works — that is, most of the operas and oratorios — are still objects awaiting clear, accessible and practical definition.

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Notes and References

  1. ’scholarship and the Handel Revival, 1935–85’, in the present volume

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  2. Ellen T. Harris is preparing a critical facsimile edition of the original wordbooks for Handel’s operas, to be published by Garland, New York.

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  3. London, 1980; the Handel article, with the accompanying work-list, was published separately, with revisions, as: Winton Dean and Anthony Hicks: The New Grove Handel (London, 1982).

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  4. W. Eisen and M. Eisen, eds.: Händel-Handbuch, i–iii (Leipzig and Kassel, 1978–86)

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  5. Händel-Handbuch, ii, 38; GB-Lbm R.M.20.f.5

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  6. D-MUs HS.1873

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  7. The Indebtedness of Handel to Works by other Composers (Cambridge, 1906)

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  8. see articles by Ellwood Derr and John H. Roberts in H. J. Marx, ed.: Göttinger Händel-Beiträge, i (Kassel, 1984). A further article by Roberts about Handel’s borrowings from Keiser appears in Göttinger Händel-Beiträge, ii (1986), and papers on Handel’s borrowings are contributed by George J. Buelow and John H. Roberts in the present volume.

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  9. John H. Roberts, ed.: Handel Sources: Material for the Study of Handel’s Borrowings (Garland: New York, 1986–8)

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  10. Gott will Mensch und sterblich werden, Concerto Vocale (Kassel, 1971)

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  11. as A Catalogue of Handel’s Musical Autographs (Oxford, in preparation); I have reported on this in ‘Paper Studies and Handel’s Autographs: a Preliminary Report’, Göttinger Händel-Beiträge, i, 103.

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  12. ‘Zur Frage der Datierung durch Wasserzeichen’, HJb 1980, 123

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  13. Hans Dieter Clausen: Handel’s Direktionspartituren, Hamburger Beiträge zur Musikwissenschaft, vii (Hamburg, 1972)

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  14. Handel’s Messiah: Origins, Composition, Sources (London, 1957), 276–303. The table also incorporates the results of Larsen’s pioneering work on the Handel copyists, referred to later in this article.

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  15. ‘A Roman Concerto Repertory: Ottoboni’s “What not”?’, PRMA, cx (1983–4), 62 (and further references)

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  16. Barbara Small (Merton College, Oxford) has pursued some of the links with the later paper types in her current work on the music of J. C. Smith junior.

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  17. Peter Williams, ed.: Bach, Handel, Scarlatti: Tercentenary Essays (Cambridge, 1985), 75

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  18. Two relevant papers by Watanabe have been published: ‘Die Kopisten der Handschriften von den Werken G. F. Händels in der Santini-Bibliothek, Münster’, Journal of the Japanese Musicological Society, xvi (1970), 225, and ‘The Paper used by Handel and his Copyists during the time of 1706–1710’, idem, xxvii (1981), 129.

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  19. GB-Ob MS mus.d.49, ff.163bis-65

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  20. The copies are in GB-Mp, MS Q 520 Vu 51, a volume from the Aylesford collection and carrying the Aylesford library mark NM/29. The section of the manuscript which includes the anthems contains paper with watermark Bd.

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  21. see the commentary to my edition of Handel: Foundling Hospital Anthem (Peters: London, 1983), 144–5

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  22. 28 vocal and orchestral partbooks, now in the collection of the Thomas Coram Foundation, London

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  23. GB-Mp MS 130 Hd4 v.47(3); I used this source as a primary source for my edition (Church Music Society: London, 1982).

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  24. see Donald Burrows: Handel and the English Chapel Royal during the reigns of Queen Anne and King George I (diss., Open U., 1981), i, 314–18, 368–71, 385–8

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  25. I originally suspected that this was a separate watermark, which I designated Cba; various references have therefore appeared to ‘Burrows Cba’. I now see that it is not a separate mark but one stage in the life-history of Cb.

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  26. GB-Lbm R.M.20.c.6 and 20.a.5

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  27. D-Hs MSS MA/1049 and MA/999; GB-Cfm MS 257, pp. 1–44. The sequence supports the probability that the first two acts of Alessandro were composed before Scipione (my thanks to Anthony Hicks for drawing this point to my attention).

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  28. Dean: ‘Handel’s early London copyists’, Tercentenary Essays (n.17), 80

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  29. Datable examples of these later ‘Italian’ papers occur principally in the autographs of Rodelinda and Alessandro, GB-Lbm R.M.20.c.4 and 20.a.5.

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  30. Donald Burrows: ‘The Autographs and Early Copies of “Messiah”: Some Further Thoughts’, ML, lxvi (1985), 208

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  31. Dean, pp. 86–8

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  32. Dean, p. 97

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  33. Clausen, p. 270

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  34. see Donald Burrows: ‘Handel and Hanover’, Tercentenary Essays (n.17), 54–7

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  35. D-MÜs HS 1907 and HS 1908

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  36. D-Hs MS MB/1570

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  37. Clausen, p. 270. The final sheets of the manuscript (pp. 187–94) may have been added rather later than 1717, but since they are part of the section copied by Hb1 this does not help to resolve the date of Smith’s contribution. Hb1’s hand is similar to that of J. C. Smith junior. It seems that MS MB/1570 was written in a slightly more angular and less mature style than Hb1’s contributions to the conducting scores.

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  38. Smith changed the form of his single inverted semiquaver between the conducting scores of Lotario (late 1729) and Poro (early 1731): in the Hamburg duet copy he was still using the earlier form, but this still leaves the date of his contribution fairly open between 1717 and 1730.

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  39. Sale Catalogue Printed Books, Christie, Manson & Woods (London, 18 Nov 1981), lots 122, 123, 132

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  40. US-SM MS ST 66

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  41. Add. 62099–101

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  42. principally in the autographs of Giulio Cesare, GB-Lbm R.M.20.b.3, and Lotario 20.b.6; see Donald Burrows: A Handlist of the Paper Characteristics of Handel’s English Autographs (typescript, Milton Keynes, 1981), and the complete listing to be included in the forthcoming catalogue (n. 11)

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  43. HG, xxxiv, 152, 158

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  44. Catalogue of the Famous Musical Library … the property of the late W. H. Cummings, Mus. Doc., Sotheby, Wilkinson & Hodge (London, 17 May 1917 and subsequent days), third day, lot 816

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  45. Handel, the Duke of Chandos and the Harmonious Blacksmith (London, 1915), 11

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  46. see Graydon Beeks: ‘Handel and Music for the Earl of Carnarvon’, Tercentary Essays (n. 17), 4–5

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  47. lot 124, now GB-Lbm Add.62561

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  48. HG, xxxv, 17

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  49. GB-Lbm R.M.20.d.8, ff.1–4

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  50. see the entry for hwv525 in Händel-Handbuch, ii

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  51. GB-T MS 615, now in GB-Ob

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  52. Cummings (n. 45), p. 12

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  53. HHA, III/5, Anthems for Cannons II, ed. G. Hendrie (in preparation)

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Authors
  1. Donald Burrows
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Editor information

Stanley Sadie Anthony Hicks

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© 1987 The Royal Musical Association

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Burrows, D. (1987). Sources, Resources and Handel Studies. In: Sadie, S., Hicks, A. (eds) Handel. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-09139-3_2

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