The New Handel Gloria(Clifford Bartlett)Händel Gloria : Emma Kirkby, Royal Academy of Music
Baroque Orchestra, Laurence Cummings. Parturiunt montes and after nine months since the encounter between Professor Marx and RAM MS 139, what is born may not be Horace's ridiculous mouse, but isn't quite the creature that the advance publicity or the booklet note leads us to expect. The ludicrous headline description of 'new Messiah' is not, of course, repeated in Curtis Price's note. But it favours a context for the work's origin which can be questioned, whereas had the score been made more widely available, we may have reached a wider-based and better-informed consensus. Scholarship thrives on publication, not secrecy. To have made the score available to anyone who was interested as soon as it was recognised last September would have needed a day at a computer (that's how long it took Brian Clark to typeset our edition) and another day to proofread it; a condition of receipt of a copy could have been a promise to contribute reaction onto a web site. (I don't know if there is any scholarly discussion on the net: if you look up 'Handel Gloria' on yahoo! you get The Times articles and the introduction to my edition on a general Handel site.) I have now had two performances to listen to: a local one sung by Patrizia Kwella with Fiori Musicali took place in Huntingdon on 18 May and the advance copy of the CD arrived next morning. Comparison was interesting. Two movements that I thought could move along a bit in Patrizia's performance were sung more slowly, but more fully characterised, by Emma: Et in terra (2' 03"/2' 29") and Qui tollis (3' 11"/4' 23"). Most of the other timings agreed within a few seconds, except that Emma, mistress of the semiquavers, knocked 20" off the lively Cum Sancto Spiritu. Does such agreement come from an 'early-music' ortho-doxy or is it inherent in the music? In both performances, the music comes over as impressive; but performers and some listeners had doubts over the attribution to Handel. The views of performers can usefully supplement the arguments of musicologists. A singer like Patrizia knows Handel's music in a way that complements the way scholars might study it, as does the director, Penelope Rapson (though she has a foot in both camps, since her doctorate involved close analysis of the music of Tallis). Bits of the Gloria were convincing as Handel, bits seemed awkward. A professor renowned chiefly for his Brahms expertise who happened to be in the audience showed the uses of his analytical skills by some pertinent comments on the first page of the score. My view is that the works is by him, but earlier than has been thought. I cannot imagine anyone from around the time of the MS (the late 1730s) composing it in archaic style, modelling it on Handel, not quite succeeding, yet using so effectively Handel's own technique of quoting bits of earlier music. If there was a tradition of setting the Gloria for a solo voice, that might help to locate it. Anthony Hicks has pointed out that there is a Mass by Telemann for alto and small ensemble dated c.1705, but he hadn't seen the music last time I spoke to him. Laudate I, Handel's oldest surviving autograph, is written on north-European paper, so probably dates from his time in Hamburg. (He could have taken some paper with him to Italy, but it wasn't pre-ruled, so it is unlikely that he would have bothered to carry it.) One wonders how he achieved such a grasp of Italian style in Hamburg: investigation of that may help to place the new Gloria. There are some elements that sound quite Germanic. By the time he came to Italy, Handel was a fully-trained composer. Listening to Dixit Dominus, dated April 1707, it is difficult to believe that the Gloria with its inconsistencies and awkward passages could have been written as late as that. The Dixit performance that completes the disc is fairly good, but not superlative (the choral semiquavers in the opening movement are a bit stiff, for instance). A disc of Gloria and Laudate I, along with Silete venti to show what Handel's mature writing in the style was like, would have been more instructive. It is excellent that the discovery was used to publicise the Academy's baroque orchestra; it plays well (though it's a long time since Simon Standage and Micaela Comberti were students) and makes an auspicious debut. (It is hardly relevant to boast that the Academy owns 25 Cremonese violins when they are mostly modernised so unusable for music of the period). There's a chance to hear it in more Handel in Theodora at the Spitalfields Festival (21 June). The Gloria was a late addition to Fiori Musicali's programme of Italianate music running from Pergolesi (Orfeo) via Durante (the outstanding piece, his amazing Concerto 2 in G minor, as unknown as the Handel but far less likely to get any publicity) to Mozart (two of the early Divertimenti); bows were changed for the later items, but not pitch. Fiori Musicali does an excellent job taking imaginatively-planned concerts around Northamptonshire and the neighbouring counties. Our District Council has developed an audience here, and the orchestra has its own effective publicity. The acoustics in the Hinchingbrooke Arts Centre did not help the performers. The layout made the sound rather distant and it was frustrating to see Penelope Rapson working away at the harpsichord to little audible effect. The Handel Gloria is now available from King's Music : Scored for Soprano, 2 vln & vlc, the score is £7.50 and parts £2.50 each. |
