George Frideric Handel, Water Music

August 19, 2024

Program Notes by Dr. K. Dawn Grapes

Date of Composition: 1717
Duration: 50 minutes

“. . . impetuous, rough, and peremptory in his manners and conversation, but totally devoid of ill-nature or malevolence; indeed, there was an original humour and pleasantry in his most lively sallies of anger or impatience . . . His natural propensity to wit and humour, and happy method of relating common occurrences, in an uncommon way, enabled him to throw persons and things into very ridiculous attitudes . . . when he did smile, it was his sire the sun, bursting out of a black cloud. There was a sudden flash of intelligence, wit, and good humour, beaming in his countenance, which I hardly ever saw in any other.”

By the time writer Charles Burney wrote this posthumous description of George Frideric Handel (1685–1759) in 1785, Handel was long established as London’s most successful and beloved composer. The irony is that the musician was not originally English at all. Born in Halle, Germany, Handel began his career in the city of Hamburg and then traveled to Italy, preparing for a lifetime of composing Italian opera. He returned to the German lands to become kapellmeister in court of Georg, Elector of Hanover. The terms of his contract were quite generous and allowed for extended travel. Handel took advantage of this perk with a trip to London, where the public embraced his operas and he found support from the aging English Queen Anne. His second trip to London proved so successful that he failed to return, temporarily severing ties with his Elector. But as fate would have it, when Anne died childless, next in the line of succession was Handel’s former German employer, now titled King George I of England.

Handel’s reputation in London turned out to be of benefit to the new king, who spoke little English and was not well liked by the general population. Soon after he took the throne in 1714, it became clear that the monarch needed to better connect with his people. A series of events was warranted, designed to place the king in the public eye. In 1717, George I and his entourage traveled up the Thames from Whitehall to Chelsea and back. Handel provided music for the occasion, appropriately titled Water Music. Reports indicate that some fifty musicians boarded a barge and followed the king up and down the river, playing additional music on land when the royal party disembarked. The ensemble was made up of a large contingent of strings and winds, most likely six oboes and four bassoons, plus pairs of trumpets, recorders, transverse flutes, and horns. What a scene it must have been that day! Imagine . . . the king on his royal barge accompanied by hundreds of other watercrafts, people lining London’s banks to get a peek at the aristocrats, and one large floating group of the king’s best musicians.

Unfortunately, no autograph manuscript definitively linked to the original performance survives. Thus, it is difficult to ascertain if all of the twenty-two movements now assigned to Water Music were performed, or in what order they may have been heard. The individual pieces were eventually published in a piecemeal fashion: first the overture, then a set of ten selected dances, and finally in 1743, a full slate of movements, which may have included new ones written for various occasions over the course of Handel’s career. Since that time, the work has remained an audience favorite. Assuredly, as long as the Thames courses onward, Water Music will continue to recall the soundscape of the city that revered the name Handel.

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