Most music lovers have encountered Georg Friedrich
Händel (1685 – 1759) through holiday-time renditions
of the Messiah's "Hallelujah" chorus. And many of them
know and love that oratorio on Christ's life, death,
and resurrection, as well as a few other greatest hits
like the orchestral Water Music and Royal Fireworks
Music, and perhaps Judas Maccabeus or one of the other
English oratorios. Yet his operas, for which he was
widely known in his own time, are the province mainly
of specialists in...(+)
Most music lovers have encountered Georg Friedrich
Händel (1685 – 1759) through holiday-time renditions
of the Messiah's "Hallelujah" chorus. And many of them
know and love that oratorio on Christ's life, death,
and resurrection, as well as a few other greatest hits
like the orchestral Water Music and Royal Fireworks
Music, and perhaps Judas Maccabeus or one of the other
English oratorios. Yet his operas, for which he was
widely known in his own time, are the province mainly
of specialists in Baroque music, and the events of his
life, even though they reflected some of the most
important musical issues of the day, have never become
as familiar as the careers of Bach or Mozart. Perhaps
the single word that best describes his life and music
is "cosmopolitan": he was a German composer, trained in
Italy, who spent most of his life in England.
One of the subtitles for Handel's keyboard suites
published in 1720 was "Lessons." Supposedly, Handel
used the suites as education works intended to guide
his pupils along the path to keyboard mastery. In that
case, those students who undertook to learn the Suite
in F minor must already be far along the path because
the F minor is a tough and powerful work requiring both
fluency and strength in each of its five movements. The
opening Adagio Prelude begins simply, but becomes
increasingly intense as voices are added and the
textures grows thick with chromatic lines and
embellishments. The Allegro Fuga that follows starts
with a rising subject, quickly adds two more voices,
then adds massive three- and four-voice chords to close
with a monumental seven-voice cadence. The Allemande
and Courante that follow roil and rock through densely
contrapuntal textures. The suite closes with a Gigue
whose octave-and-a-half theme hastens to an oblique but
nonetheless conclusive final cadence.
Source: AllMusic
(https://www.allmusic.com/composition/suite-for-keyboar
d-suite-de-piece-vol1-no8-in-f-minor-hwv-433-mc00024052
98).
Although originally written for Keyboard, I created
this Arrangement of the Suite in F Minor (HWV 433 No.
8) for Woodwind Trio (Flute, Oboe & Bassoon).
