Georg Friecirich Handel.(Review)

Georg Friecirich Handel. Kantaten mit Instrumenten, III: HWV 150, 165, 166, 170, 171, 173. Hrsg. von Hans Joachim Marx. (Hallische Handel-Ausgabe, Ser. V: Kleinere Gesangswerke, Bd. 5.) Kassel: Barenreiter, 1999. [Editorial policy, pref., in Ger., Eng., p. vii-xviii; facsims., p. xix--xxii; texts and trans., p. xxiii--xxviii; score, 105 p.; index of first lines, p. 106; Krit. Bericht (Kantaten mit Instrumenten I-III), p. 107--200. Cloth. ISMN M-006-49568-9; BA 4060. DM 285.]

With the publication of this volume, the Hallische Handel-Ausgabe (HHA) completes its three-volume edition of "cantatas with instruments" by George Frideric Handel. Among his least-known works, the cantatas form the backbone of Handel's compositional activity during his years in Italy and first years in London (1706--11). Handel, like his Italian contemporaries, wrote the majority of his cantatas for solo voice with continuo accompaniment, but these works, approximately seventy in number, have yet to appear in the HHA. The "cantatas with instruments" comprise the twenty-eight works for one or more voices with instrumental scoring added to the continuo, ranging from a single violin or flute to a full string ensemble with various wind instruments, including oboe, flute, bassoon, and trumpet.

The category "cantatas with instruments" covers a broad spectrum of works. Those with just two arias (and preceding or only connecting recitative) and one or two obbligato instruments are quite similar to the continuo cantatas, where, typically, a nameless shepherd (or shepherdess) sings of love: Nel dolce dell'oblio for soprano, flute, and continuo offers one example. By contrast, the longer works with larger instrumental forces generally use specific characters and present stories that approach the dimensions of chamber opera. Examples include the pastoral drama Cor fedele for three singers and the particularly fine Apollo e Dafne.

The distinction between continuo and instrumental cantatas in Handel studies dates at least from the nineteenth-century Handelgesellschaft edition (HG) by Friedrich Chrysander, and the HHA follows Chrysander's precedent in this and other matters of content. Like Chrysander's edition (Cantate con strumenti, 2 vols., Werke, 52 [Leipzig: fur die Deutsche Handelgesellschaft, 1888-89; various reprints]), the three-volume HHA edition presents the cantatas in alphabetical order. I wonder whether any other arrangement was considered, especially given the planned space of three volumes. For example, a more useful ordering for performers might have been based on performing forces, moving successively from cantatas for solo voice through two- and three-voice works to the five-voice Echeggiate, festeggiate. Such a categorization would parallel the typical distinctions used for instrumental works and help clarify the rich diversity of performing forces contained in these volumes; the HHA has generally adopted such classi fications for Handel's instrumental music published in series 4. Without such a grouping, at least an indication of instrumental scoring, number of voices, and vocal ranges on the contents page would have been helpful. As the three-volume edition now stands, the uninitiated user can only determine this information by examining the score of each individual cantata.

The decision not to include Handel's Aci, Galatea e Polifemo among the instrumental cantatas may also show Chrysander's influence. Chrysander, however, only moved this work to the following volume (Cantate con instrumenti, vols. 52 A/B; the Aci, Galatea e Polifemo, vol. 53), whereas the HHA edition took the separation a step further by issuing Aci, Galatea e Polifemo in series 1 (oratorios and larger cantatas) rather than series 5 (small vocal works). Yet Aci arises from the same context of private patronage as do the instrumental cantatas, and the cantata Cuopre tat volta, included in the first volume of instrumental cantatas, was probably written for the same bass who performed the role of Polifemo. Moreover, Aci closely parallels Cor fedele in length and Apollo e Dafne in dramatic content. Thus, there is no obvious reason for considering Aci a "larger cantata" and Cor fedele (or Echeggiate, festeggiate) a "small vocal work."

Despite these silent echoes from a hundred years ago, the volumes of instrumental cantatas edited by Hans Joachim Marx for the HHA offer a huge advance over Chrysander in repertory, editing, and critical apparatus. Perhaps most importantly, these volumes present a significant amount of music never before published. As stated in the five-column preface repeated in German and English in all three volumes, "This edition contains seven cantatas which are either absent from Chrysander's edition, volumes 52 A/B, or printed there incomplete" (vol. 3, p. xiii). The new material in volumes 1 and 2 (ser. 5, vols. 3--4) is listed in my preliminary review of this edition (Notes 53 [March 1997]: 978--79). Volume 3 (ser. 5, vol. 5) includes the previously unpublished cantata Qual ti riveggio (Ero e Leandro) for soprano, two oboes, a concertino of solo violin and solo cello, and a concerto grosso of two violins, viola, and continuo. In the preparation of these previously unpublished works, as elsewhere throughout these vol umes, the edition benefits from Marx's extensive archival research and source studies. In addition, this volume like its predecessors, contains excellent translations into English by Terence Best; German translations (of the Italian texts) are by Siegfried Flesch in the first volume and by Frieder Flesch in the second and third. In my earlier review, I expressed regret that the Italian recitatives are printed in these volumes as prose, as the line lengths and rhymes of the poetry are so important to the recitative settings; unfortunately the translations of both recitatives and arias are also given in prose. This decision, which is unexplained, is particularly puzzling, since in the equally recent edition of Aci, Galatea e Polifemo published in 2000 (ed. Wolfram Windszus, HHA, ser. 1, vol. 5), both the Italian text and its translation are given by the same translators in versed also regret that this three-volume edition lacks a listing of "borrowings from Handel's own works or the works of other composers and re-use in later works" that forms part of the HHA guidelines for editorial prefaces (Hallische-Handel Ausgale: Editorial Guidelines for the Volume Editors [Halle, 1992], 3) and has become standard in recent volumes, as in Aci, Galatea e Polifemo.

This third volume of the edition contains the long-awaited critical report for all three volumes, to which the user of the first two volumes was repeatedly referred. Unfortunately, the promised information or explication is not always forthcoming. The cantata Qual ti riveggio (Ero e Leandro) from this volume offers an example. In the discussion of individual cantatas in the preface to volume 3, Marx relates that Aloy Fuchs, who acquired the autograph of Ero e Leandro in 1834 (now separated into two parts, one in a private collection and one at the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York), annotated the manuscript with the note "composed in Rome in 1707 for his patron and protector, Cardinal Ottoboni," and Marx states that this is "confirmed by the evidence of the paper" (ser. 5, vol. 5, p. xv). Marx's comments on ...