Page:Romain Rolland Handel.djvu/157

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HIS TECHNIQUE AND WORKS

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Lennard Collection.^[1] Others come from Almira, 1705. Naturally Handel enlarged and revised, and carefully grouped all these pieces in his edition of 1720. The interest of the Jugendbuch is chiefly that it shows us the first sketches of the pieces, and how Handel perfected them. Side by side with the oldest pieces there are others more recent, composed, it may be, in Italy or in England.^[2] One can trace in these pages the course of the different influences. Seiffert and Fleischer have noted some of them,^[3] German influences, French, and Italian. ^[4] In

↑ It is a manuscript of 21 pages, the writing appearing to date from about 1710. It is certainly a copy from some older works. Chrysander published it in Volume XLVIII of the Complete Edition. It is probable that Handel had given to an English friend a selection from the compositions of his early youth. They were passed from hand to hand, and were even fraudulently published, as Handel tells us himself in the Edition of 1720: "I have been led to publish some of the following pieces, because some faulty copies of them have been surreptitiously circulated abroad." In this number appear, for example, the Third Suite, the Sarabande of the Seventh Suite, etc.
↑ It is said that Handel wrote these for the Princess Anne, whom he taught the clavecin; but Chrysander had observed that the princess was only eleven years old at the time. It is more probable that these pieces were written for the Duke of Chandos or for the Duke of Burlington. It is in the second book of Clavier Pieces that we find the much easier pieces written for the princesses.
↑ In their republication of the Geschichte der Klaviermusik by Weitzmann (1899), in which the chapter devoted to Handel contains the fullest information of any description of the Clavier works.
↑ Influences of Krieger and of Kuhnau, particularly in the Halle period (see Vol. XLVIII, pp. 146, 149); French influences in the Hamburg Period (pp. 166, 170); influences of Pasquini (p. 162); and of Scarlatti (pp. 148, 152), about the time of his Italian visits. The influence of Kuhnau is very marked, and Handel had all his life a well-stocked memory of this music, and particularly of Kuhnau's Klavier-Uebung (1689-1692), and the Frischen Klavier-Früchte (1696), which were then widely known and published in numerous editions. Here is the same limpid style, the same neat soberness of line. Kuhnau's Sarabandes especially are already completely Handelian. It is the same with certain Preludes, certain Gigues, and some of the airs (a trifle popular).

[1] It is a manuscript of 21 pages, the writing appearing to date from about 1710. It is certainly a copy from some older works. Chrysander published it in Volume XLVIII of the Complete Edition. It is probable that Handel had given to an English friend a selection from the compositions of his early youth. They were passed from hand to hand, and were even fraudulently published, as Handel tells us himself in the Edition of 1720: "I have been led to publish some of the following pieces, because some faulty copies of them have been surreptitiously circulated abroad." In this number appear, for example, the Third Suite, the Sarabande of the Seventh Suite, etc.

[2] It is said that Handel wrote these for the Princess Anne, whom he taught the clavecin; but Chrysander had observed that the princess was only eleven years old at the time. It is more probable that these pieces were written for the Duke of Chandos or for the Duke of Burlington. It is in the second book of Clavier Pieces that we find the much easier pieces written for the princesses.

[3] In their republication of the Geschichte der Klaviermusik by Weitzmann (1899), in which the chapter devoted to Handel contains the fullest information of any description of the Clavier works.

[4] Influences of Krieger and of Kuhnau, particularly in the Halle period (see Vol. XLVIII, pp. 146, 149); French influences in the Hamburg Period (pp. 166, 170); influences of Pasquini (p. 162); and of Scarlatti (pp. 148, 152), about the time of his Italian visits. The influence of Kuhnau is very marked, and Handel had all his life a well-stocked memory of this music, and particularly of Kuhnau's Klavier-Uebung (1689-1692), and the Frischen Klavier-Früchte (1696), which were then widely known and published in numerous editions. Here is the same limpid style, the same neat soberness of line. Kuhnau's Sarabandes especially are already completely Handelian. It is the same with certain Preludes, certain Gigues, and some of the airs (a trifle popular).

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