place on the day of its publication which it has held since, that of a European classic.
The following volumes are less interesting for the reasons I have given. The Second Volume published in 1733 by Walsh, unknown to Handel, and in a very faulty manner, gives us little pieces which we find in the Jugendbuch, and which date from the time of Hamburg and Halle.[1] They lack the setting which Handel had certainly planned for them: preludes and fugues.
This arrangement was ready; and Handel, frustrated by this publisher, resigned himself to publishing them later on, as an Appendix to the preceding work : Six Fugues or Voluntaries for the Organ or Harpsichord, 1735, Opus 3. These fugues date from the time when Handel was at Canons before 1720, the second in G Major was from the period of his first sojourn in England. They became celebrated at once, and were much circulated in
- ↑ One finds there, cycles of variations on Minuets, on Gavottes, especially on Chaconnes and many other Italian forms. The Gigue of the Sixth Suite (in G minor) comes from an air in Almira (1705). One notices also that the Eighth Suite in G major is in the French style (particularly the Gavotte in rondo with five variations).
It is necessary to follow this second volume by the third, which contains works of widely different periods : Fantasia, Capriccio, Preludio e Allegro, Sonata, published at Amsterdam in 1732, and dating from his youthful period (the Second Suite was inspired by an Allemande of Mattheson): Lessons composed for the Princess Louisa (when aged twelve or thirteen years) about 1736; Capriccio in G minor (about the same date); and Sonata in C major in 1750.
Finally, there should be added to these volumes, various clavier works published in Vol. XLVIII of the Complete Edition under the title: Klaviermusik und Cembalo Beavbeitungen. There is also a selection of the best arrangements of symphonies and airs from the operas of Handel by Babell (about 1713 or 1714).
