Firework Music (1749),—and Concerti for two horns.
Although Handel was in art a visualist, and though his music had a highly descriptive and evocatory power, he only made a very restrained use of instrumental tone-colour.[1] However, he showed on occasion a refined intelligence in its use. The two oratorios written at Rome when he found himself in the society of the Cardinal Ottoboni, and his great virtuoso works, The Triumph of Time and The Resurrection of 1708, have a fine and well-varied orchestration.[2] In London he was one of the first to introduce the use of the horn into the orchestra of the opera.[3] "He was the first," says Volbach, "to assert the expressive personality of
- ↑ It was the aesthetic of the period. Thus M. Mennicke writes: "Neutrality of orchestral colour characterises the time of Bach and Handel. The instrumentation corresponds to the registration of an Organ." The Symphonic orchestra is essentially built up on the strings. The wind instruments serve principally as ripieno. When they used the wood-wind obbligato, it went on throughout the movement and did not merely add a touch of colour here and there.
- ↑ One finds in the middle of the Trionfo del Tempo an instrumental Sonata for 2 Oboes, 2 Violins, Viola, Cello, Basso, and Organ. In the Solo of the Magdalene in the Resurrection, Handel uses two flutes, 'two violins (muted), viola da gamba, and cello; the cello is occupied with a pedal-note of thirty-nine bars at the opening, and then joins the clavecin. In the middle of the air, the viola da gamba and the flutes play by themselves.
- ↑ In Radamisto (1720) Tiridate's air: Alzo al colo, and final chorus. In Giulio Cesare, 4 horns.
I do not suppose that Handel was the first to use the clarionets in an orchestra, as this appears very doubtful. One sees on a copy of Tamerlano by Schmidt: clar. e clarini (in place of the cornetti in the autograph manuscript). But it is feasible that just as with the "clarinettes" used by Rameau in the Acanthe et Céphise, the high trumpets are intended, Mr. Streatfeild mentions also a concerto for two '* clarinets " and corno di caccia, the MS. being in the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge.
