Feasting with Handel
by David Yearsley
Praised by contemporaries as one of the greatest organists of his or any time, Handel was pictured at the King of Instruments only once—and in far from flattering fashion. The expatriate French artist Joseph Goupy painted a cruel picture in pastels of Handel as a hog-headed organist after having been invited to the composer’s London house for supper, probably in the mid 1740s; ten years later the image was riffed on by an anonymous artist in the cruder caricature.
Handel’s dinner guest was not much impressed by the fare and was even more nonplussed by his host’s frequent disappearances. Goupy eventually sneaked after the composer and found him in the kitchen stuffing his face with far better food than had been offered his visitor. Goupy’s cruel caricature was a thank-you card for a bad time. The friendship between the men came to an abrupt end, Handel sealed the rupture by writing Goupy out of his will.
The picture derived from Goupy’s original sets the bewigged beast on a hogshead of ale with wine bottles lined up behind it. A long shopping list of delicacies spills from his coat pocket; a once-proud rooster hangs from the side of the organ; a trussed-up goose rests on a table in front of a saucepan of turtle soup; a bigger bird of indefinite species sprawls belly-up on a kettledrum, itself seemingly in danger of being crushed by Handel’s massive left leg which is encased in white hose as if it were a giant sausage.
At the bottom of the image, a motto spreads across a snaking ribbon: “I Am Myself Alone.” Taken from Shakespeare, this is the hedonist’s creed, not simply a tautological statement, but a declaration that the epicurean organist will follow his own lusts unimpeded by the dictates of society and prevailing moral standards or even bother with the basic social graces of a good host. Handel’s bulging shoe looms directly above the word “Myself.” Slave to his lusts, Handel threatens to stamp himself out.
In this recording I want to put Handel’s feet into motion not for the purposes of parodying a gourmand but for indulging in a different kind of excess: extravagant, four-limbed performance at an organ a lot bigger and more delectable than the one Goupy has Handel bellied up to. I don’t care whether the virtuoso was virtuous or not. I want him to feast at the banqueting table that is a large and powerful organ laden with sonic delights and surprises.
But how will the organist chef be able to construct a sufficiently abundant menu, since Handel left only a slender volume of solo organ music and these pieces are for hands alone? That he provided almost no pedal parts (save for one of the organ concertos) reflects the fact that the organs of his adopted country, England, were almost universally without a keyboard for the feet. However richly deployed with victuals, the organ in the caricature lacks a crucial ingredient for the German organist: pedals. But in the repast heard on this recording, I want Handel to become another version of himself by urging his feet to tread the pedals in true German fashion, rather than let them loiter idly by. Instead of the legs that Goupy gives the Great Man, I imagine more shapely appendages, like those pictured in the sumptuous portrait of Handel painted by Thomas Hudson in 1756. These are the kind of feet that will nimbly dance over the pedalboard. If the organist’s exertions cause him to reach with his hands for a nearby tankard of beer while his feet are busy with a solo, then let him reach!
As a boy, Handel was at home on the organs in his native Halle in central Germany with their full pedal divisions; he also impressed dukes and kings of the region at the splendid instruments in their courtly chapels. From the age of 18, Handel spent three years in Hamburg, pursuing his career as an opera composer, but he also must have held forth often on the city’s colossal organs, Europe’s richest collection of such sounding monuments. Johann Mattheson, the haughty Hamburg music theorist and sometime friend and dueling partner of Handel, praised him (along with Bach) for unsurpassed brilliance “at pulling from his sleeve all that belongs to manuals and pedal.”
We know that Handel also travelled (with Mattheson) to the Hanseatic capital of Lübeck to see if he might succeed the venerable Dieterich Buxtehude as master of St. Mary’s two organs, that in the west end gallery a richly decorated color machine with a massive pedal division.
The foundation of the German organist’s art was the pedal. There were flashy solos in which the hands did nothing but grip the bench for balance. Elsewhere, the feet had to pull off tricky fugue subjects first introduced by the fingers, and sometimes even manage two parts at once (one in the left foot and one in the right) while the hands were simultaneously playing complex contrapuntal textures.
Rather than spending his life among large-scale organs with full pedals, Handel’s career path led away from Germany, first to Italy where he made organ pyrotechnics a crucial feature of his brand of showmanship. On his arrival in Rome in the first days of 1707, he played the towering, ornate organ in St. John Lateran before “an extraordinary crowd of prelates, cardinals, and aristocrats … to the amazement of all.” These Italian organs had small pedalboards without independent stops. However opulent, they were not the medium for dazzling with German feet.
After 1710 Handel settled in London where only the organ at St. Paul’s Cathedral had a pedalboard, though it was a much smaller one than those in Germany. Of a Sunday afternoon he would hold forth at the cathedral, happy to get “the exercise [the organ] afforded him, in the use of the pedals.”
The comparisons with Bach were—and remain—inevitable and ubiquitous. Writing in 1788, C. P. E. Bach (Johann Sebastian’s second son, and then one of the most revered composers in Europe) chided Handel for renouncing his pedal patrimony: “Should not Handel have disposed at least one piece among his organ works in such manner that masters across the sea, too, could tell that he measured up to their higher art? Should he not have written and left behind in Germany a single work worthy of the German organ?” C. P. E. Bach was referring to a composition with vigorously independent pedal.
On his occasional return trips to the mighty organs of the continent Handel surely played pedal-rich solos, and had his legs join in on fugues. These improvisations vanished with their echo in the cavernous interiors of churches like St. Bavo in Haarlem, The Netherlands. That instrument was one of the largest and most famous of all organs in Europe, and Handel played it in 1740 soon after it had been completed, and again in 1750. For his own enjoyment and “to the amazement” of those down in the church, he must have had his way with the impressive pedal resources, the antics of his slender youth adapted to those of his more stout maturity. Here’s betting his girth didn’t slow him down at the organ bench.
How to get Handel his organist’s feet back? With imagination and without inhibition. Handel was the most inspired and dedicated of musical plunderers, adept and unapologetic at lifting themes and even whole sections from teachers, colleagues, and competitors. He almost always put his inimitable spin on what he stole, “paying back the loan with interest,” in Mattheson’s memorable description of the duties of the plagiarist/borrower. The organ, as Handel knew better than anyone, is the instrument of instruments—a symphony unto itself. To sit at an organ like that in Cornell’s Anabel Taylor Chapel, an instrument that would have seemed like a long-lost friend to Handel, is to have the world of eighteenth-century music (and beyond) at the tips of one’s fingers and toes. Let Handel steal from Handel, with Yearsley as the accomplice. Guilty as charged, your Honor!
The banquet starts with a resonant hors d’oeuvre, the Sinfony that opens Handel’s most famous work, Messiah. This overture in the French style is stern and lofty, its harmonies ornamented with trills and turns that the feet can’t resist joining in on. For the quicker polyphonic section that follows, I substitute a fugue from a Handel harpsichord suite that has a subject more fun for the feet, which I nonetheless modify with an occasional change of direction, supplemental voice, and a concluding pedal solo.
Played on the organ, the aria “As with rosy steps the morn” from Handel’s penultimate oratorio, Theodora of 1750, could well serve as a chorale heard before a sermon in Handel’s Saxon homeland; the composer remained true to his Lutheran faith during both his sojourn in Catholic Italy, and the half-century he spent in Anglican Britain. Accompanied throughout by a rich chordal texture and a sometimes-roving bass line, the florid solo line is embroidered still further on the repeat of the opening section.
In reclaiming his German roots, Handel would have had to show his mastery of the then new genre of the organ trio. A refined, yet spirited, set of variations on a repeating bass line, the Passacaille comes from a Handel quartet. I subtract a voice in order to make out of it a trio, the loss requiring minor harmonic and contrapuntal adjustments. J. S. Bach was the inventor of the organ trio sonata, that most demanding and exposed genre in which each hand takes a part (of for example, a violin and a flute) and the pedal delivers the bass line. Handel keeps step with his contemporary, the feet required to caper across the pedalboard in ways that even Bach didn’t demand.
For “Lord, to Thee, each night and day,” another chorale-like aria taken from Theodora, I have composed an additional voice played by the right foot alone, while the left takes the original bass line written by Handel. Deploying both feet in double pedal was a prized technique of the great seventeenth-century north German organists admired by Handel and Bach. In contrast to the placid opening, the tempo of the B section races into a depiction of an earthquake and thunderstorm. Pulling on a battery of stops, I now give the melody line (sung by a soprano in the original) to the pedal, which joins the fury with some pyrotechnics of its own before returning to two-part accompaniment in the more contemplative (but no less demanding) opening texture. Single-minded in my pursuit of the north German ideal, I even set down my adaption of the aria on a double folio of cotton paper using a quill pen and the tablature notation favored by the north Germans, and also the young Bach.
The opening chorus of Handel’s anthem, “O praise the Lord with one consent,” sets the then-new St. Anne hymn tune (composed by William Croft in 1708, and also the subject of one of J. S. Bach’s best-known organ fugues) in an Italian concerto style that builds towards a bracing contrapuntal exercise in which the feet run wild again.
One of Handel’s most famous arias, Lascia ch’io pianga (Let me weep) comes from his first London opera, Rinaldo, of 1711. This mournful confection proves that the organ can sing.
The diverse and demanding moods and manners of the multi-movement Sonata in F, Op 5, no. 6 again require the organist to be three instrumentalists at once: as always when a single musician impersonates several, there is room for detours from, and additions to the original.
To add luster and variety to his oratorio performances, Handel included organ concertos in which he was the soloist. Transplanted from London back to Germany (via Cornell’s Anabel Taylor Chapel), Handel’s Concerto in G minor/G major allows the single organist to serve as both orchestra and soloist. Variety and virtuosity reign in equal measure.
To close (nearly), we return to Messiah and that celebrated work’s final “Amen” chorus. My adaptation of the movement as a valedictory Fuga for full organ culminates in a pedal cadenza that is itself a mini-fugue for four voices, the heels and toes of both feet simultaneously occupied through to the final apocalyptic cadence with its double trills in the pedal and in the manual. The King of Instruments chortles and chuffs such that his lungs can barely hold out against the strain.
After this sublime assault on the auditory digestion, the banquet finishes with an unlisted dessert—an improvised concerto movement whose theme is taken from Handel’s most famous chorus.
The Cornell Baroque Organ in Anabel Taylor Chapel represents an international, collaborative effort between Cornell’s College of Arts and Sciences and GOArt (Gothenburg Organ Art Center) of the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. The project was led by builder Munetaka Yokota and spearheaded by Cornell University Organist Annette Richards. The instrument’s tonal design is a recreation of the celebrated organ of Charlottenburg Palace, Berlin, built in 1706 by Arp Schnitger and destroyed in WWII. The construction of the Anabel Taylor instrument sought to recreate historical methods of pipe casting and woodwork, from wooden pegs and iron hand-forged nails to dovetail joints and wedge bellows fastened with cowhide and glue. The console reconstructs the Charlottenburg instrument as it appears in 20th-century photographs, down to the stop labels of Prussian blue and gold. The case, based on another contemporary Schnitger instrument at Clausthal-Zellerfeld, has clearly delineated divisions of Hauptwerk, Rückpositif, and Pedal towers. It was constructed of white oak by Ithaca craftsman, Christopher Lowe, and holds 1,847 pipes, and over 740 feet of wooden trackers transferring movement from key to pallet. The action, windchests, and bellows (which can be operated by human foot power) were made by Parsons Organ Builders of central New York State. More than a decade since its dedication, the instrument continues to inspire performers, composers, and researchers from Cornell and beyond its campus.
Werk:
Quintadena 16’ • Principal 8’ • Floite dues 8’ • Gedact 8’ • Octav 4’ • Spitzflöit 4’ • Viol de Gamb 4’ • Nassat 3’ • Super Octav 2’ • Mixtur IV • Trommet 8’ • Vox humana 8’
Rückpositiv:
Principal 8’ • Gedact lieblich 8’ • Octav 4’ • Floite dues 4’ • Octav 2’ • Waltflöit 2’ • Sesquialt II • Scharf III • Hoboy 8’
Pedal:
Principal 16’ • Octav 8’ • Octav 4’ • Nachthorn 2’ • Rauschpfeife II • Mixtur IV • Posaunen 16’ • Trommet 8’ • Trommet 4’ • Cornet 2’
Tremulant
Calcant Bell
Temperament: Werkmeister III, A-415
Track List with Registrations
Track 1 [5:37]: Sinfony from Messiah (HWV 56) combined with the Fugue from Suite in E Minor, HWV 429
WERK: Ged 8’ / Tr 8’ / Oct 4’ / Nas 3’ / Sup 2’
PED: Pr 16’ / Pos 16’ / Oct 8’ / Tr 8’ / Oct 4’
@1:16
RP: Pr 8’ / Oct 4’ / Oct 2’
PED: Pr 16’ / Oct 8’ / Tr 8’ / Oct 4’
@5:14
add PED: Pos 16’
@5:20
WERK: Ged 8’ / Tr 8’ / Oct 4’ / Nas 3’ / Sup 2’
Track 2 [5:28]: As with rosy steps, the morn (from Theodora, HWV 68)
WERK: Ged 8’ / Fl 4’ RP
RP: Ged 8’ / Fl 4’ / Sesq
PED: Pr 16’ / Oct 8’ / Oct 4’
Track 3 [5:29]: Passacaille in G (HWV 399)
Right hand—WERK: Pr 8’
Left hand—RP: Pr 8’
PED: Pr 16’ / Oct 8’
Track 4 [6:44]: Lord, to Thee, each night and day (from Theodora, HWV 68)
Right Hand—WERK: Ged 8’ / Vox 8’ / Nas 3’
Left Hand—RP: Ged 8’
PED: Oct 8’
with Tremulant
@2:53
RP: Pr 8’ / Ged 8’ / Oct 4’ / Mixt
PED: Pr 16’ / Pos 16’ / Oct 8’ / Tr 8’ / Oct 4’ / Tr 4’ / Cor 2’ / Rausch
—Trem
@3:47—back to opening registration
Track 5 [6:28]: O praise the Lord with one consent (opening chorus of Chandos Anthem no. 9, HWV 254)
WERK: Pr 8’ / Ged 8’ / Oct 4’
RP: Pr 8’ / Oct 4’ / Sup 2’
PED: Pr 16’ / Pos 16’ / Oct 8’ / Oct 4’
@3:46
add WERK: Tr 8’
add PED: Rausch
@5:11
add PED: Tr 8’ / Tr 4’
@5:54
Add PED: Cor 2’
Track 6 [3:33]: Lascia ch’io pianga (from Rinaldo, HWV 7)
WERK: Fl 8’ / RP: Pr 8’ ; PED: Pr 16’ / Oct 8’ Trem
@2:56
minus PED: Oct 8’
Tracks 7-11: Trio Sonata in F, Op 5, no. 6 (HWV 401)
Track 7 [1:50]: Largo
Right hand—WERK: Pr 8’ / Fl 8’
Left hand — RP: Pr 8’ / Ged 8’
PED: Pr 16’ / Oct 8’
Track 8 [2:33]: Allegro – Adagio
Right hand — WERK: Ged 8’ / Fl 4’ / Nas 3’
Left hand — RP: Hob 8’ / Oct 4’
PED: Pr 16’ / Oct 8’ / Oct 4’
Track 9 [3:22]: Allegro
Right hand — RP: Pr 8’ / Oct 4’ / Sesq
Left hand—WERK: Ged 8’ / Tr 8’ / Oct 4’ / Sup 2’
Track 10 [2:34]: Adagio
Right hand — WERK: Fl 8’
Left hand — RP: Fl 4’ (played up an octave)
PED: Pr 16’
Trem
Track 11 [1:57]: Menuet: Allegro moderato
Right hand — WERK: Ged 8’ / Sp 4’
Left hand — RP: Ged 8’ / Fl 4’
PED: Pr 16’ / Oct 8’
Tracks 12-15: Concerto in G minor/G major, op. 4, no. 1 (HWV 289)
Track 12 [4:50]: Larghetto, e staccato
WERK: Qu 16’ / Pr 8’ / Ged 8’ / Fl 8’ / 4’ Oct / Viol 4’ / Sp 4’
RP: Ged 8’ / Fl 4’
PED: Pr 16’ / Pr 8’
Track 13 [6:00]: Allegro
WERK: Pr 8’ / Fl 8’ / Oct 4’
RP: Ged 8’ / Wal 2’ (minus Wal 2’ for echoes)
PED: Pr 16’ / Oct 8’ / Oct 4’
Track 14 [1:02]: Adagio
WERK: Pr 8’ / Fl 8’
RP: Ged 8’
PED: Pr 16’ / Oct 8’
Trem
Track 15 [3:44]: Andante
RP: Ged 8’ / Fl 4’
WERK: Sp 4’
PED: Pr 16’ / Oct 8’
@1:14
RP: Ged 8’ / Oct 4’
PED: Pr 16’ / Oct 8’ / Oct 4’
@1:33
WERK: Ged 8’ / Oct 4’
@1:55
RP: Ged 8’ / Wal 2’
@2:07
WERK: Fl 8’ / Ged 8’ / Sup 2’
@2:24
RP: Ged 8’ / Fl 4’ / Wal 2’
@2:43
WERK Ged 8’ / Sup 2’
@3:02
WERK: Ged 8’ / Sp 4’ / Sup 2’
PED
@3:19
RP: Pr 8’ / Oct 4’ / Sup 2’
PED: Pr 16’ / Pos 16’ / Oct 8’ / Oct 4’
Track 16 [4:26]: Fuga in D (“Amen” from Messiah, HWV 56)
WERK: Qu 16’ / Pr 8’ / Tr 8’ / Oct 4’ / Mixt
RP: Pr 8’ / Hob 8’ / Sup 2’
PED: Pr 16’ / Oct 8’ / Oct 4’ / Rausch / Mixt
@3:26:
PED: Pos 16’ / Tr 8’ / Tr 4’ / Cor 2’ / Rausch / Mixt
Track 17 [3:13] Bonus Track: A ‘Hallelujah’ Concerto (improvisation)
WERK: Ged 8’ / Viol 4’ / Sup 2’
RP: Ged 8’ / Sup 2’
PED: Pr 16’ / Pr 8’ / Oct 4’
Total time: 68:59
False Azure Records 