Tag: Händel

Celebrate spring with Händel’s sonatas for oboe!

Gentle and jaunty. © Charles Thibo

I have made my peace with Georg Friedrich Händel. More than a year ago I explained in a post on Händel’s keyboard sonatas how I had come to hate his music being constantly exposed to it when I lived in Halle. Since then I have explored his music with much candour and I discovered many a treasure. Recently I wrote about his sonatas for recorder and this collection features also a number of sonatas for oboe and basso continuo. To celebrate spring in all its splendour, its freshness, its vitality, you may wish to listen to his Trio Sonata for Two Oboes and Basso Continuo No. 1 (HWV 396) and No. 6 (HWV 401), written in A and F. They have been recorded like the sonatas for recorder by musicians from the Academy of St. Martins in the Fields.

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Baroque melodies from a not-so-simple piece of wood

Autumn colors, autumn music. © Charles Thibo
Autumn colors, autumn music. © Charles Thibo

Did you have music lessons at school? Then perhaps you learned to play the recorder, this very basic woodwind instrument. Well, the recorder is more than just a school instrument for children. It has been in use as a music instrument in its own right since the Middle Ages up to the Baroque period, when it enjoyed a wide popularity. Georg Friedrich Händel has written several sonatas for recorder and basso continuo*. And they are worth to be known a little better.

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“Make me a bearer of the death of Christ”

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The Holy Virgin at the cross. © Charles Thibo

History is not without remarkable coincidences. In the year 1685, three great Baroque composers were born: Johann Sebastian Bach in the German town of Eisenach, Georg Friedrich Händel in Halle, some 140 kilometres north-east of Eisenach, and Domenico Scarlatti in Naples, Italy. Domenico Scarlatti was the sixth child of Alessandro Scarlatti, composer of a wonderful “Salve Regina” and the oratorio “O di Betlemme altera”. Tale padre, tale figlio – the French musicologist Adelaïde de Place believes that the son inherited the talent from his father with the additional benefit of genius.

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Celestial music interpreted by a jazz panist

Händel - music descended from heaven. © Charles Thibo
Händel – music descended from heaven. © Charles Thibo

Händel is everywhere. At least in the German town of Halle/Saale, just like Mozart in Salzburg. I lived for many years in Halle, and for a long time, I kept my distance to that Baroque composer. Being constantly exposed to his “Feuerwerksmusik” (Music for the Royal Fireworks, HWV 351) and his “Wassermusik” (Water Music, HWV 348–350), I ended up hating his music.

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