HANDEL, George Frideric 1685-1759

The Celebrated Water Musick In Score Composed in the Year 1716. [HWV 348]. Bound with The Musick for the Royal Fireworks Performed in the Year 1749. [HWV 351]. [Full scores]

[London]: [Arnold], [1788].

Large folio. Half black cloth with marbled boards, titling gilt to spine. 1f. (recto title, verso blank), 3-53, [i] (blank) pp. Engraved throughout.

Early small label of London binder to upper outer corner of front pastedown, "G. Crouch Bookbinder 1, Crown Court, Tudor St. Blackfriars Bridge."

With a [?]19th century newspaper article announcing a concert performance laid down to front pastedown incorporating an engraving of a highly ornamented barge on the Thames for a performance of Handel's Water Musick and a description of "The Romance" and "The Reality" behind the famed orchestral work. Occasional minor annotations including "Menuet" in pencil to p. 28; "No. 8" in ink to p. 29.

First Edition of the full score, without the list of subscribers. Smith p. 257, no. 8. OCLC 55639078. Arnold's Edition Nos. 23-24. RISM H1505.

Bound with:
Handel
The Musick for the Royal Fireworks, Performed in the Year 1749. [HWV 351]. [Full score]. [London: Arnold, 1788]. 20 pp., caption title. First Edition of the full score. Smith p. 235, no. 9. OCLC 19997675. Arnold's Edition No. 24. RISM H1506.

Binding worn, rubbed, and bumped; head and tail of spine lacking; hinges cracked. Slightly foxed, most noticeably to outer and lower margins.

"The major orchestral work of this period is the Water Music, a large-scale suite specially written to accompany a royal water party of June 1717, in which George I and his entourage were conveyed by barge along the Thames from Whitehall to Chelsea and back. The suite is remarkable for being the first orchestral work composed in England to include horns, crooked in both F and D; in movements in D major they are joined, sometimes in dialogue, by trumpets. The jovial opulence of such moments is balanced by lightly scored movements in both major and minor keys, mostly having G as their tonic. Though some of the music may have been written earlier for other contexts, the recent notion that the music was conceived or considered to exist as ‘three suites’ is questionable, since the earliest sources (keyboard transcripts from the early 1720s) show the movements in D and G in mixed order (as in the editions of Arnold and Chrysander). Ordering the movements by key had however become a practice by the 1730s, and is reflected in the keyboard arrangement published by Walsh in 1743." Anthony Hicks in Grove Music Online

The Musick for the Royal Fireworks, composed to celebrate the end of the War of Austrian Succession and the signing of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, was first performed on 27 April 1749.

The first full scores of two of Handel's most celebrated orchestral works.

Item #39691

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