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March 2002 Program Notes
The Triumph of Time and Truth
by Mary Burke
George Frideric Handel was something of a man without a country—or perhaps a man of all countries. Although German by birth, he spent the greatest part of his life in Italy and England, and in fact became a British citizen. He devoted a tremendous amount of energy to the pursuit and promotion of Italian music in England (London's Royal Academy of Music was founded for this purpose). The great majority of his vocal works were composed in Italian or English, with a fair number in Latin, but only a handful in his native tongue (and a few in French). His compositional style blended traditional Germanic counterpoint, Italianate brilliance and treatment of melody, and elements of the French courtly genres.
Handel's vocal works in German consist of a few early operas, a Passion, and a set of German arias that he completed around 1727. He took the texts for these arias from Irdisches Vergnügen in Gott (Earthly Pleasure in God), a collection of poems by the celebrated Pietistic poet Barthold Heinrich Brockes, whose version of the Passion Handel had set to music around 1716. Brockes celebrates the beauty of creation, as perceived by the various senses, as a path to religious reflection and fulfillment.
Handel's settings create a sort of hybrid of the trio sonata and the vocal chamber duet in the close relationship of vocal and instrumental obbligato lines.
With Giulio Cesare in Egitto, which premiered in 1724, Handel achieved one of the greatest triumphs of his career. The libretto by Nicola Francesco Haym eschews much of the political complexity of the story, and focuses on Caesar's journey to Egypt, during which he rescues Cleopatra from her evil brother Ptolemy. The arias performed here depict Cleopatra at two highly emotional points in the story: In "V'adoro, pupille" she waits for Caesar to come to her in her apartments, all but swooning with passion; in "Piangerò la mia sorte" she believes that Caesar has been killed, and promises that her spirit will come back to haunt Ptolemy ("the tyrant") after she is dead.
While it may seem that Italian opera easily won acceptance all across Europe, the genre did encounter a few roadblocks—even in its country of origin. In 1681, Pope Innocent XI actually banned opera in Rome as the result of a scandal that occurred during the 1677 carnival season. The composers and librettists philosophically created a loophole for themselves, and began writing oratorios instead, which essentially became operas without the costuming. Tra le fiamme probably dates to 1707/1708, and may have been written for the benefit of Ernst Christian Hesse, a German violist da gamba. The text is based on the familiar Greek myth of Icarus, with flashy writing for both the voice and the instruments to represent flight and the flames of the sun.
The Triumph of Time and Truth began life in 1707 as an allegorical Italian cantata (Truth in this version is called Disinganno, which implies a hard truth or disillusionment) with text by Cardinal Benedetto Pamphili, a very active patron of the arts in Rome. Truth does not actually make an appearance in this piece; Pleasure and Deceit try to convince Beauty to live for the moment, while Time and Counsel (son of Truth) advise her to reflect on mortality (no points for guessing who wins). Handel returned to this work in 1738 and again in 1758, making various changes and additions, most notably replacement of the original text with an English translation by Thomas Morell ("Melancholy/Is a folly,/Waive all sorrow/Until tomorrow"). In a pleasing case of coincidental symmetry, the various incarnations of The Triumph of Time and Truth represent the beginning and the end of Handel's career as an oratorio composer.
Demographic note: Handel entered the University of Halle as a law student before becoming a full-time musician. For those keeping score, other German Baroque composers who studied law were: Telemann, Sch\ütz, multiple Bachs (Carl Philipp Emanuel, Wilhelm Friedemann, Johann Christoph Friedrich, Johann Ernst), Heinichen, Kuhnau, and Graupner. Watch this space for further cases.
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