This
preface by Clifford Bartlett appeared in the edition of Gloria
in excelsis Deo published by King's Music in May 2001 and available
from:
King's
Music, Redcroft, Bank's End, Wyton, Huntingdon, Cambs, PE28 2AA
Tel
+44 (0)1480 52076 fax +44 (0)1480 450821 email clifford.bartlett@btopenworld.com
We
are very grateful for permission to reproduce it here.
On
12 March 2001 The Times, with an exaggeration more appropriate to one of
our less reputable papers, announced on one of its news pages (not
buried amid its Arts section) ‘Handel scholar finds the new 'Messiah'’;
more modestly, two days later it became ‘Glory in the Gloria’.
In
fact, the work was not quite as unknown as the publicity suggested. It
is included in the commercially-available complete microfilm of the MSS
in the Royal Academy library issued by Harvester Microform/Research
Publications a decade or so ago and available in the world's major music
libraries (though apparently no British libraries bought a set). The
opening violin and vocal themes were published in a letter in Early
Music (vol. 11, 1983, p.295) by the countertenor Nicholas Clapton, who
was working at the time for RISM; he described it as 'a highly dubious
attribution to Handel by R. J. S. Stevens'. Clapton had been working on
the submission of UK Music MSS to the Répertoire International des
Sources Musicales (RISM), so the information was generally available to
scholars.
I
was somewhat embarrassed by the revelation of this unknown Handel work
since I had catalogued the RAM's MSS in the late 1960s. I allocated the
MSS their current numbers and the catalogue card that prefaces the MS on
the Research Publications film is the one I typed then. At the time,
although I was a Handel enthusiast, I did not have the professional
interest that I later acquired. The Gloria
was an oddity in its position in the MS and bore no ascription, so the
only personal action I took was to note in my copy of Gerald Abraham's Handel:
a Symposium (whose list of works I used as a peg for miscellaneous
comments) 'doubtful Gloria RAM
MS 139 & 288'. When the announcement of the discovery was made, I
wrote a few paragraphs in Early
Music Review (69, April 2001) and intended to do no more about it.
But a singer asked me if I could provide an edition, and there was no
reason not to do so, since, despite the announcement of the premières,
there was no sign that an edition was likely to be available by the
launch date.
The
Gloria survives in RAM MS 139,
ff. 111-122. The foliation is modern (in my hand, in fact), and has no
implication that the Gloria
was of the same origin as the rest of the MS, which is bound together
from several discrete items, though with overlapping handwritings. The
rest of the MS contains opera arias, beginning with substantial groups
from Atalanta (1736) and Alcina
(1735); further on, there are items dating from 1737. These are mostly
headed with the name of the opera and original singer, as was normal in
operatic publications, suggesting that perhaps they were copied from the
early prints rather than derived from Handel's scriptorium. The Gloria is separately paginated [1] to 23. There is also a set of
parts (MS 288) with two copies each of violino
primo, violino secondo and
violoncello. These were
probably copied from the score; they have some mistakes and contribute
nothing to the information presented by it. There is nowhere in either
score or parts an ascription to Handel (or to anyone else) except for an
addition on the cover of one of the parts, which is not in the hand of
the copyist: I surmised that this was written by R. J. S. Stevens, Marx
proposes Savage. The inclusion in MS 139, a volume otherwise devoted to
Handel and owned by a musician who frequently sang with him, suggests
that Savage at least presumed it was by Handel.
Nearly
all of the early MSS in the RAM come from the library of R. J. S.
Stevens (1757-1837), now remembered (if at all) for his glee Ye spotted snakes. His MSS have his signature, mostly (as far as I
can remember) with the date 1817. A considerable number of these were
previously owned by William Savage (c.1720-89), who had sung for Handel
as a boy treble and as a bass. My recollection of the collection is that
the Savage MSS were library volumes rather than working copies of music
from which he would have sung. His Messiah
score, for instance, is interesting for being an early version, but has
no individual signs of use or ownership; when he sang in the first
London performance, he probably used a voice part (such as those
surviving at the Foundling Hospital from later performances). There is
no reason to assume that he copied the Gloria
himself. It is, however, odd that a copy should survive in the library
of someone from Handel's circle without the composer himself having a
copy, since he seems to have kept firm control over his MSS.
I
suspect that I didn't take the possibility of an attribution to Handel
seriously when I catalogued the work because I did not immediately
recognise any cross-relationship with music known to be by him. Handel
was such a self-borrower, that any newly-discovered work that does not
pass that test is immediately suspect. The presence of material, used by
Handel, however, is not in itself a sign of authenticity, since
throughout his career Handel borrowed liberally from other composers and
it is always possible that a work with Handelian references could be a
source work from which he himself borrowed. Confirmation of authenticity
will not come until experts in Handel's borrowings have produced and
studied a full list of borrowings and similarities. One suspicious
feature is the full figuring of the bass. That is not normal in Handel's
autographs, so suggests that the scribe of MS 139 was not working from
Handel's own score or one derived directly from it. But the assumption
that the work is by Handel seems to be confirmed by its quality and
style.
The
preliminary assessment made by Prof. Marx and Curtis Price (the
Principal of the RAM and the writer of the booklet note for the first
recording) which lies behind the press comments is that the Gloria
seems most likely to have been written in Rome. But questions of its
authenticity may be more easily silenced if it were from Handel's
earlier years in Hamburg — it is unlikely that Handel could have
written it later in London like his most distinguished Latin solo
setting, Silete venti. Since the MS itself dates from some thirty years after
composition, it affords no clues: a line of research that needs to be
followed is the investigation of similar settings of movements of the
mass for a solo voice, which may supply a possible context for the
composition. One possible precedent is a Missa
brevis (Kyrie and Gloria) by Telemann for alto, two violins and bass written in
Leipzig in 1705 (TWV 9: 14; publ. Carus-Verlag Stuttgart 39.131,
recording Capriccio 10 315).
The
score itself does not require more than one instrument per part — the
tutti in 3.31 need only be to warn the player that his exposed solo is
over; the contrary evidence of the doubled parts is only evidence of how
it was performed in England decades later. It is also significant that
none of the movements is scored for violini
unisoni, which one would expect in at least one if the work were
orchestral. Roman pitch was about a tone lower than A=440 (and a
semitone below convention 'baroque pitch'), so the tessitura (and top
note of Bb) would have been
less high than it looks were the setting written for Rome; but high Bbs
and Cs are also common in Hamburg music by Handel and others.
Handel's
Roman church music is scored with one or two viola parts. The absence of
the viola makes an obvious point of contact between the Gloria and Laudate pueri I
. But the resemblances go far beyond that and offer a clear point of
comparison with an authentic early work which survives in autograph on
paper which is of north-European origin. Scholars have argued about the
date of that work: it is Handel's earliest autograph and the style is
different from his other pre-Italian music. Its Italian style, in fact,
has lead some to suggest that it was actually written after Handel
arrived in Italy (he was in Rome by 14 Jan 1707), though would he really
have bothered to carry paper across Europe with him? It wasn't even
pre-ruled with music-staves. Others have placed it before he reached
Hamburg (summer 1703). Scholars will be arguing which work is the
earlier, and it is possible that this is rather earlier than has so far
been thought. Comparisons with Dixit
Dominus (April 1707) make it stylistically unlikely that it could
have been written as late as that year.
Despite
the work's effectiveness in performance, there are technical weaknesses
which caused the performers of the informal first performance to be
extremely suspicious and wonder whether it was written by a lesser
Italian composer in London in the 1730s. The difficulty of that idea is
that such a composer would be unlikely to borrow from Handel in the way
that Handel borrowed from himself and other composers, apart from the
fact that the Italian style by then was very different.
The
work was first claimed to be authentic Handel by Professor Hans Joachim
Marx, who saw the MS on a visit to the Royal Academy of Music in
September 2000. His edition will be published by Bärenreiter. A
recording was made by Emma Kirkby on 3 May 2001 with the Royal Academy
of Music Baroque Orchestra directed by Laurence Cummings for release on
4 June (BIS-CD-1235). The official première was at the Göttingen
Festival on 3 June 2001.
The
first performance of this edition (probably the first modern public
performance) was on 18 May 2001 at the Hinchingbrooke Performing Arts
Centre, Huntingdon by Patrizia Kwella and Fiori Musicali.
Clifford
Bartlett, May (rev. June) 2001