Handel Overture to Occasional Oratorio

Overture to Occasional Oratorio (1746)

George Frideric Handel (1685-1759)

[NOTE: Handel himself spelled his middle name as “FRIDERIC” – this is correct!]

The conventional picture of George Frideric Handel as a composer of oratorios, largely due to the huge popularity of Messiah, is quite fanciful. Indeed, until the age of fifty the composer spent most of his time writing and staging operas in Italian. These activities began in his native Germany, while still a teenager, continued in Italy (with great success), where he remained into his early twenties, and in 1710 brought Handel to London, where his opera Rinaldo was performed to great acclaim. He stayed, became a naturalized British subject, and for more than two decades won enormous popularity (and financial reward), even though his stage works were composed in a language largely unknown to the public. The bottom fell out of the opera market in the late 1720s, marked by the runaway success of the Beggar’s Opera, in 1728. That work, a sort of 18^th century “musical, ” written in English, with spoken dialogue and a racy popular plot, defined a moment of cultural transition, one not lost on Handel. Always eager to turn a profit, he began to shift his dramatic focus to the world of “sacred drama, ” in the form of oratorios in English based upon Old Testament stories. (Messiah would be the only oratorio based upon the New Testament.) Handel’s oratorios (again with the exception of Messiah) were quite operatic in character, and, although without costumes and stage action were performed in theatres—not churches. Since theatres were always shut down during Lent, Handel could strike a hard bargain to rent a “darkened” theatre for a reduced fee as a venue for presenting his sacred oratorios. (And with no other entertainments on offer, he benefited from a lack of competing attractions during the austere days preceding Easter!)

The Occasional Oratorio earns its curious title from the circumstances of its first performance, which could have resonance for anyone of Scottish descent. In 1745 the pretender to the British throne, Prince Charles Edward Stuart (grandson of the deposed Stuart king, James II of England), landed in Scotland, raised an army, and invaded England with the intention of ousting the Hanoverian monarchy. After initial success this “Jacobite” Rebellion faltered, and in April, 1746 ended in savage brutality at the Battle of Culloden. The rebellion had terrified the English, and the defeat of “Bonnie Prince Charlie” in this last battle fought on British soil was greeted with wild celebrations. Handel, whose very first employer had become King George I of England, sprang into action and prepared his “Occasional Oratorio, ” not so much composed as “compiled” from various existing compositions.

Handel usually prefaced his oratorios with an Ouverture – the sort of introductory music which originated in French opera, although in Handel’s case carried over the orchestral “suite” so popular in Germany, where an Ouverture in the French manner was always the opening movement. Here the oratorio is introduced by what is actually a suite in miniature, consisting of a robust and festive Ouverture, followed by two shorter movements: an adagio (featuring a solo oboe) and a march, employing a typical Baroque orchestra with three trumpets, two oboes, timpani, strings and harpsichord continuo.

True to form there is a stately opening section, filled with the “dotted” rhythms characteristic of the “French style, ” the dependable feature in all music written for festive occasions. This gives way to a brisk, free-wheeling fugue marked by a galloping rhythmic figure and brilliant rapid-note passages for the violins. The atmosphere is bright, slightly pompous, bursting with energy. The short adagio movement is a poignant little aria for solo oboe in B Minor, songful in character---Handel slow movements usually seem to suggest the sound of the human voice, and this is no exception. This reflective mood is swept aside by the “Marche” (Handel used the French spelling), with the trumpets very much to the fore, the music bristling with martial flourishes and parade-ground swagger. The composer may well have had the victor of Culloden in mind, the hero of the moment, the Duke of Cumberland. (The Scots reviled him as “Butcher Cumberland, ” and when the English named a flower in honour of the Duke---“Sweet William”--- it was immediately was known as “Stinking Billy” north of the border!)

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