Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- Part I Background
- Part II The music
- 8 Handel and the aria
- 9 Handel's compositional process
- 10 Handel and the idea of an oratorio
- 11 Handel's sacred music
- 12 Handel's chamber music
- 13 Handel as a concerto composer
- 14 Handel and the keyboard
- Part III The music in performance
- Bibliographical note
- Notes
- List of Handel's works
- Index
8 - Handel and the aria
from Part II - The music
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 September 2011
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- Part I Background
- Part II The music
- 8 Handel and the aria
- 9 Handel's compositional process
- 10 Handel and the idea of an oratorio
- 11 Handel's sacred music
- 12 Handel's chamber music
- 13 Handel as a concerto composer
- 14 Handel and the keyboard
- Part III The music in performance
- Bibliographical note
- Notes
- List of Handel's works
- Index
Summary
While in our own time Handel's choruses (particularly those in Messiah) are perhaps his best known vocal music, throughout much of his career it was his arias that generated the most public enthusiasm. Partially owing to the relative neglect of the works in which arias are the most prominent element (the operas and cantatas) in the two centuries following Handel's death, and partially owing to rapidly changing tastes in the genres to which those works belong (both then and now), our appreciation of Handel's aria composition has suffered. Arias are the most important structural element in all of Handel's vocal works, however, and consequently they occupied more of his creative energy than any other form. As a result, Handel's arias provide us with a clear picture of his compositional development and also with insights into his aesthetic aims throughout his career.
Certainly part of our neglect of Handel's arias is the result of the fact that the vast majority of them are in da capo form, a form most commonly associated with opera seria. Until quite recently, opera seria as a genre has been relentlessly criticised by both contemporary commentators and modern scholars alike; moreover, quite often the focus of the criticism has been the da capo aria itself. Essentially an expanded ternary form, the grand da capo aria (or five-part da capo, the type most commonly found in Handel's arias) takes the form A1 A2 B (B) A1 A2, in which A1 is the first stanza of text, A2 is a repetition of the first stanza, and B is the second stanza of text.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge Companion to Handel , pp. 109 - 121Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1997
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