Organ concertos, Op. 4 (Handel)
Written as interludes in performances of oratorios in Covent Garden, they were the first works of their kind for this combination of instruments and served as a model for later composers.
However, when they came to the Organ there was not the least pretence for doubting to which of them it belonged ... Handel had an uncommon brilliancy and command of finger; but what distinguished him from all other players who possessed these same qualities, was that amazing fullness, force and energy, which he joined with them.
[3] The precise reasons why Handel introduced this new musical form, the concerto for chamber organ and orchestra, have been discussed in detail by Cummings (2007).
Handel's instruments he used were most likely the single keyboard portable chamber organs with four stops constructed by John Snetzler, the leading organbuilder in London.
In March 1735 the London Daily Post and General Advertiser announced that Handel had decided to incorporate in later performances of Deborah "a large new Organ, which is remarkable for the Variety of Curious Stops, being a new Invention, and a great Improvement of that Instrument."
Whoever the organbuilder, Handel added a codicil to his will in 1757 bequeathing to John Rich his "Great Organ which stands at the Theatre Royal in Covent Garden.
Whereas Handel's company was supported by the king George II and his wife, the Opera of the Nobility had the patronage of their son Frederick, Prince of Wales, an open sign of deep-seated disagreements within the royal family.
By that stage the Opera of the Nobility had assembled a star-studded cast which now additionally included the castrato Farinelli and the soprano Francesca Cuzzoni.
Later in the season they even revived one of Handel's own operas Ottone, albeit in a heavily bowdlerised form, again with Farinelli as a guaranteed audience drawer.
[7] Handel's opera company was obliged to leave the King's Theatre after the 1733–1734 season, because of a lack of support from former directors of the Royal Academy of Music.
The timing of the performances avoided conflicts with events in other London theatres and the local papers advertised the "new Concertos on the Organ."
During this period Handel prepared the 16 movements of the four organ concertos HWV 290–293, of which 10 are reworkings of previous compositions with the remaining 6 largely newly composed.
Meanwhile, he had produced Arminio and Giustino, completed Berenice, revived Partenope, and continued with Il Parnasso in Festa, Alexander's Feast, and the revised The Triumph of Time and Truth which premiered on March 23.
[14] I was nearly an hour with Handel yesterday ... he is in no danger upon the whole but I fear or am rather too certain that he will lose a great part of his execution so as to prevent his ever playing any more concertos on the organ.
In Autumn 1737 the fatigued Handel reluctantly followed the advice of his physicians and went to take the cure in the spa towns of Royal Tunbridge Wells, Aix-la-Chapelle (Burtscheid) in September.
The Countess of Shaftesbury relates that she saw "the great though unhappy Handel, dejected, wan and dark, sitting by, not playing the harpsichord.
In the nineteenth century, W. T. Best, the Victorian Handelian champion and frequent performer at Crystal Palace, popularized a version for large solo two manual organ with pedals, with his own lengthy romantic candenzas.
Subsequent scholarship and performance practice, however, has favoured the original intimate scoring for chamber organ and small baroque orchestra.
Modern performing editions of Walsh's 1738 solo keyboard version and the original scoring for organ and orchestra have been prepared by the musicologists William Gudger and Terence Best.
