Inspired with Godly Mirth
by Ken Myers
The year he turned twenty-one (1706), the energetic and obviously talented George Frideric Handel accepted an invitation from a member of the de Medici family to come to Italy. For the next four years, he worked for various patrons composing sacred motets, oratorios, secular cantatas, and two operas. His flair for dramatic composition was celebrated, and in 1710, he relocated to London, where—theaters having been closed in 1642 by the Puritans—works for the stage were still recovering from a long absence, and opera was just beginning to become fashionable.
Handel's Rinaldo—the first Italian-language opera written for an English audience—opened in 1711. It proved to be a great success and turned out to be the most frequently performed of Handel's 42 operas during his lifetime. In 1712, having secured a subsidy from Queen Anne, the composer decided to stay in England indefinitely.
In 1717, he was offered a position composing for James Brydges, son of an English baron who had served as ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. Soon to be named the first Duke of Chandos, Brydges had served as a Member of Parliament and in other political posts, including Paymaster-General during the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714). Benefiting financially from public office was not at the time considered a source of scandal or shame, and Brydges had done quite well for himself. He set about to rebuild and furnish his Jacobean mansion—Cannons—near the village of Edgware, about ten miles northwest of London.
Brydges was an enthusiastic patron of the arts, especially music and poetry (Alexander Pope was another of his beneficiaries), and he already had established a formidable array of musical talent in residence when Handel began composing music for performance in Cannons concerts and chapel. It was a short-lived but productive time for the German-born composer destined to become one of England's favorite adopted musical sons.
At the time, Handel had no experience setting English texts to music, and little experience with choral music of any kind, there being almost none in Italian operas. So his tenure at Cannons was an opportunity to exercise new muscles. Before returning to London in 1719, he composed two dramatic works, Acis and Galetea and Esther, and a collection of eleven settings of Psalm texts known as the Chandos anthems.
Confident & Exuberant
It is surprising that these works are not better known, especially among Christian listeners who delight in listening to Messiah every year. There are dozens of recordings of Acis and Galetea available, but only one complete set of the Chandos anthems, recorded by The Sixteen and Harry Christophers in the late 1980s.
Like Bach's cantatas, they are multi-movement works, each but one opening with a brief instrumental sonata before alternating between aria-like solo movements and full choruses. Most of the anthems employ Psalms that are confident and exuberant, which allowed Handel to display some of his most extroverted choral writing.
Anthem number one is based on Psalm 100, which in the Anglican daily liturgy was then (and now) known simply as the Jubilate. This Chandos anthem is sometimes called the Chandos Jubilate, which recognizes its being a re-working of a 1713 setting by Handel of Psalm 100 known as the Utrecht Jubilate. As the title suggests, Handel produced the buoyant composition of 1713 to celebrate the Treaty of Utrecht, which ended the War of the Spanish Succession.
Handel trimmed down that composition to accommodate the reduced musical forces available to him at Cannons (no brass, no violas, and no altos). In addition to three appropriately jubilant choruses, there is a soprano and bass duet, and, on the words "For the Lord is gracious, his mercy is everlasting," a trio featuring soprano, tenor, and bass. Since there are no trios in all of Messiah, this is a musical texture that many haven't heard in Handel's music.
Ken Myers is the host and producer of the Mars Hill Audio Journal. Formerly an arts editor with National Public Radio, he also serves as music director at All Saints Anglican Church in Ivy, Virginia. He is a contributing editor for Touchstone.
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