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.
The Other Alleluia Chorus
The best-known of the Chandos anthems is probably "O praise the Lord with one consent," which is the ninth in the series and is based on Psalm 135. It is distinctive in several notable ways. First, it is the only one of the eleven works that does not begin with an opening all-instrumental movement. It seems to, for a minute or so, but just when listeners are expecting the strings to settle into the next phase of harmonic and melodic development, the full chorus bursts in.
There follow three solo movements in succession (the other anthems alternate between solo sections and choruses) and eventually all four solo voices—alto, tenor, bass, and later soprano—get an opportunity to sing. None of the other anthems include solos by all four voices. The most distinctive of these four solos is that sung by the bass, "That God is great we often have by glad experience found." Handel employs a triple-meter dance form that gives both singer and players a chance to bounce to the message of the text.
As attentive readers may have noticed, the text cited above suggests that this anthem uses a metrical translation of the Psalm. Where all of the other Chandos anthems use the prose rendition of the Psalter from the Book of Common Prayer, this one uses the remarkably influential metrical paraphrase by poets Nahum Tate and Nicholas Brady. "Tate and Brady" is a pairing as enduring as fish and chips; their 1696 A New Version of the Psalms of David Fitted to the Tunes Used in Churches transformed the singing of Psalms by English-speaking congregations on both sides of the Atlantic (and presumably throughout the British Empire). Handel's decision to use a paraphrase of a Psalm with a regular beat and a fixed number of feet in each line presented a new set of musical possibilities that he exploited to the full, which may explain why this Chandos anthem is apparently the most performed and recorded.
"O praise the Lord with one consent" closes with two choral movements; the second—"Your voices raise, ye Cherubim and Seraphim, to sing his praise! Alleluia!"—could easily be considered Handel's other Alleluia chorus. More like angels in flight than in assertive declaration, it has a carefree joy that the chorus from Messiah lacks.
When the Chandos anthems were being composed, Messiah was still more than 20 years in the future. Sadly, the overwhelming success of the later work seems to have eclipsed the accomplishments and capacities for edification in the smaller Psalm settings. They deserve more attention and affection from thoughtful and faithful listeners.
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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