instruments. Mozart's autograph scores of "Acis and Galatea" (566 K.),
of "The Ode for St. Cecilia's Day" (592 K.),[16] and of the "Feast of
Alexander" (591 K.),[17] preserved in the Royal Library in Berlin, show
how he set about his task. The voice parts and stringed instruments have
been transferred to his score, and left as Handel wrote them, with the
exception that where Handel has provided a violin part, Mozart
employs the second violin and viola to fill in the harmonies. The wind
instruments have been altogether omitted by the copyist in order
to leave Mozart free play. Wherever Handel has employed them
characteristically, they are so preserved, but when, as often happens,
the oboes are the sole representatives of the wind instruments, Mozart
has proceeded independently, sometimes replacing them by other single
instruments, frequently clarinets--flutes only very occasionally,
sometimes introducing the whole body of wind instruments. This he does
also in some places where Handel has not even employed oboes, if it is
needed to give force or fulness to the whole.
The frequent introduction of the clarinets replaced the full and
powerful organ tones, but without any express imitation of that
particular sound-effect by Mozart. The whole character of the
instrumentation was necessarily modified, and even the portions which
were literally
{OFFICIAL AND OCCASIONAL WORKS.}
(222)
transcribed from Handel's original have a very different effect in their
altered surroundings. Mozart has proceeded quite as independently in
dealing with the harpsichord parts. Not content with filling in the
prescribed or suggested harmonies and regulating the due succession of
chords, he has also made an independent disposition of the middle
parts and given them free movement. The subjects employed by Handel are
further developed, and sometimes a new motif has occurred to him as
an enlivenment to the accompaniment, in which case the additional wind
instruments are employed to advantage. The harpsichord is treated, in
the main, as might be expected from a first-rate organist of that time,
and it is difficult at the present day to reproduce what so much depends
upon the free co-operation of the performer.[18] The objection
which may be raised against the alteration and partial remodelling of
a carefully thought-out and finished work by a strange hand is
unanswerable. The most loving and intelligent treatment cannot avoid
inequality and incongruity; compared with what has been literally
transmitted, every modification reflects, both in kind and degree, the
individual learning and taste of the adapter. On the whole, however,
Mozart's arrangements evince the greatest reverence for Handel, combined
with a masterly use of all available resources, and they afford a
proof as interesting as it is instructive of the study which Mozart had
bestowed upon Handel, of the spirit in which he undertook his task, and
of his thorough and delicate apprehension of foreign creations.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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