The Standard Cantatas: Their Stories, Their Music, and Their Composers: A HandbookUpton, George P. (George Putnam)
History
The Standard Cantatas: Their Stories, Their Music, and Their Composers: A Handbook
Upton, George P. (George Putnam)
Cantatas -- History and criticism
Handel in his younger days wrote many cantatas for the church, though
they are now but little known. The entire list numbers one hundred and
fifty. On his return from England to his post of chapel-master at Hanover
in 1711 he composed twelve, known as the Hanover cantatas, for the
Princess Caroline, the words written by the Abbé Hortentio Mauro, to
which no objection was offered by Handel's master and patron,
notwithstanding he was a Lutheran prince. Several written in England are
still preserved in the royal collections. On Holy Week of the year 1704,
the same week in which Reinhardt Kaiser brought out his famous Passion
oratorio, "The Bleeding and Dying Jesus," Handel's Passion cantata was
first produced. Kaiser's work had been denounced as secular by the
pastors, because it did not contain the words of Holy Scripture. Handel's
was founded on the nineteenth chapter of St. John, and thus escaped the
pulpit denunciation. This cantata is sometimes called the First Passion
Oratorio, the second having been written at Hamburg in 1716.[6] In 1707
Handel was in Florence, where he wrote several cantatas, and thence went
to Rome, where he produced some church music in the same form, notably
the "Dixit Dominus," for five voices and orchestra; "Nisi Dominus," also
for five voices; and "Laudate pueri," for solos and full orchestral
accompaniment. The famous anthems written for the private chapel of James
Brydges, Duke of Chandos, familiarly known as the Chandos Anthems, are in
reality cantatas, as each one is preceded by an overture and in its
structural form comprises solos, choruses, and instrumentation for full
band and choir. It is also noteworthy that it was during Handel's
residence at the Duke's palace at Cannons that he wrote his first English
oratorio, the legitimate successor of the Chandos Anthems, and the
precursor of the great works destined to immortalize his name.
The cantatas left by Haydn are mainly secular in character; but it may
well be imagined that during the days of his early married life, when his
fanatical and termagant spouse was forcing him to write so much music for
the priests and monks whom she entertained so sumptuously below-stairs
while he was laboring above, more than one cantata must have come from
his pen, which would have been preserved had he not reluctantly parted
company with them to pacify his wife.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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