George Frideric Handel (1685-1759)

Acis and Galatea, HWV 49b

The Scholars Baroque Ensemble
There is an element of paradox about the career of George Frideric Handel. Born
in Hall in 1685, the son of a distinguished and elderly barber-surgeon by his seco
nd wife, he gave up other studies in order to become a musician, working first i
n Hamburg at the opera, as composer and harpsichordist. From there he moved to t
he source of all opera, Italy, where he made a name for himself as a composer an
d performer. A meeting in Venice with Baron Kielmansegge led him to Hanover as K
apellmeister and from there, almost immediately, to London, where he was invited
to provide music for the newly established Italian opera. It was, then, primari
ly as a composer of Italian opera that Handel made his early reputation there.
Xenophobia has always run strong in England, and while ready, in the interests o
f Protestantism, to accept a German king as successor to Queen Anne, the public
was less whole-hearted in its support of foreign opera. Common sense found some
objection to the artificiality of the form, supported by the strong existing lit
erary and dramatic traditions of the country. It seemed that The Beggar's Opera,
a political parody of grand opera, in the satirical vein of Henry Fielding's no
vel Jonathan Wild, appealed to a much wider public than any foreign entertainmen
t ever could.
Handel was deeply concerned in the business of Italian opera, and when rivalry o
f an opposing company and fickle popular taste suggested the need for change, he
turned instead to a form of music that seemed admirably suited to London audien
ces. English oratorio provided what was essentially an Italianate operatic enter
tainment, at least as far as the music was concerned. It had the advantage, howe
ver, of being in English, and the further attraction of an appeal, through its c
hoice of subjects and texts, to Protestant religious proclivities.
Although Handel's oratorios were to fascinate generation after generation of Eng
lish choral singers and exercise an effect so overwhelming as to paralyse future
English musical creativity, in their own time they suffered variable fortunes a
t the box-office. There were critics who found something unsuitable in the mixtu
re of sacred and secular, and audiences came and went as fashions changed from s
eason to season. In the end, though, it was the creation of this new and peculia
rly English artistic and religious compromise that ensured Handel's lasting fame
, with a series of works that continued in performance until shortly before his
death in April 1759 and subsequently formed the basis of popular English choral
repertoire into the following centuries.
The pastoral has a long history in European culture, stemming from Theocritus an
d his Alexandrian contemporaries, handed on through Virgil to find further devel
opment in Renaissance Italy and in the newly developing form of Italian opera. T
he essence of pastoral, which takes for its subject the lives and loves of sheph
erds and shepherdesses, lies in its urban view of the countryside, an idealised
Arcadia, without winter and rough weather, where little work is done, as shepher
ds sit idly upon the rocks, birds sing madrigals and where the only ills come fr
om unrequited love, where rejection often proves fatal.
The story of Acis and Galatea has its earliest surviving literary source in Theo
critus in the third century B.C. It owed its Renaissance resurgence to the treat
ment of the subject in Ovid's Metamorphoses, the inspiration for paintings by Cl
aude and by Poussin. The Sicilian shepherd Acis, son of Faunus and a river-nymph
, is in love with Galatea, in origin a sea-nymph, but depicted as a shepherdess.
Acis is killed by his rival, the Cyclops Polyphemus, who crushes him under a ro

ck, and is turned into a stream.

Handel's first treatment of the subject of Acis and Galatea was in the summer of
1708 in Naples. There he completed a cantata or serenade, apparently composed f
or the wedding of the Duca d' Alvito and Beatrice Sanseverino, which took place,
seemingly in the composer's absence, in July, In England in the following decad
e Handel had, in 1717, accepted the appointment of composer-in-residence to Jame
s Brydges, Earl of Carnarvon and, from 17l9, Duke of Chandos, a man who had made
his fortune as Paymaster-General during Marlborough's campaigns on the Continen
t. It was for Cannons, the magnificent house that Brydges had had built for him
at Edgware, that Handel, in 17l8, turned again to the subject of Acis and Galate
a in a masque, a miniature English opera, with a 1ibretto by John Gay. Gay, who
was ten years later to write The Beggar's Opera, had poured ridicule on attempts
by some Eng1ish poets to explore a vein of pastoral realism, much as Shakespear
e, a hundred years or so ear1ier, had, in As You Like It, mocked pastoral preten
sions. In Acis and Galatea Gay provides an example of the true Greco-Roman form.
The work was given a successful production at Cannons, where Pepusch, the compo
ser responsible for collecting music for The Beggar' s Opera, was director of mu
sic.
In 1731 a performance of Acis and Galatea was given at the Theatre Royal in Linc
oln's Inn Fields. This was followed, in 1732, by the announcement of an unauthor
ised performance for the New Theatre, in the Haymarket, a direct challenge to Ha
ndel, who was presenting Italian opera at the King's Theatre opposite. In respon
se Handel mounted his own production of Acis and Galatea, in aversion that now i
ncluded additional elements taken from his Italian Aci, Galatea e Polifemo, and
this was to be revived successfully in further performances during the following
years.
The first English version of Acis and Galatea at Cannons had been for relatively
small forces. The orchestra there consisted of two oboes, one doubling flute an
d recorder, two violins, two cellos and harpsichord, with the solo singers combi
ning in the choruses. The 1732 version at the King's Theatre in the Haymarket wa
s on a larger scale, with additions from the Italian work of 1708. There were fu
rther revisions up to 1736. The present performance is based on the version orig
inally written for Cannons, with the part of Damon, the shepherd who urges Acis
to moderate his passion, given to a countertenor, as in the King's Theatre perfo
rmances. The two arias of Damon have been arranged for the Scholars Baroque Ense
mble by Andrew Lawrence-King. The chorus Happy we and Damon's aria Would you gai
n the tender creature? are here omitted, since they represent later additions to
the original work, the aria with words by another poet.
The Scholars Baroque Ensemble
The Scholars Baroque ensemble was founded in 1987 by David van Asch with the ide
a of complementing the 'a capella' work of the vocal quartet The Scholars. This
latter group, consisting also of the soprano Kym Amps, counter tenor Angus David
son and tenor Robin Doveton. has had worldwide success during the last twenty ye
ars. The members of The Scholars Baroque Ensemble are all specialists in the fie
ld of baroque music and play original instruments (or copies) using contemporary
techniques. Singers and players work together without a director to produce the
ir own versions of great baroque masterworks such as Bach's St John Passion, Mon
teverdi's 1610 Vespers, Purcell's The Fairy Queen, Dido and Aeneas and Handel's
Messiah, all of which have been recorded for Naxos. Performances of The Scholars
Baroque Ensemble have been acclaimed by critics and audiences alike, perhaps be
cause the artistic aim of the ensemble goes beyond that of so-called 'authentici
ty'; more important is the clarity and vitality achieved by the use of a minimum
number of players and singers to apart (often only one), a common practice in t
he seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.