Chapter 5 - Musical Genres and Compositional Practices

Summary

OF all this book's chapters the present one is the least likely, in traditional musicological terms, to have the audience as an analytical element or viewpoint. The technical demands of musical genres and the compositional practices employed to meet those demands are generally considered to have little to do with the individuals who hear the piece, whether at its first performance or subsequent ones. Yet, while it is necessary for music to exhibit internal logic, and for musicology to make judgements based on the skill with which it is deployed, it is also necessary for the work at various levels of aggregation – each the sum of technical decisions – to be meaningful to the audience. If the work is to win praise and longevity it must evoke pleasure or other complementary responses. The audience, not the genre, technique, or their deployment, determine a work's success.

Much as we can consider audiences at the macro level of collective status, income, and mass, and at the micro level of individuals, so too can we look at the notes and words that Handel used to build his musical texts both at the macro level of musical genres or one libretto rather than another, and at the micro level of the compositional choices that led him to prefer a particular note or group of notes, or one word or phrase in a libretto, and not others. Handel's ability to control audiences through genre selection was limited, though the most important – the turn from opera to oratorio – will be considered in depth in this chapter, but his ability to control audiences through manipulation of musical material was profound, in constant use, and supplies the basis for his continued ranking as a genius.

The grandeur that the music of Handel evokes may be the most durable memory for performers and audiences alike, but Handel spent more time writing smallscale pieces, if we consider the arias and recitatives of operas and oratorios as such, along with the cantatas for one or two voices, the solos and duets, and the instrumental sonatas. Just as in writing many of his works Handel was attempting to and succeeded in satisfying his patron pro tem, so also was he adapting his materials to suit the individual voice, player, or instrument to hand, as he strove to meet the demands he placed on himself.