Generic Handel
Post categories: Suzanne Aspden
| 12:09 UK time, Friday, 23 January 2009
'Reiner_Torheit' suggests, with regard to the modern staging of oratorio, that 'Handel knew perfectly well in which genre he was writing - and he was very careful about this.'
While I wouldn't dispute Handel's awareness of generic issues or his care with his compositions, I think we should be careful applying our conceptions of genre retrospectively: the Italian oratorio of the 17th and 18th centuries was performed by the same forces as used for opera (i.e., opera singers, though often not women), often in front of theatrical backdrops, and it used the chorus as little as opera did.
So, in creating the English oratorio, Handel was highly innovative: in fact, he mixed genres to achieve it, adding choral music redolent of his music to operatic solo numbers. As he came to work more with English than Italian soloists, his musical style altered to accommodate their less highly trained voices. But that had its rewards: the dramatic talents and malleability of singers such as and allowed Handel greater flexibility in his use of musical forms, even though the limitations of some of his singers must also have carried frustrations...
Comments