Handel: L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato

CD1

1. L’Allegro
2. Il Penseroso
3. L’Allegro
4. Il Penseroso
5. L’Allegro : Air: Tenor I Haste thee, nymph, and bring with thee 
6. L’Allegro : Chorus Haste thee, nymph, and bring with thee 
7. L’Allegro : Air: Tenor II and Chorus Come, and trip it as you go 
8. Il Penseroso : Accompagnato: Soprano III Come, pensive nun, devout and pure 
9. Il Penseroso : Arioso: Soprano I Come, but keep thy wonted state
10. L’Allegro : Recitative: Tenor I, Soprano IV Hence, loathed Melancholy Air: Soprano IV Mirth, admit me of thy crew
11. Il Penseroso : Accompagnato: Soprano I First, and chief, on golden wing Air: Soprano I Sweet bird, that shun’st the noise of Folly 
12. L’Allegro : Recitative: Bass If I give thee honour due
13. Il Penseroso : Air: Soprano III Oft on a plat of rising ground
14. Il Penseroso : Air: Soprano II Far from all resort of mirth
15. L’Allegro : Recitative: Tenor II If I give thee honour due Air: Tenor II Let me wander not unseen
16. L’Allegro : Air: Soprano II Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures Accompagnato: Soprano II Mountains, on whose barren breast
17. L’Allegro : Air: Soprano IV and Chorus Or let the merry bells ring round 

CD2

1. Il Penseroso : Accompagnato: Soprano III Hence, vain deluding joys Air: Soprano III Sometimes let gorgeous Tragedy 
2. Il Penseroso : Recitative: Soprano I Thus, Night, oft see me in thy pale career 
3. L’Allegro : Solo: Bass and Chorus Populous cities please me then 
4. L’Allegro : Air: Tenor II There let Hymen oft appear
5. Il Penseroso : Accompagnato: Soprano I Me, when the sun begins to fling Air: Soprano I Hide me from Day’s garish eye
6. L’Allegro : Air: Tenor I I’ll to the well-trod stage anon
7. L’Allegro : Air: Soprano II And ever against eating cares
8. L’Allegro : Air: Soprano II Orpheus self may heave his head 
9. L’Allegro : Air: Tenor I and Chorus These delights if thou canst give 
10. Il Penseroso : Recitative: Soprano I But let my due feet never fail 
11. Il Penseroso : Chorus and Solo: Soprano I There let the pealing organ blow
12. Il Penseroso : Air: Soprano III May at last my weary age
13. Il Moderato : Accompagnato: Bass Hence, boast not, ye profane Air: Bass Come, with native lustre shine Accompagnato: Bass and Chorus Sweet Temp’rance in thy right hand bear
14. Il Moderato : Air: Soprano III Come, with gentle hand restrain 
15. Il Moderato : Recitative: Tenor I No more short life they then will spend Air: Tenor I Each action will derive new grace
16. Il Moderato : Duet: Soprano I, Tenor II As steals the morn upon the night 
17. Il Moderato : Chorus Thy pleasures, Moderation, give

L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato is unique in Handel’s output. Neither opera nor oratorio, it is closest in style to the English ode pioneered by Henry Purcell – a loose assemblage of solos and choruses governed by a strong literary scheme – which Handel had already experi -men ted with in Alexander’s Feast and the Song for St Cecilia’s Day. For L’Allegro, Handel’s librettist Charles Jennens chose a pair of complementary poems by John Milton which celebrate the opposing extremes of the human spirit: L’Allegro (‘The Merry Man’) and Il Penseroso (‘The Thoughtful Man’). Rather than setting them separately, Handel’s friend the philosopher James Harris suggested that the poems be interleaved to produce an imagi -nary debate between these two ‘characters’.

The poems were divided up to form a two-part structure, but Handel seems to have felt that a stronger ending was required and asked for the addition of a third and final part to the work which would marry the two Miltonic outlooks into ‘one Moral Design’. Despite Handel’s own suggestion of Milton’s At a Solemn Musick (‘Blest pair of Sirens’), Jennens decided to write the conclusion himself, introducing a third allegorical character – Il Moderato – who uses the voice of reason to reconcile the divergent viewpoints of the main protagonists. While Milton’s words were much admired, Jennens admitted that his own contribution was less warmly received, writing to a friend that he ‘overheard one in the Theatre saying that it was Moderato indeed, & the Wits at Tom’s Coffee House honour’d it with the Name of Moderatissimo’.

L’Allegro received its first performance at the Theatre Royal in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London, on 27 February 1740. Although there is no formal overture, the original printed libretto records that at the first performance Handel introduced the first and second parts with two new concertos (probably from Op.6), and began Part 3 with a performance of his most recent organ concerto (later published as Op.7 no.1). Over the next fifteen years Handel revived L’Allegro on numerous occasions, in 1741 adding several new numbers including ‘Straight mine eye’ and ‘Orpheus self’ for L’Allegro, and ‘Far from all resort of mirth’ and ‘May at last my weary age’ for Penseroso, all of which are recorded here. In 1743 Handel decided to dispense with Part 3 entirely, and adjusted the order of numbers in Part 2 so as to conclude with the solo and chorus ‘These delights if thou canst give’. It was in this form that Handel continued to revive L’Allegro as late as 1755, often performing his Ode for St Cecilia’s Day in place of Part 3. Following Handel’s practice, the final part of the work was long ignored until John Eliot Gardiner restored and recorded it for the first time in 1980. The two hundred or so lines of text posed a particular challenge for Handel.

Although a supreme master of dramatic writing for the theatre, he found himself confronted by a libretto without formal plot, proper characters or dramatic action. Despite their powerfully contrasting characters, Handel decided not to portray L’Allegro and Penseroso in a conventional theatrical manner with one singer assigned to each part. Instead, he was interested in evoking human emotion in a more general way, and so deployed his forces according to the emotional and expressive dictates of the text. In this, Handel’s imagi -nation was fired by Milton’s bold and colour -ful imagery and his wide-ranging evocation of English life: from rural merry-making to the bustle of city life; from the evening song of the nightingale to Evensong in a great cathedral.

Handel’s contemporaries were struck by the music’s poetic sensitivity and its strong pictorial power. In 1753, William Hayes, Professor of Music at Oxford, wrote that ‘I believe no reasonable Person, or Judge of Words and Music, will deny that the beautiful, picturesque Scenes, which Milton describes, are greatly heightened and assisted by the Music Mr. Handel has adapted to them ... chiefly of the mimetic or imitative Kind ... There cannot be a more complete Model of true musical Expression’. For John Eliot Gardiner, two centuries later, ‘the sympathy with English life, English music and the English landscape, both rural and urban, makes L’Allegro the greatest tribute Handel ever paid to the land of his adoption’.
Simon Heighes, 2015