Georg Frideric Handel
(1685-1759)

Selected Movements  from the First Water Music Suite

Transcribed for Organ Solo
.

Overture in F-Major ~ Grave
Menuet in F-Major & Trio in D-Minor
Air in F-Major (Trois fois)
Andante in D-Minor
[Louré]  in D-Major
Coro in D-Major
Menuet in G-Major
Hornpipe in D-Major (and B-Minor)

.
Click on the link below to download a PDF booklet
available 09/2024

  GFHandelWaterMusicSuiteOrgBklt2024 

Notes

        The group of eight movements collected here from Handel’s Water Music Suites were written circa 1717 for performance as open-air serenades for royal boating parties on the Thames River. King George I and his entourage are chronicled as having traveled up-river from Whitehall to Chelsea to the accompaniment of  “50 instruments of all sorts, who play’d ... the finest Symphonies, comp’d express for this Occasion, by Mr. Hendel ....”
.
     These selections, representing just a few of the more familiar movements, offer a miniature suite of contrasting moods that will provide opportunities to display a wide palette of tonal colors native to the pipe organ. For the pur-pose of these transcriptions, some movements have been annotated with their originally intended instrumental colors, while others are marked only with basic terraced dynamics, indicating use of one manual or another. Pedal parts have been included for the larger tutti sections, as well as for the familiar strains of the Air and the second Menuet. The original instrumentation is for strings and continuo, oboes, trumpets and horns.
.
    While flutes have been omitted from Handel’s score because of their inherently delicate timbre, which might well have become lost in the open-air environment of a river barge, their use in an organ performance could be both appropriate and telling.

♦ ◊ ♦