Recommended Listening: Handel's "Music For the Royal Fireworks"

Requisite Knowledge Level for Understanding (* being beginner, ***** being expert): **

George Frideric Handel was born in Germany in 1685, but moved to England to study music early in his youth.  He was made citizen, dropped the German spelling to his name, became a court composer, and essentially can be viewed as a purely English composer, and is generally agreed to be the greatest of these.  He rose quickly in fame as a composer and ended up as a court composer for Prince George in 1710 who would go on to become King George I.  Handel proceeded to work in then a number of very high profile positions including working at the Royal Academy in London and later became court composer for King George II of England as well.

“Music For The Royal Fireworks” is one of the world’s most famous compositions of all time.  Written under commission from the Crown in 1749, it is famous for historical reasons as well as musical ones.  It was commissioned to celebrate the end of the War of Austrian Succession and the signing of the Treaty of Aix-La-Chapelle in 1748.  Handel wanted to call it an Overture (which instead is the title of the first movement), but the Crown, in a moment of social inspiration, decided to upscale the name as the prelude to a public celebration.

The public was quite excited for this performance, as Handel’s fame had already become legend through his many triumphs, among them “Water Music” in 1717 which King George I caused to be played three times over because of his love of the music, and the “Messiah” oratorio some years later in 1742.  King George II, building on this quite literally, had a brand new hall constructed for the musicians to perform this piece, along with the fireworks ceremony that he had planned to accompany the music.

Handel, however, was just too popular.  The musicians had been rehearsing in the Vauxhall Gardens, and six days before the concert, there was an open full rehearsal.  Over 12,000 people paid 2 and 6 (two shillings and six pence) to attend the rehearsal, causing a traffic jam the like of which had never been seen before that lasted for more than three hours and caused the collapse of the central archway of the newly-constructed London Bridge.  When the concert date arrived, the music was a rousing success, especially when compared to the fireworks which all but fizzled and died, not to mention a building catching fire from the few that actually went off.

Musically speaking, the piece was an oddity.  The original scoring called for twenty-four oboes, twelve bassoons, nine trumpets, nine horns, three sets of kettle-drums (timpani), and a “bunch” of side drums (snare drums).  This scoring is now almost never used, as performers use the full orchestral rescoring which Handel arranged after the initial performance.  The concept of a purely wind piece was odd enough in itself, but to add such an overabundance of hard to play and tune instruments caused even more interest to be shown in this piece.

Recommended recordings:  King's Consort and Robert King (might be difficult to find)
                                             Academy of Ancient Music and Christopher Hogwood

The recording by the King's Consort is the first recording ever to be made of the piece in its original 1749 scoring with all musicians present on period instruments.  The recording by the Academy of Ancient Music is also made using period instruments, though was made using the later full orchestral rescoring.  Both of these are fine recordings made by quality musicians and I enjoy both of them immensely.  There are any number of other recordings that you can find of these pieces, I recommend these two in particular because I know them well.  I cannot think of any recordings off the top of my head that I would advise against other than to say that any other arrangement of this music (e.g. for brass quintet, or piano 4 hands), while possibly interesting in its own right, is not recommended in this post as I would prefer to recommend your first experience with this music as being with either of the original scorings done by Handel himself.  I prefer recordings of period instruments over modern instruments, but either can successfully illustrate the grandeur and beauty of this music.

George Frideric Handel is also the first to hold a most prestigious distinction in the history of music, due to his popularity, which, if not certain before, was cemented by this piece, so that by the time he died in 1759, he was still as popular as ever.  This distinction is that Handel is the first truly Classical composer.  Not in terms of the musical period, which pretty much began in 1750 and which will be further discussed in future posts, but in terms of his compositions being classic (this idea mentioned in a previous post).

All music before and up to this time was written for a purpose.  With the exception of liturgical music, music was not performed after its initial run, much in the way that you generally cannot go see a movie in the theatre after the first six months or so of its release.  It was written, performed, attended, loved, and then discarded, as new pieces were written.  Handel’s fame and popularity prevented that in this case, though, and there are records of his music being performed ever year continuously from his appointment to the court of Prince George in 1710 through to this very day.  His music truly is “classic” even though it’s Baroque. 

Dynamic Contrast

Requisite Knowledge Level for Understanding (* being beginner, ***** being expert): *

One of the biggest differences between Classical and Popular music, in my opinion, is in the dynamic contrast.

Let's start off with a musical definition.  Dynamics are, simply put, the loudness or softness of a note.  This does NOT mean the volume setting on your stereo system.  This means the volume of one portion of the music relative to the volume of another portion of the music.  It is an intrinsic quality.  Certainly, you can put on a CD and play with the volume dial and make it sound super quiet or super loud regardless of what the musicians who recorded it were doing.  But that just changes your perception of it, it does change the dynamics of the music on the recording.  You are hearing dynamics when the music starts off quietly and slowly builds to a loud section without your having to touch the volume knob on the stereo.  Think about the THX logo at the opening of some movies how it starts off quietly and then grows to an incredibly loud volume.

Why should this matter?  Variety, as they say, is the spice of life, and this is why I think it matters.  It provides a different take on the same thing.  This is what makes a lot of popular music boring in my opinion.  Songs on the radio are all at about the same volume.  What is more, they pretty much tend to stay at that volume from the beginning of the song straight through the end of it.  You can find exceptions, true.  Like a few of the songs on the "Sgt. Pepper" album by the Beatles, or the song "Stairway to Heaven" by Led Zeppelin both make notable use of dynamics.  But really, that's the point.  These songs are notable for their use of dynamics.  Songs by Christina Aguilera or Justin Bieber will start off at what I call a medium loud volume and continue there throughout.  Each verse and each refrain is at the same volume.  What's more, usually the relationship between the instruments holds steady, too.  The drums and lyrics are very easily heard while the guitar is usually a little more background except when the vocal rests so it can be clearly heard while usually providing a musical fill.

Classical music gives us a variety.  Certainly there are forms in use that, like popular music, bring back the same melodic line over and over.  But classical composers will switch things up on the audience.  There are markings in each performer's part instructing them when to play loudly or softly.  A musician might commonly see any of the following in his/her part:  p, f, mf, mp, ff, pp, fff or ppp.  p stands for piano (not the instrument), meaning quiet. f stands for forte meaning loud.  m stands for mezzo meaning medium, thus mp and mf would be the medium soft and loud dynamics between p and f.  More p's or f's simply means to go further in that direction (thus pppp would be softer than pp, fff louder than ff), but more than three is fairly rare.  These are all of course relative terms, so forte to one musician might mean something completely different to another.

What this means is that these musicians will use their own judgement, coupled with the artistic direction of the conductor, to determine how loudly to play any of their given passages.  So a melody in the violins might begin softly backing up the winds and then grow until it takes over, becoming prominent.  Conversely, the strings might start off loudly and on their own only to be overtaken later by the brass instruments.  There are essentially endless permutations as each instrument can perform simultaneously a distinct volume from the performer sitting to their left or right in addition to the parts where the ensemble as a whole will player quieter or louder.  This engages the audience member and brings him/her more into the music in a way that is not achieved with a static volume level.  This also means that no two performances that you hear will ever be exactly the same.  One night a musician might play a little louder than he/she did the previous evening.  While one musician in an orchestra might not make a large impact, there are tiny variations to each individual musician's output, sometimes affecting a great change in the whole ensemble, thus guaranteeing that each performance is a completely unique and engaging experience.

Now, to be fair, I have seen a number of popular musicians using noticeable dynamic shifts in performance.  But this does not even reach the halfway mark of people that I have seen, and I feel like I have seen some of the more musical performers.  In addition, this then still very rarely translates into noticeable dynamics on any studio recorded albums.

This might not sound very convincing written down like this, so I urge you to listen to a few examples.  Just listen, do not put it on as background music, but really focus on what you are hearing.  For comparison, I would suggest listening first to something like U2's "Vertigo" to hear a more static volume (for the record, I am a big fan of U2, so I mean this in the politest way possible), and follow that up with "Stairway to Heaven" noticing the dynamic shifts.  There are any infinite number of examples from the classical world, though the 1st or 5th movement(s) to Bela Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra would be a good beginning place for an illustration of dynamic contrast if you are not sure where to start.