Georg Friedrich Händel - Concerto Grosso Op. 6, nº 6 in -G minor HWV 324 -Academy of Saint Martin in the Fields - Neville Marriner.

The Concerti Grossi, Op. 6, or Twelve Grand Concertos, HWV 319--330, are 12 concerti grossi by George Frideric Handel for a concertino trio of two violins and violoncello and a ripieno four-part string orchestra with harpsichord continuo. First published by subscription in London by John Walsh in 1739, in the second edition of 1741 they became Handel's Opus 6. Taking the older concerto da chiesa and concerto da camera of Arcangelo Corelli as models, rather than the later three-movement Venetian concerto of Antonio Vivaldi favoured by Johann Sebastian Bach, they were written to be played during performances of Handel's oratorios and odes. Despite the conventional model, Handel incorporated in the movements the full range of his compositional styles, including trio sonatas, operatic arias, French overtures, Italian sinfonias, airs, fugues, themes and variations and a variety of dances. The concertos were largely composed of new material: they are amongst the finest examples in the genre of baroque concerto grosso.

Concerto Grosso Op.6 No.6 HWV324

Movements:

I. Larghetto e affetuoso
II. Allegro, ma non troppo
III. Musette
IV. Allegro
V. Allegro

The sixth concerto in G minor was originally intended to have four movements. The autograph manuscript contains the sketch for a gavotte in two parts, which, possibly in order to restore an imbalance created by the length of the musette and its different key (E flat major), Handel abandoned in favour of two new shorter allegro movements. The musette thus became the central movement, with a return to the minor tonality in the concluding movements.

The first movement, marked Larghetto e affetuoso, is one of the darkest that Handel wrote, with a tragic pathos that easily equals that of the finest dramatic arias in his opera seria. Although inspired by the model of Corelli, it is far more developed and innovative in rhythm, harmony and musical texture. There are brief passages for solo strings which make expressive unembellished responses to the full orchestra. Despite momentary suggestions of modulations to the relative major key, the music sinks back towards the prevailing melancholic mood of G minor; at the sombre close, the strings descend to the lowest part of their register.

The second movement is a concise chromatic fugue, severe, angular and unrelenting, showing none of Handel's usual tendency to depart from orthodoxy.

The elegiac musette in E flat major is the crowning glory of the concerto, praised by the contemporary commentator Charles Burney, who described how Handel would often perform it as a separate piece during oratorios. In this highly original larghetto, Handel conjures up a long dreamy pastoral of some 163 bars. Like the similarly popular aria Son confusa pastorella from Act III of Handel's opera Poro re dell'Indie (1731), it was inspired by Telemann's Harmonischer Gottes Dienst. The musette starts with a gravely beautiful main theme: Handel creates a unique dark texture of lower register strings over a drone bass, the traditional accompaniment for this dance, derived from the drone of the bagpipes. This sombre theme alternates with contrasting spirited episodes on the higher strings. The movement divides into four parts: first a statement of the theme from the full orchestra; then a continuation and extension of this material as a dialogue between concertino and ripieno strings, with the typical dotted rhythms of the musette; then a section for full orchestra in C minor with semiquaver passage-work for violins over the rhythms of the original theme in the lower strings; and finally a shortened version of the dialogue from the second section to conclude the work.

The following allegro is an energetic Italianate movement in the style of Vivaldi, with ritornello passages alternating with the virtuoso violin solo. It departs from its model in freely intermingling the solo and tutti passages after a central orchestral episode in D minor.

The final movement is a short dance-like allegro for full orchestra in 3/8 time and binary form, reminiscent of the keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti.

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