Notes for: July 13, 2010
After settling in London in 1711, Handel became known mainly as a composer of operas, composing over the next 30 years 40 operatic works. In the custom of the day, these operas were generally settings of Italian librettos and in the Italian style of singing.
In the 1730s, however, the taste of English audiences for Italian opera palled, and Handel turned to the composition of oratorios, extended settings for the concert hall of Biblical texts or other religious stories. To satisfy the London public, moreover, he now chose English texts, either original works or translations of the Bible, by English writers. In addition to Messiah, these works included Esther (text by Alexander Pope), Alexander’s Feast (John Dryden), Samson (John Milton), Acis and Galatea (John Gay) and Israel in Egypt (King James version of the Bible).
Composed early in 1740, L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato was based on Milton’s poetry. The librettist, Charles Jennens, arranged two Milton poems for the purpose, interleaving them to create dramatic tension between their personified characters – L’Allegro or the “Joyful man” and Il Penseroso or the “Contemplative man”.
The first two parts of the oratorio consist of dramatic dialogs between Milton’s poems – L’Allegro sung by a tenor and Il Penseroso by a soprano. The third part was an attempt by Jennens to unite the two poems in a singular “moral design” in a third poem, Il Moderato, sung by a bass.
“Sweet Bird” comes from the middle of Part I, and is Penseroso’s request to the “most melancholy enchantress of the woods” to sing its song. As with the Rameau arietta, the flute impersonates the bird, but its species is unidentified. The flute part is of virtuoso difficulty, and the work is, in effect, a demanding duet for the flute and a coloratura soprano.
Again the aria is in the da capo A-B-A form. In the first section, the flute is heard at some length before the singer’s entrance to suggest the bird’s warbling. The bird’s song is dropped from the short middle section, in the minor mode over steadily pulsed chords, as the singer continues her solitary walking. The flute and soprano then resume their duet.