Messiah - Arranged By Mozart
In
1789, a performance of "Messiah" that was to have a radical effect on
the course of the oratorio's performance history was given in Vienna.
Baron Gottfried Van Swieten, who later translated and edited the text
for Haydn's "Creation", had, as a diplomat in London during the late
1760s, become an ardent Handelian. Among other Handel scores, he took
back to Austria a copy of the first edition of the full score of
"Messiah", published by Randall and Abell in 1767. Beginning with
"Judas Maccabaeus" in 1779, he introduced works by Handel into the
annual oratorio series given for the benefit of the Tonkunstler
Society, a Viennese musical charity. In 1789, he presented "Messiah"
and, for this Viennese premiere, commissioned Mozart to fill out the
accompaniments, largely dispensing with keyboard continuo and replacing
the tromba parts practically unplayable for late 18th century
trumpeters.
Using the Randall and Abell score and a German translation of the text
by Daniel Ebeling, Van Swieten had a copyist prepare a score containing
the vocal lines and Handel's string parts, together with the original
dynamic and tempo markings. Onto the staves left blank for his use,
Mozart added his woodwind, brass, and string parts; those of Handel's
woodwind or brass parts that he chose to retain, he copied from the
Randall and Abell score. Since that score contains some, but not all,
of the alternative versions either in its main body or in an appendix,
Van Swieten had to decide which of the various forms to use. He
doubtless chose the versions that he had come to know in London 20
years earlier; by and large he selected the versions favored by Handel
in the last years of his life and subsequently by his successors in
presenting the annual Foundling Hospital performances, John Christopher
Smith the Younger and John Stanley.
Van Swieten reassigned some of the solos to voices other than those
that Handel specified. He divided the six tenor numbers beginning with
"All they that see Him" between the two soprano soloists (There was no
alto soloist per se; those solos he allotted to the second soprano.),
assigned the 4/4 form of "Rejoice greatly" to the tenor, and gave the
Guadagni version of "But who may abide" to the bass. Ironically, the
only one of these reassignments with no precedent whatever in Handel's
own practice, namely, the last, is the one that became "standard"
during the 19th century and the first half of the 20th .
And this seems as good a place as any to deal once and for all with the
"problem" of the various versions of "But who may abide the day of His
coming". Handel originally set this number as an aria for bass in 3/8
time without the vibrant prestissimo sections that distinguish the
bravura rewrite for Gaetano Guadagni. At Dublin and in other early
performances, a recitative setting for bass was on occasion
substituted, and, in at least one season, Handel gave the original bass
version, transposed up a step, to the tenor soloist. After Guadagni
returned to the continent in 1753, Handel assigned the setting of "But
who may abide" that is now so familiar to a female alto or, as we have
seen, to a soprano. There is not a scintilla of evidence that he ever
assigned this version to a bass.
Since Mozart's version of "Messiah" was to become the basis for most,
if not all, further accompaniments added to the oratorio throughout the
20th century, Van Swieten must also take credit (or shoulder the blame)
for initially shaping the "standard" score that was finally codified by
Sir Ebenezer Prout in his performing edition of 1902. Neither Mozart
nor Van Swieten, however, can be blamed for turning "Why do the
nations" into a da capo aria; they were merely following the indication
in the first edition. As Walsh's heirs, Randall and Abell had reused
the plates from his "Songs in Messiah" in order to hold down costs in
assembling a full score. Since no choruses figured in that collection,
a da capo was indicated at the end of the aria to provide a return to
the tonic key; Handel had used the chorus "Let us break their bonds
asunder" as an exciting and dramatic substitute for a reprise of the
aria's opening section. Walsh's da capo expedient was carried over into
the full score in error.
Van Swieten and Mozart also made a few cuts. They omitted the chorus
"Let all the Angels of God" and the aria "Thou art gone up on high".
Mozart replaced the aria "If God be for us" with an accompanied
recitative of his own composition. His abridged version of "The trumpet
shall sound" gives most of the demanding tromba part to a horn. Perhaps
most surprisingly, Mozart made wrote no additional accompaniments
whatever for quite a few numbers. "He trusted in God", for instance, is
utterly free of added instrumentation.
Mozart's woodwind complement includes paired flutes (piccolo in the
"Pifa"), oboes, clarinets, bassoons, and horns. In addition to two
trumpets and tympani, his scoring calls for three trombones in the
"Overtura" and the chorus "Since by man came death". The original
performance materials, which have been preserved, show that the
trombones also doubled the alto, tenor, and bass lines in the tutti
choruses, according to the standard Austrian practice at that time.
[Because these additional, colla parte trombone parts were not
specifically indicated by Mozart in his score – since he knew
that the copyists would understand the performing convention and draw
the parts for the doubling trombones out intuitively, they are
–
inexplicably – not included in the Neue Mozart Ausgabe score.
The
trombones appear in that full score only in the two places where Mozart
wrote them out because copyists would not have intuitively assumed
their presence. Those two places are the "Overtura" and the chorus "Wie
durch einen die Tod" {"Since by Man came Death"}. The original and
authentic doubling trombone parts are described and included only in
the Kritische Bericht {Critical Report} volume that accompanied the
full score when acquired as a part of a subscription to the Neue Mozart
Ausgabe. The purchaser of the individual volume not only does not get a
copy of the Critical Report, he is rarely, if ever, aware, that one
even exists! Hence, the vast majority of modern performances of the
Mozart arrangement are flawed because the overwhelming majority of the
trombone parts are omitted.]
addition, these original performing parts show not only that portions
of some choruses were sung by the soloists, but also that the tutti
choir – and this is confirmed by annotations on a surviving
word
book – consisted of but twelve singers!
Precisely because Mozart's additions were so exquisite in and of
themselves and were written by a universally acknowledged master
unabashedly working in the style of his own age, their validity and
propriety have been debated. The negative view was perhaps best
expressed by Moritz Hauptmann, who complained that Mozart's arrangement
"resembles elegant stucco work upon an old marble temple, which easily
might be chipped off again by the weather." Perhaps; but to extend the
architectural analogy, I for one, find Mozart's work as congruent with
and as complementary to Handel's as Sir Christopher Wren's late
17th-century additions are with the original Tudor portions of the
palace at Hampton Court.
The arrangement was published by Breitkopf und Hartel in 1803, with
editorial assistance from Thomascantor Johann Adam Hiller, who had done
much to promote "Messiah" in Germany. Influenced no doubt by reports of
the 1784 Westminster Abbey commemoration, he had presented the
oratorio, with additional accompaniments of his own, using enormous
forces; at the first performance he directed, in Berlin in 1785, 302
vocalists and instrumentalists participated.
Editing Mozart's arrangement must have been a bittersweet task for
Hiller, who surely would have preferred to have seen his own performing
edition, for which both the score and the performing parts now appear
to be lost, published. Still, Hiller's alterations to Mozart's
arrangement were nowhere near as extensive as Prout, Franz, and others
believed, (The autograph Mozart score and the original performing
materials turned up only in the mid 1950s, and the arrangement was not
published in Urtext form until 1961.) Apart from the substitution of a
German text that is a combination of the Klopstock and Ebeling
translations, Hiller's only crucial change was to substitute his own
arrangement (with bassoon obbligato!) of Handel's "If God be for us"
for the accompanied recitative that Mozart had written.
CITATION
"Messiah -
Arranged by Mozart"
Teri Noel Towe, Classical Net. 1996.
<http://www.classical.net/~music/comp.lst/works/handel/messiah/mozart.php>
|
