“What I like about this is that I’m not even sure it’s a good idea in all honesty. It’s going to be beautiful though,” says Nico Muhly. That’s the one thing everyone involved agrees on — the beauty of Handel’s music. Muhly, one of five composers commissioned to mark the 250th anniversary of Handel’s death by reinterpreting one of his works for performance at the Barbican arts center in London on Saturday, explains: “If you love something a lot you don’t want to touch it.” David Daniels, the counter-tenor charged with bringing these new interpretations to life, agrees. “My first reaction was: Why mess with perfection?” he says.
But Daniels and Muhly — along with Michael Nyman, Craig Armstrong, John Tavener and Jocelyn Pook, the other composers involved — all put aside initial doubts. The opportunity to simply pay tribute to the composer Tavener calls “the greatest melodist of all time” was unmissable.
The project is the brainchild of Robert van Leer, head of music and arts projects at the Barbican, and Gill Graham, of the publishers Music Sales. “We wanted, in Handel’s anniversary year, to bring something more contemporary into the picture, amid what we knew would be a sea of Handel operas and presentations,” Van Leer says. And so Handel Remixed was born, giving musicians and audiences alike the opportunity to re-examine and reappraise his music, to hear familiar works with fresh ears.
Craig Armstrong — best known for his film scores — has taken a 16-bar passage of The Water Music as his starting point. “What really was exciting about the process was taking the time to analyze a piece of his music and look at all the chords one by one and really just look at the progressions,” he says. “The funny thing with Handel is that it sounds very fluid — like you turn a tap on — and quite simple, but when I actually analyzed the chords I realized it’s incredibly complicated and clever. The first variation just goes up a semitone all the way until it gets to the next octave. He’s an amazing composer. It made me want to go back and listen to more of his music.”
Muhly felt the same impulse, and acted on it in his own reinterpretation. One of the two works he chose is the aria O Lord Whose Numbers Merciless, from Saul. “It’s the most beautiful thing in the world,” he says. “What I always want is for it to last for ever. To live in the music. So that’s what I did.”
Muhly has slowed the aria down — in fact he’s made it around four times slower. “I took the original orchestration and extended it almost into eternity. The orchestra is playing the same notes, basically, but they’re each slower by a different proportion. The vocal line, note for note, is the same. It’s like putting the pedal down on the piano and it just goes through, and makes this cloud.” Handel’s original aria is, of course, a prayer, and Muhly’s treatment, with its long drones, recognizes that. He offers a less reverent, alternative take: “It feels like singing along to a vacuum cleaner.”
Nyman chose another well known and much loved aria — Ombra Mai Fu, from Xerxes. “Handel’s Largo, as it was always known, must have been the first and only Handel that I listened to as a child — though I must have heard the Hallelujah Chorus without knowing it was by Handel,” he says. “I seem to remember lying in bed and hearing Kathleen Ferrier singing it on a distant radio.”
Michael Nyman’s new version of Ombra Mai Fu is “trademark Nyman,” says Harry Christophers, who’ll be conducting. “There’s a repetitive pattern at the beginning and a long instrumental introduction, but he’s preserved the tune and put intricate woodwind and string patterns over the top of it. It’s his own take on it. That’s the lovely thing about this all.”
Christophers admits it will be quite a challenge to bring some kind of framework to the concert, so works by Handel in their original form will be performed alongside the reinterpretations, commenting on and grounding, and, in some cases, pairing, the new works. There’ll be the overtures to Saul, and to Xerxes, which will lead straight into Nyman’s piece. The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba pairs with Tavener’s treatment, while David Daniels will be singing two “straight” arias, Dove Sei, from Rodelinda, and Vivi Tiranno, from Guilio Cesare.
“I’m starting to freak out a bit how much singing there is,” Daniels says, “but it’s only one night. It’ll be fine.” Does he know what Muhly’s got in store for him, I wonder? The concert closes with the young composer’s take on another aria from Guilio Cesare, the notoriously tricky Al Lampo dell’Armi.
“It’s like the countertenor’s Paganini — with these fabulous vocal fireworks,” says Muhly. “It’s a very fast, very complicated pitter-patter — a weird little piece of acrobatics. To be honest I’d always found it kind of annoying. So I thought, ‘This will be fun to do!’”
With the precision of a surgeon, Muhly has stripped away much of the orchestration, introduced different rhythms, and dispensed with the text, too. “I’ve got rid of everything that was in the way, so you can see exactly what’s going on — the technicality of it. I wanted to call attention to the mechanics of the fireworks of these kind of vocal lines.” And so Daniels will be singing what Muhly calls “vocalese.”
“The thing with music like this is you want it to point towards the original,” says Muhly. “It’s like designing a building that draws the eye to another building. Or it’s like making a beautiful bench on which you can sit to see [London’s] St Paul’s Cathedral. With someone like Handel the footprint of his influence is so epic that it’s nice to see the edge of that reverberation — who’s listening to it now? What are they thinking about it? What attracts them to it?”
“Hearing new music by five composers will be fantastic,” says Daniels. “Whether everyone in the audience loves every piece it’s really not the point. We’re doing this in celebration of Handel’s life and this is an homage to him, not just from me but from the composers as well.”
Van Leer welcomes the debate the project might provoke. “Some people think it’s the freshest, best, most interesting thing ever to reimagine these great works by this great composer. Other people see it as a great affront — how could you possibly rethink someone as hallowed as Handel? I’m not looking for a homogeneous response to either the work or the reinterpretations of the work. I’m just looking for a fresh dialogue.”
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