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Scan 82
Grove's Dictionary of music and musicians, 1927
23 lines. Read by computer on 4 September 2026. Printed page 38. See the scan on archive.org.
1of arias and recitatives, and a certain heaviness of effect, inevitable where a large choir has to be supported by large numbers of instruments with a background of the organ, made the result not wholly satisfactory. The method was not generally accepted, and outside the Albert Hall one or other of the editions founded on Mozart is still generally used. At the Albert Hall the Mozart accompaniments (Novello Edition) were readopted when Eugene Goossens conducted the Royal Choral Society in a performance of 'Messiah' on Good Friday, 1923.
3The artistic conscience of the present generation has asserted itself strongly in favour of performing Bach's works as nearly as possible with the composer's own instrumentation. All Robert Franz's work in writing additional accompaniments to the 'St. Matthew Passion,' the Magnificat, and various church cantatas, has been definitely rejected and his followers have gained little or no foothold.1 Franz's idea was to do with Bach, of definite artistic purpose, what chance had done with Handel. His several writings on the subject, including prefaces to his various editions of Bach and Handel, have been collected and published in pamphlet form since his death.2 Though musicians agree that the right course in performing Bach is to go straight to Bach's scores and allow only such modifications in them as may be needful for the conditions of a particular performance, Handel, in England at any rate, remains a popular institution, and the accretions of a century and a half have gained sanction by a popular verdict which overrides the arguments of scholars.3 From the musician's point of view it will be admitted that Handel should be treated with the same conscientiousness which is shown towards Bach, and it has often been urged that a revival of interest in Handel's music would be stimulated if performances of the oratorios, the Chandos anthems, and other choral works were given with a moderate-sized chorus, an orchestra approximating more or less to that of Handel's day, and using only his instrumentation with the figured basses intelligently played on a keyboard instrument. But as Handel's music lives by its popular appeal and its performance in places of the size of the Crystal Palace and the Albert Hall by choirs of upwards of 800 voices, it is impossible to apply any purist principles. The most we can hope for is that the lines of his melody should not be obscured by alteration of his part-writing or by wanton additions to the orchestral polyphony. Professor Prout in his article contributed to this Dictionary quoted an instance of such error which may be retained here as a warning. He said:
5'Mendelssohn, in his score of the "Dettingen Te Deum," has altered (and we venture to think entirely spoilt) several of the very characteristic trumpet parts which form so prominent a feature of the work. As one example out of several that might be quoted, we give the opening symphony of the chorus "To thee, Cherubin." Handel writes:
72 Trombe.
9These trumpet parts are assuredly not easy; still they are practicable. Mendelssohn, however, alters the whole passage thus:
11Flauti.
12Oboi. f
13Clarinetti in C.
14Corni in D.
153 Trombe in D.
17and still worse, when the symphony is repeated in the original by oboes and bassoons, the arranger gives it to the full wind band with trumpets and drums, entirely disregarding the ideas of the composer. The chief objection to be urged against such a method of procedure as the above—so unlike Mendelssohn's usual reverence and modesty4—is not that the
191 Perhaps the only notable exception to this in England is in the case of 'Phcebus and Pan,' produced as an operatic work by the Beecham Opera Company where Mottl's orchestral version was accepted. But in that case the whole production was an adaptation for stage purposes.
202 Gesammelte Schriften über die Wiederbelebung Bach'scher und Händel'scher Werke, Leuckart, 1910.
213 For the Handel Festival (Crystal Palace), 1926, Sir Henry Wood rescored 'Messiah,' 'Israel in Egypt' and other works of Handel for a large orchestra more or less proportioned to the chorus of over 3000 voices.
224 The Te Deum and 'Acis' were instrumented by Mendelssohn as an exercise for Zelter. The date on the MS. of 'Acis' is January 1829. He mentions them in a letter to Devrient in 1833, speaking of his additions to the Te Deum as 'interpolations of a very arbitrary kind, mistakes as I now consider them, which I am anxious to correct.' It is a thousand pities that the work should have been published.
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