01	Suite in F Major, HWV 348 -- I. Ouverture (Largo - Allegro)						03:18
	02	Suite in F Major, HWV 348 -- II. Adagio e staccato						02:13
	03	Suite in F Major, HWV 348 -- III. (Allegro); Andante; (Allegro da capo)						07:49
	04	Suite in F Major, HWV 348 -- IV. (Minuet)						03:14
	05	Suite in F Major, HWV 348 -- V. Air						03:02
	06	Suite in F Major, HWV 348 -- VI. Minuet						03:24
	07	Suite in F Major, HWV 348 -- VII. Bourree						02:08
	08	Suite in F Major, HWV 348 -- VII. Hornpipe						02:37
	09	Suite in F Major, HWV 348 -- IX. (Andante)						03:14
	10	Suite in D/G Major, HWV 349/350 -- I. (Ouverture)						02:08
	11	Suite in D/G Major, HWV 349/350 -- II. Alla Hornpipe						04:15
	12	Suite in D/G Major, HWV 349/350 -- III. (Minuet)						02:53
	13	Suite in D/G Major, HWV 349/350 -- IV. Rigaudon						02:44
	14	Suite in D/G Major, HWV 349/350 -- V. Lentement						02:03
	15	Suite in D/G Major, HWV 349/350 -- VI. Bourree						01:20
	16	Suite in D/G Major, HWV 349/350 -- VII. Minuet I						01:06
	17	Suite in D/G Major, HWV 349/350 -- VIII. (Andante)						01:39
	18	Suite in D/G Major, HWV 349/350 -- IX. (Country Dance I & II)						01:28
	19	Suite in D/G Major, HWV 349/350 -- X. Minuet II						03:28

The English Concert on authentic instruments Directed from the harpsichord by Trevor Pinnock Simon Standage - Elizabeth Wilcock, Violin solo

Water Music Suites Nos 1-3 for orchestra, HWV 348-350
Composer George Frideric Handel
Composition Date 1717

Description
Early in his career Handel left Germany, where he resented the limitations of his role. He left for for England, where he hoped that the more cosmopolitan musical life of the capital, subject to market forces led by fashion and popular taste, rather than princely dictate, would offer a more lucrative reception for his stage works. Despite his limited mastery of the English language, Handel made a triumphant entree into London society. His operas were immensely successful there for a time, and it was for London that Handel composed his two most universally popular orchestral works, the Music for the Royal Fireworks, and the three Water Music suites.
Both of these were intended for outdoor performance, and were scored for ensembles with complements of woodwinds and brasses that could be heard to good advantage in open air. Moreover, each drew in some measure upon material Handel had already composed. By the time Handel composed his Water Music in 1717, he had been able to fully evaluate the musical trends of his adopted home. He brought to what might at first seem like a rather nondescript assemblage of nautical folk melodies, songs, and country dances what Professor H. C. Robbins Landon has described as "far more than the usual international flair; a remarkable fusion of solid German upbringing, Italian training and a thorough acquaintance with French tastes." Each piece is a miniature gem with a finely sculpted expressive point, drawing, as Landon indicates, upon the various suite components and types of orchestral writing that Handel had mastered.

English monarch King George I held a society river party, probably a sort of eighteenth-century equivalent of the "photo op," on the Thames on July 17, 1717. For this event Handel composed a collection of short, festive pieces, known collectively as the Water Music since the publication soon afterward of a group of them as "The Celebrated Water-Musick." The original order and grouping of the pieces is not known; not all employ the supernumerary trumpets, horns, oboes, and drums suited particularly to outdoor festive events, and it seems likely that the Suite in G (which employs the softer tones of flutes and strings) was reserved for performance at the "choice supper" reported by the London Daily Courant, held "at Lord Ranelagh's villa at Chelsea, where there was another fine Consort of Musick, which lasted until two (am)." Of the river-festivities earlier that day, the same newspaper also recorded that "many barges with Persons of Quality attended, and so great a number of boats that the whole river in a manner was cover'd; a City Company's barge was employ'd for all the musick, wherein were fifty instruments of all sorts, who play'd all the way from Lambeth ... the finest of Symphonies compos'd express for this Occasion, by Mr. Hendel; which his Majesty liked so well, that he caus'd it to be plaid three times in going and again in the returning."

The arrangement of the music into three suites may have been intended by Handel originally; with three keys used in the work (F, D, and G), the grouping is natural. Conductors have also ordered the pieces in other ways. -- Michael Jameson



Water Music Suite No.1 for orchestra in F major, HWV 348
Composer George Frideric Handel
Composition Date 1717

Description
There is a story that George Frideric Handel's magnificent Water Music was originally intended as a peace offering to King George I. In 1710, prior to his ascension to the British throne, the then Elector of Hanover had given the rather vagabond composer a generous position at his court; but Handel never actually fulfilled his duties. After the Elector relocated to London, the composer was more than a little reluctant to face his old master. As the story goes, it was not until 1717, when Handel seized the opportunity to provide some musical entertainment for the King's now-famous barge party on the River Thames, that the composer was restored in the royal eye; George I was completely enamored with the Water Music (asking for the hour-long work to be repeated three times and not returning to the palace until the wee hours) and all past transgressions were immediately forgotten. There was indeed a grand party on the Thames on July 17, 1717, during which some of Handel's music (possibly but not definitely the Water Music) was played, but the rest of the story is likely highly fictionalized.
It appears that Handel drew upon three already-composed suites of instrumental music, each scored for slightly different instrumental forces, when putting together the Water Music; the Water Music Suite No. 1 in F major, HWV 348, scored for a pair of oboes, bassoon, two horns, two violins, and basso continuo, is the largest of the three, comprising ten more-or-less separate pieces.

The Overture that begins the first Water Music Suite is in two large sections. The stately and eminently restrained exuberance of the first and slower section, built entirely out of a single ornamented pick-up gesture, finally boils over into the vivacious, partially fugato, allegro portion of the piece. There are two printed endings for the Overture: one ending in a full and rich cadence to tonic, the other climaxing on a dramatic half cadence.

Next up is an Adagio e staccato (the heading is apparently Handel's), and then a large three-part movement that moves from an "allegro" (not Handel's heading) built on a regal, fanfare-like, repeated-note motive in triple meter, to a Corelli-derived Andate in D minor and then back to the allegro "da capo." If we count this Allegro-Andante-Allegro as a single movement, there are really only nine pieces in the Suite.

A delightful minuet (sometimes called simply Andante or Moderato) precedes the famous Air, which is marked by Handel to be played three times. Another minuet and trio, this time starting off with a robust horn duet, follows.

The Bourree, like the Air, is to be played three times; on the second time around the two oboes take the place of the two violin sections, and on the third the two contingents join forces.

After a Hornpipe, Handel finishes the Suite with a substantial fast movement (not titled, but written in ordinary Baroque allegro style) not in F major, but rather in its relative minor, perhaps in an effort to make more seamless the transition between this Suite and the following one in D major (HWV 349). -- Blair Johnston




Water Music Suite No.2 for orchestra in D major, HWV 349
Composer George Frideric Handel
Composition Date 1717

Description
There is a story that George Frideric Handel's magnificent Water Music was originally intended as a peace offering to King George I, for duties to the former Elector of Hanover left unfulfilled by Handel. As the story goes, Handel seized the opportunity in 1717 to provide some musical entertainment for the King's now-famous barge party on the River Thames, and was restored in the royal eye. George I was completely enamored with the Water Music (asking for the hour-long work to be repeated three times and not returning to the palace until the wee hours) and all past transgressions were immediately forgotten. There was indeed a grand party on the Thames on July 17, 1717, during which some of Handel's music (possibly but not definitely the Water Music) was played, but the rest of the story is likely highly fictionalized.
It appears that Handel drew upon three already-composed suites of instrumental music when putting together the Water Music; for the Water Music Suite No. 2 in D major, HWV 349, Handel has added a pair of trumpets to the robust ensemble of two oboes, two horns, strings, and basso continuo that he used in the Water Music Suite No. 1.

The first of the Suite's five pieces is the only substantial through-composed movement to be found in it (the rest are all dances of one kind or another). Although given no heading by Handel, this fast-tempo movement is composed in very normal Baroque overture style, starting off with an accompanied trumpet fanfare and soon moving on to ponder a regal dotted-note motive that brings the French Overture to mind. The crystalline brilliance of Handel's scoring is plain from the start -- witness the fiery descending string scales that support the opening trumpet blast and, a while later, the virtuoso sixteenth notes of the trumpets themselves.

After this overture movement comes a little musicological trouble, as the hornpipe dance included in some printed editions is very often replaced in performance and print by an entirely different dance (also a hornpipe). The more commonly-played of the two hornpipes is certainly one of Handel's most famous instrumental compositions, filled with wonderful syncopations and, during the middle of the first of the dance's two (quite lengthy) halves, some charming interplay between the trumpets, horns and strings.

Although most often called a minuet on account of its triple meter, the stately, binary-form piece that comes third in the D major Suite in fact carries the heading "Coro," or Chorus.

The Lentement that follows (the indication is Handel's own), is a delicate thing, rolling gently along on dotted quarter-eighth-quarter rhythms and providing just enough minor mode contrast in its second section to make the da capo reprise of the opening taste all the sweeter.

Handel marks the following Air -- really in the rapid style of the bourree -- to be played three times all told, leaving it up to the musicians to decide what, if any, textural contrasts might be nice each time around. -- Blair Johnston




Water Music Suite No.3 for orchestra in G major, HWV 350
Composer George Frideric Handel
Composition Date 1717

Description
There is a highly fictionalized story that George Frideric Handel's magnificent Water Music was originally intended as a peace offering to King George I. In 1710, the then Elector of Hanover had given the rather vagabond composer a generous position at his court; but Handel never actually fulfilled his duties. After the Elector relocated to London, the composer was more than a little reluctant to face his old master. As the story goes, it was not until 1717, when Handel seized the opportunity to provide some musical entertainment for the King's now-famous barge party on the River Thames, that the composer was restored in the royal eye; George I was completely enamored with the Water Music and all past transgressions were immediately forgotten. There was indeed a grand party on the Thames on July 17, 1717, during which some of Handel's music (possibly but not definitely the Water Music) was played.
It appears that Handel drew upon three already-composed suites of instrumental music when putting together the Water Music; the Water Music Suite No. 3 in G major/minor, HWV 350, is, in terms of instrumentation, the most intimate of the three, calling for just flutes, strings, and basso continuo.

There are really only four movements in the Third Water Music Suite, but three of these are da capo organizations built around two individual pieces, and so one will sometimes see HWV 350 listed as comprising seven or eight separate items. Unlike the Second Suite, which begins with a robust and lengthy overture, or the First, which contains no fewer than three large-scale through-composed movements, the Water Music Suite No. 3 is made up entirely of small dance and character pieces.

First up is a gentle, untitled piece in triple meter (sometimes called lento), in which a solo flute -- supported by the first violins -- sings a flexible melody atop a transparent background that, even at its most active, moves no faster than in quarter notes. Each of the piece's two halves is repeated.

In the following Aria the flutes are sometimes replaced by oboes, but this is most likely a modern enhancement and not Handel's idea. A rapid bourree style is at work in each of the two parts of this da capo organization, and each is itself cast in simple binary form. Handel provides some delightful harmonic contrast in the second part -- he moves to the parallel minor (G minor), but not directly at first, and even after establishing the new mode feels free to veer off towards B flat major and C minor for a bit -- but the reprise of the opening re-establishes good natured G major.

A Menuet and Trio in G minor is next (sometimes the minuet portion and its trio, which is not actually marked as such, are separated into individual movements). There is a wonderful line for piccolo flute, or, possibly recorder, in the trio section.

A pair of Country Dances -- titled such by tradition, not by Handel -- make a jovial conclusion. -- Blair Johnston