Handel flute sonatas

It is impossible to say precisely how many flute sonatas George Frideric Handel composed, but the correct number is somewhere between zero and eight.

There are many reasons for the confusion, including: the fact that some of the sonatas were originally written for other instruments, some contain borrowings from other Handel's works, and some were published without Handel's knowledge (in altered form). At least six of the sonatas are known to contain music written by Handel, although he may not have intended some of them to have originally been played on the flute.

The main source of the sonatas is the circa-1730 publication Sonates pour un traversiere un violin ou hautbois con basso continuo composées par G. F. Handel, allegedly by the Amsterdam publisher Jeanne Roger (who had died in December 1722). The publication was in fact made by the printer John Walsh whose reasons for the false imprint are unclear, however in 1732 he published a revised version under his own name.[1][2]

Three more sonatas attributed to Handel were published by Walsh in 1730 as part of a collection titled Six Solos, Four for a German Flute and a Bass and two for a Violin with a Thorough Bass. It was long supposed that these were early works, composed by Handel as a boy in Halle, before 1703, but their authenticity is now considered doubtful, and the supposition of the date has been proven unfounded, at least for the second sonata, three movements of which are arrangements of music known to have been composed by Handel after 1712.[3]

Of the eleven flute sonatas formerly attributed to Handel, only one appears to have been genuinely intended for the flute (since it exists in that form in Handel's autograph), and even that one is a hasty arrangement of movements from other works.[4]

More recently, a Flute Sonata in D major, attributed in a manuscript to Johann Sigismund Weiss (brother of the lutenist Sylvius Leopold Weiss), has been put forward as a work actually by Handel (HWV 378).[5]

List of flute sonatas

HWV Key Composed Published Opus Notes
359b E minor circa 1724 1732 Opus 1 No. 1 Originally composed as a violin sonata in D minor (HWV 359a).
363b G major circa 1711–1716 1732 Opus 1 No. 5 Originally composed as an oboe sonata in F major (HWV 363a).
367b B minor circa 1725–1726 1732 Opus 1 No. 9 Originally composed as a recorder sonata in d minor (HWV 367a).
374 A minor 1730 "Halle sonata No. 1". Authenticity uncertain.
375 E minor 1730 "Halle sonata No. 2". Authenticity uncertain.
376 B minor 1730 "Halle sonata No. 3". Authenticity uncertain.
378 D major ?circa 1707 1979 No autograph version exists.
379 E minor circa 1720 1879 Opus 1 No. 1a The only sonata that survives as a flute sonata in Handel's own manuscript.

See also

Book: Georg Friedrich Händel
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References

  1. ^ Anthony Hicks. "Handel, George Frideric", The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. S. Sadie and J. Tyrrell (London: Macmillan, 2001), x, 770.
  2. ^ Terence Best, "Handel's Chamber Music: Sources, Chronology and Authenticity", Early Music 13, no. 4 (November 1985): 476–99. Citation from 481–83.
  3. ^ Terence Best, "Handel's Chamber Music: Sources, Chronology and Authenticity", Early Music 13, no. 4 (November 1985): 476–99. Citation from 484.
  4. ^ David Lasocki and Terence Best, "A New Flute Sonata by Handel", Early Music 9, no. 3, Wind Issue (July 1981): 307–11. Citation on 308–309.
  5. ^ David Lasocki and Terence Best, "A New Flute Sonata by Handel", Early Music 9, no. 3, Wind Issue (July 1981): 307–11. Citation on 309–10.