Solomon, Handel’s late oratorio in English, sparkles not only because of its stirring plot, but also through musical tableaus of great variety. Now this major work has been published as part of the Handel Complete Edition.
Solomon’s Temple, the Judgement of Solomon, the Song of Solomon – the King of Israel and Judah left his mark on history and on our collective memory. Handel’s oratorio Solomon of 1748/49 (librettist unknown) is the first drama in the history of music which draws on all these threads – a drama in pictures, in episodes. It is the only one of Handel’s Old Testament oratorios without a continuous narrative. Those who admire Handel as one of the greatest dramatists in the history of music might therefore approach this work with lower expectations. But they will be astounded by its musical richness.
To begin with, the forces he used are astonishing: Handel seldom had sufficient choral singers at his disposal to be able to write for double chorus. In no other season was he able to use as many stringed instruments plus a full wind complement, allowing him to write additional parts for an occasional reinforcing, ripieno string group. Powerful double choruses divide the work, like the pillars in the temple, singing of the glory of Solomon and praising God. But there are also intimate moments: as in the verses in the Song of Solomon where two lovers praise each other, Solomon and his young wife, the daughter of the Egyptian Pharaoh, affirm their love in arias and a duet. This is a scene whose highpoint takes place beyond our gaze in a cedar grove, but which we hear in the exquisite slumber chorus to the song of nightingales.
In the middle of the second act, and therefore the work as a whole, is the legal dispute of the two mothers about the new-born child and Solomon’s surprising way of establishing the truth. With the trio of warring factions and the judge, with the aria in which the decision of the real mother to save the life of her child crystallises through her renunciation of it, this scene points the way to much later events in the drama.
The traditional story of the Queen of Sheba’s visit to Jerusalem is an expression of peaceful foreign relations, and forms the content of the third act. This scene is one of the high points of the work. It is also combined with the theme of peace, depicting a battle and the pain of the loss of a beloved person in deeply moving choruses embedded in a demonstration of the calming, peace-generating and blissful effect of the music.
The new edition with appendices, published in the Halle Handel Edition, is more than just a reproduction of the 1749 version in two ways: firstly, it contains the new version of the oratorio, extensively altered in both content and music, which Handel, now blind, worked on with his pupil John Christopher Smith in 1758/59. Perhaps Handel felt that with the episodic structure of the oratorio he was ahead of his time; with his new arrangement he sacrificed the first act and attempted to create a link in terms of structure and cast between the second and third acts.
Secondly, the volume contains movements which Handel cut before the first performance. These include a tenor aria which survived in fragmentary form in the draft sketches and has been reconstructed by the editor, and the grand choral finale of the second act. Handel shortened this in two stages to a length of less than a minute, something not previously taken into consideration in any edition. Handel’s radical step is understandable after the high points of this act and in the context of the whole work. But taken on its own merits, this choral rondo with verses for the two semi-choruses and a pastoral-idyllic soprano aria is worth reviving. It could form the conclusion of a performance of the second act on its own, which could be given under the title of “The Judgement of Solomon” in view of its plot, complete in itself.
Hans Dieter Clausen
(translation: Elizabeth Robinson)
(from [t]akte 1/2014)