Nine German arias

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The Nine German Arias ( HWV 202-210) are the work of the baroque - composer George Frideric Handel (1685-1759) from the years 1724 - 1727 . Nine seemingly simple da capo arias for a solo part, an accompanying melody instrument and basso continuo follow one another:

  • 1. Future times of vain sorrow
  • 2. The trembling shine of the playing waves
  • 3. Sweet amber flakes flowers
  • 4. Sweet silence
  • 5. Sing, soul, God in praise
  • 6. My soul hears in seeing
  • 7. You who dig the vain mammon from dark tombs
  • 8. In the pleasant bushes
  • 9. Flaming rose, ornament of the earth

The title alone suggests that Handel - famous as the creator of sumptuous operas and oratorios - is taking an excursion into the area of ​​the more intimate lecture and into the world of the mindset of early Pietism .

In 1727, Handel, the German Protestant , had been living in London for sixteen years , where until then he had mainly emerged as a composer of celebrated Italian operas from the heroic genre and pompous casual music. From 1703 to 1706 (before his acquaintance with Italy ) he lived and created in Hamburg .

He took over the quiet, sensitive texts from the Hamburg poet Barthold Heinrich Brockes , which were neither Italian nor, like Handel's later oratorios, in English , but in his native German . They come from Brockes' collection of poems, Earthly Pleasure in God , published in 1721. Handel knew how to express their affectionate, frugal, unpretentious mood with the same mastery in music as the thunderous passions or virtuoso sentimentalities of his other works.

Both the texts and Handel's setting are characteristically at the turn from the Baroque in the narrower sense to the Age of Enlightenment , or its first phase, sensitivity : Man discovers the trace of God in the calm beauty of nature and thanks him Creator with praise and praise, sometimes cheerful and sometimes deeply contemplative. The satisfied, calm tone of the frame of mind is due in equal parts to its home in an officially ruled, bourgeois milieu, such as the contemporary idea of ​​the best of all possible worlds .

All of this leaves room for rather modest ornamentation of the vocal line, and only in the A 'part of the A – B – A' form. The unusual Nine German Arias were to remain isolated in Handel's work even after 1727, and the composer soon turned back to large-scale forms that were more popular with the public.

Recordings (selection)

There are interpretations for both female (e.g. by Adele Stolte ) and male (e.g. Hermann Prey ) voices. As was customary at the time, their instrumental accompaniment often changes from violin to flute and oboe with bassoon or viol and harpsichord .

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