Dunedin Consort - George Frideric Handel: Acis & Galatea (Original Cannons Performing Version 1718) 2008 These are Studio Master files from Linn Records, so NO LOG and NO CUE. See www.linnrecords.com for more details. Reviews 22 December 2008 BBC Music Magazine George Hall Handel himself performed his masque in various ways at various times. John Butt and his period-instrument ensemble revert to its initial form, when it was written for Handel's wealthy patron, the Earl of Carnarvon, at Cannons, his palatial home in Middlesex where the composer was resident in 1717-18. Larger-scale editions can also work, but there is a special charm in hearing the piece performed by just five singers, who also combine to form the chorus, plus a small instrumental ensemble. Its narrative about the love between the shepherd Acis and the nymph Galatea, rudely interrupted when the giant Polyphemus hurls a rock at the former and kills him, is couched in the genre of the pastoral. Handel responds with some of his loveliest melodies and a choice part for the bass as the comic-grotesque rival for Galatea's affections. Even by Handel's standards, the results are unusually delightful. The chief strength of this account lies in the excellent instrumental playing (the recorders that form the ‘warbling choir' addressed in Galatea's first aria are sheer magic) and in Butt's careful attention to tempo. The singing is generally good, though Susan Hamilton's Galatea has an unfortunate habit of starting phrases with blanched tone before moving into full voice. Nicholas Mulroy's Acis and Thomas Hobbs' Damon are both athletic, but compared to Matthew Brook's rumbustious Polyphemus the other characterisations sound wan. 12 December 2008 Gramophone David Vickers Handel's Acis & Galatea has been recorded often, but the original version written for small-scale performance by only five singers (soprano, three tenors and bass) and a small band at Cannons in 1718 has almost never been properly revived owing to blind trust of poor editions, a preference for using composite (or compromised) versions, mucking about with the scoring, a desire to use full chorus, missing out the third tenor character, Coridon, or sheer uninterest in doing extra homework. This beggars belief because the Cannons version text makes more dramatic sense and the musical scale of it is charming. It is certainly among Handel's most perfect creations. Thankfully, John Butt has researched the performing conditions and text of the Cannons Acis. The philological aspects are impeccable, and, better still, the performance is utterly magical. The Sinfonia brims with unforced personality, after which the pastoral chorus "O the pleasure of the plains" is relaxed, with the oboes given enough space to weave their initiative lines clearly. The five singers and the band are beautifully in proportion with each other, and Linn's sound recording is stunningly good. Susan Hamilton's light, articulate soprano is preferable to an operatic voice in the role of Galatea: her rendition of "Hush, ye pretty warbling choir" is notable for its affectionate delicacy, and she smoothly navigates the deceptively tricky leaps in "As when the dove". Nicholas Mulroy's Acis is resonant and suave, combining muscularity and elegance. In "Love in her eyes sits playing" the Dunedin Players sound as expansive and sonorous as any larger Baroque orchestra. The madrigal-like beauty of "Wretched lovers" is breathtaking: the blend and understanding between the five singers is deeply satisfying, and the menacing music to convey the arrival of Polyphemus is astutely integrated (the section "See what ample strides he takes" is magnificently measured). Matthew Brook's Polyphemus is extrovert, powerful and amusing, but also arouses pity and tenderness from the listener in "I rage, I melt, I burn". The dialogue between the hapless would-be seducer and the disgusted Galatea is superbly enacted by Brook and Hamilton. The roles of Damon (offering counsel to Acis) and Coridon (who advises Polyphemus to behave more gently) are admirably sung by Nicholas Hurndall Smith and Thomas Hobbs. "The flocks shall leave the mountains" is slower than has become normal, but this better reveals its function as a tender love duet until the jealous Polyphemus can't bear in any more. Furthermore, it sets up an ideal dramatic context for a pathos-laden performance of Acis's death scene. The rapturous choral ensemble brings out the Purcellian quality in the unaccompanied final cadences of "Mourn all ye Muses", and Galatea's "Heart, the seat of soft delight" is sublimely shaped by the recorder-players and radiantly sung by Hamilton. Butt's direction from the harpsichord is a role model of taste and style, and he insightfully conveys the elusive changing tone of the story from pastoral romp into personal tragedy. Previous versions of merit still possess enduring appeal, but it seems to me that the Dunedins have transformed the way in which we can understand and enjoy Handel's lovely early English masterpiece. 08 June 2009 6moons Frederic Beudot If you enjoy opera and SACD, your opportunities for celebration are few and far between. Exclude re-editions and they are downright sporadic. Just for that reason you won't want to miss John Butt's refreshingly novel read of Acis and Galatea but in all fairness, be it CD, SACD or download, this recording is a jewel regardless. Händel's Acis and Galatea tells the story of Acis, a young shepherd from Sicily and his lover, the nymph Galatea. Unfortunately the cyclops Polyphemus has other matrimonial plans for the young and beautiful Galatea despite her absolute loathing of the ugly creature. After discovering the lovers, Polyphemus kills Acis by throwing a huge rock at him (typical cyclops negotiation strategy) but Galatea overcomes her despair, appeals to the Gods and turns Acis into an undying fountain, an act that restores peace and harmony in the paradise-like setting of the opera. Typical of the pastoral compositions of the time, plot and action won't keep you on seat's edge but this very simple story gave Händel the perfect material to work on music in depth, using it to paint landscapes and emotions rather than support the stage action. By reverting to the original version of the composition rather than Mozart's or Mendelssohn's later re-orchestrations or even some of the later scores by Händel himself, John Butt considerably simplified the composition of the orchestra (no violas, fewer violins) and reduced the chorus to just the five soloists. The result is an interpretation that gets rid of the spider webs in the corners, that is lean and fast, light and agile. Take any recording of the re-orchestrated versions by contrast and it will sound both heavy and boring. The Dunedin Consort and the soloists both are first class, fast and deploy all sorts of varied tonal colors and contrasts with a tempo that is engaging without feeling reckless. They give this pastoral little opera all its charm -- actually far more charm than it's had in any recording I know -- by revealing the contrasting elements and fluttering music that was hidden beneath the redundant complexity added over the centuries. Absolutely and unconditionally recommended as the new reference recording of Händel's Acis and Galatea, it easily replaces William Christie's more conventional and less enlightening interpretation. The fact that Linn's recording quality is simply superb does not hurt either. Track Listing Act one 1. Sinfonia 3:12 2. Chorus: Oh, the pleasure of the plains! 6:13 3. Accompagnato: Ye verdant plains & woody mountains (Galatea) 0:45 4. Air: Hush, ye pretty warbling choir! (Galatea) 6:17 5. Air: Where shall I seek the charming fair? (Acis) 3:05 6. Recitative: Stay, shepherd, stay! (Damon) 0:22 7. Air: Shepherd, what art thou pursuing? (Damon) 4:10 8. Recitative: Lo, here my love (Acis) 0:30 9. Air: Love in her eyes sits playing (Acis) 6:51 10. Recitative: Oh didst thou know the pains of absent love (Galatea) 0:16 11. Air: As when the dove laments her love (Galatea) 6:57 12. Duet: Happy, happy we! (Acis & Galatea) 2:35 Act two 1. Chorus: Wretched lovers! 4:25 2. Accompagnato: I rage - I melt - I burn! (Polyphemus) 1:27 3. Air: O ruddier than the cherry (Polyphemus) 3:16 4. Recitative: Whither, fairest, art thou running (Polyphemus, Galatea) 1:11 5. Air: Cease to beauty to be suing (Polyphemus) 5:24 6. Would you gain the tender creature (Coridon) 5:42 7. Recitative: His hideous love provokes my rage (Acis) 0:21 8. Air: Love sounds th' alarm 4:50 9. Air: Consider, fond shepherd 6:41 10. Recitative: Cease, oh cease, thou gentle youth 0:25 11. Trio: The flocks shall leave the mountains (Galatea, Acis, Polyphemus) 3:03 12. Accompagnato: Help, Galatea! Help, ye parent gods! (Acis) 1:30 13. Chorus: Mourn, all ye muses 3:43 14. Solo & Chorus: Must I Acis still bemoan (Galatea) 4:14 15. Recitative: 'Tis done! Thus I exert my pow'r divine (Galatea) 0:19 16. Air: Heart, the seat of soft delight (Galatea) 4:02 17. Chorus: Galatea, dry thy tears 3:18 “ The Dunedin Consort, having scored such a big hit with Handel's Messiah ("Best Baroque Vocal Album" 2007), now heads into 2009 with what is an even better version of the same composer's Acis and Galatea. The scholarly approach continues and here John Butt's forces shrink to perform the masque exactly as it was given at its premiere at the Early of Carnaervon's country house at Cannons, Edgeware, in 1718. The ensemble is nigh perfect - not only is every word of Alexander Pope's and John Gay's text crystal clear and tuning immaculate, but the freshness with which they sing radiates joy throughout the entire score. ~ Classic FM Magazine, Rick Jones If you thought that we were unlikely to have any new Handel recordings to challenge existing recommendations, this new account of Acis and Galatea should make you think again. My former version of choice for Acis, the King's Consort, on Hyperion CDA66361/2, now becomes an honourable also-ran and has already found a new home. I obtained the new Acis via a download from Linn's website and my original intention was simply to include it in my January 2009 Download Roundup. Two considerations persuaded me otherwise: it's too good just to receive a paragraph in a roundup which some of you may not yet have discovered - scroll down the page, past the concert reviews, to find it each month - and, as I downloaded it in CD-quality sound, it's fully comparable with the published article. In fact, like other recent Linn recordings, it can even be obtained in better-than-CD quality as a 24-bit studio-quality download. This involves downloading a very large file and listening to the result other than via CD - the file is too large to burn to CD - and I'm perfectly happy with the quality of both Linn's wma and flac 16-bit files. One other user-friendly aspect of Linn's website is that it never seems to suffer from traffic congestion - whatever your broadband speed, some sites will download only at about 50k when they are busy; Acis downloaded at over 800k. Acis and Galatea was originally performed at Cannons, the home of the Earl of Caernarvon, later Duke of Chandos, for whose chapel Handel also composed the Chandos Anthems. The grand house is long gone but the chapel is still there, serving as the parish church, and its baroque splendours indicate how grand the house must have been. Grand though the house was, this first version of Acis was composed on a small scale, which makes it well suited to recording. William Christie (Erato 3984-25505-2, also part of a budget-price 6-CD collection on 2564-695641) has already offered us a chamber-sized performance of the later version, HWV49b, but this is the first attempt to reproduce the original and it is wholly successful. An inexpensive version on Brilliant Classics claimed to employ the original version, but actually uses larger forces - see Robert Hugill's unenthusiastic review. John Butt's superb scholarship would have gone for naught if the end result had not been so convincing, with all concerned giving of their best. The Dunedin Consort and Players repeat the success of their earlier award-winning Messiah and St Matthew Passion. Right from the opening Sinfonia the orchestral playing is a delight - always the right ‘size' to match the smaller vocal forces. ~ 05 January 2009 - MusicWeb International - Brian Wilson ” Track Listings Disc 1 – Act one 1. Sinfonia 3:12 2. Chorus: Oh, the pleasure of the plains! 6:13 3. Accompagnato: Ye verdant plains & woody mountains (Galatea) 0:45 4. Air: Hush, ye pretty warbling choir! (Galatea) 6:17 5. Air: Where shall I seek the charming fair? (Acis) 3:05 6. Recitative: Stay, shepherd, stay! (Damon) 0:22 7. Air: Shepherd, what art thou pursuing? (Damon) 4:10 8. Recitative: Lo, here my love (Acis) 0:30 9. Air: Love in her eyes sits playing (Acis) 6:51 10. Recitative: Oh didst thou know the pains of absent love (Galatea) 0:16 11. Air: As when the dove laments her love (Galatea) 6:57 12. Duet: Happy, happy we! (Acis & Galatea) 2:35 Disc 2 – Act two 1. Chorus: Wretched lovers! 4:25 2. Accompagnato: I rage - I melt - I burn! (Polyphemus) 1:27 3. Air: O ruddier than the cherry (Polyphemus) 3:16 4. Recitative: Whither, fairest, art thou running (Polyphemus, Galatea) 1:11 5. Air: Cease to beauty to be suing (Polyphemus) 5:24 6. Would you gain the tender creature (Coridon) 5:42 7. Recitative: His hideous love provokes my rage (Acis) 0:21 8. Air: Love sounds th' alarm 4:50 9. Air: Consider, fond shepherd 6:41 10. Recitative: Cease, oh cease, thou gentle youth 0:25 11. Trio: The flocks shall leave the mountains (Galatea, Acis, Polyphemus) 3:03 12. Accompagnato: Help, Galatea! Help, ye parent gods! (Acis) 1:30 13. Chorus: Mourn, all ye muses 3:43 14. Solo & Chorus: Must I Acis still bemoan (Galatea) 4:14 15. Recitative: 'Tis done! Thus I exert my pow'r divine (Galatea) 0:19 16. Air: Heart, the seat of soft delight (Galatea) 4:02 17. Chorus: Galatea, dry thy tears 3:18 Product Details Composer: George Frideric Handel Orchestra: Dunedin Consort & Players Conductor: John Butt Susan Hamilton (Galatea) Nicholas Mulroy (Acis) Thomas Hobbs (Damon) Nicholas Hurndall Smith (Coridon) Matthew Brook (Polyphemus) Audio CD (October 27, 2008) Please Note: Requires SACD-compatible hardware SPARS Code: DDD Number of Discs: 2 Format: Super Audio CD - DSD, Import Label: Linn Records ASIN: B001HWU3ZC Dunedin Consort & Players John Butt - Director Susan Hamilton - Galatea Nicholas Mulroy - Acis Thomas Hobbs - Damon Nicholas Hurndall Smith - Coridon Matthew Brook - Polyphemus Acis & Galatea, HWV 49a G.F. Handel - Original Cannons Performing Version (1718) Handel's brief period (1717-1718) at Cannons (near Edgware) as composer to James Brydges, Earl of Carnarvon, was to prove an excellent catalyst for his future success in England. Here, with the handful of professional musicians who constituted the ‘Cannons Concert', he could experiment with instrumental genres and dramas involving English texts without the habitual financial pressures of public performance. His eleven Cannons Anthems constituted his most extensive single collection of English church music and Esther (HWV 50a, then called The Oratorium) became the prototype for the English oratorio, which was to sustain the latter part of his career. Equally important was the pastoral ‘entertainment', Acis and Galatea, which was his first setting of a substantial dramatic English text. He had already set this story - derived from the version in Ovid's Metamorphoses - in an Italian Serenata of 1708 (Acis, Galatea e Polifemo, HWV 72), and poetry in the pastoral genre was well suited to the da capo aria form that Handel had long cultivated in his Italian dramatic works. He was clearly on excellent terms with the major figures in the literary movement concerned with defining and developing English pastoral poetry, a circle centred around another of Handel's patrons. The leading theorist and practitioner was Alexander Pope, whose models lie behind several numbers in Handel's libretto (e.g. ‘Wretched lovers!' and ‘The flocks shall leave the mountains'), closely followed by John Gay, who probably wrote much of the text. Brian Trowell has suggested convincingly that, at some stage in the process of creating Acis and Galatea, it was decided to expand it from a three-character piece (involving Acis, Galatea and Polyphemus alone, as in Handel's Italian setting) to one with an advisor each for Acis and Polyphemus - Damon and Coridon respectively. According to Trowell, much of the newer poetry was added by John Hughes, but other poets might have been involved too, such as one of the Cannons tenors, John Blackley. As Graydon Beeks notes, Blackley wrote the libretto for at least one cantata by Johann Christoph Pepusch, director of the Cannons Concert. The story is disarmingly simple: the nymph Galatea loves the shepherd Acis and he loves her. After an agonizingly protracted separation, they find each other and anticipate everlasting bliss. The giant, Polyphemus (the personification of Mount Etna in some of the earlier versions of the story), has his own ambitions for union with Galatea - her evident repulsion notwithstanding - and eventually kills Acis with an enormous rock (‘massy ruin'), one of only two actions in the entire drama. The final section of the story involves the inevitable lament for Acis and the sorrow of Galatea, the latter realizing that she can use her divine powers to turn Acis into an everlasting fountain. This, the second action, is the metamorphosis that restores order and contentment to the seemingly timeless paradise with which the story began. Despite the comparative lack of narrative flow (many of the arias following one another without the traditional link of recitative), Handel grasped the opportunity to make music the principal means of injecting new life into the pastoral genre, bringing out some of its central implications with a degree of insight and vividness that has seldom been matched. How does our civilization relate to a supposed state of nature or to a past ‘Golden Age'? How do we reconcile reason and the lessons of experience with physical and emotional urges that are undeniably present? Is the natural world at our command or is it always threatening to gain the upper hand? Handel's music can often evoke a state of nature that seems complete in itself and into which human voices enter almost unexpectedly (e.g. the beginning of the opening chorus ‘Oh, the pleasure of the plains!') or surreptitiously (e.g. the final aria ‘Heart, the seat of soft delight'). A musical menagerie of nature skips along, seemingly oblivious to the feelings it stimulates in Galatea, in ‘Hush, ye pretty, pretty warbling choir!', though just twice it seems to respond to her call, perhaps more in parody than sympathy. Yet when she exercises whatever divine power she has, at the end with ‘Heart, the seat of soft delight', the rivulets of the music are delightfully compliant. She seems to teach the early modern human that, while we might not be able to control the volcanic raging of raw nature, we have enough of the divine spark of intelligence to be able to redirect a small watercourse. The music can also support and flesh out the emotions the characters undergo, whether the nervous questing of Acis (‘Where shall I seek the charming fair?'), his almost explosive tenderness in the wake of Galatea's sexual appetite (‘Love in her eyes sits playing'), or his hapless pugnaciousness in ‘Love sounds th' alarm'. If music can both underline and unify the emotions of groups - the unstoppable bubbling of happiness in ‘Happy, happy we!' or the Purcellian funeral lament ‘Mourn, all ye muses' - it can also provide a devastatingly ironic perspective. Just after Polyphemus intends to construct the largest possible pipe of ‘a hundred reeds of decent growth', his attempt at wooing Galatea (‘O ruddier than the cherry') is accompanied by the sopranino recorder, the smallest pipe that Handel could possibly find - an unmanning that is shamelessly direct. As Winton Dean has observed, the portrayal of Polyphemus as a comic character has its precedent in Ovid; ridiculing the darkest forces of nature is surely a healthy step on the way to learning how to control them. Meanwhile, the cynical Damon, ever free with his realistic, worldly advice for Acis, has one of the most compellingly energetic arias (‘Shepherd, what art thou pursuing?') and also one of the most tender and moving numbers (‘Consider, fond shepherd'); it is as if the music gives an unusually subtle beauty to the mode of thought that surrenders unthinkingly neither to personal passion nor to the forces around us, but sizes up the situation with a degree of wry calculation (might we not be hearing something of the voice of Handel himself here?). Most impressive of all is the way Handel balances the static and cyclic mood that dominates the lyric world with the notion of metamorphosis and development. The first ‘state' of the drama, up to the duet ‘Happy, happy we!', is one of timeless recurrence (as suggested by the cycle of seasons in the middle section of the opening chorus, the da capo form bringing the sense of recurrence to actuality in musical time). The love-pains and ultimate satisfaction of Acis and Galatea reflect a human experience common to all ages and cultures; they are thus historically unspecific. The Sinfonia and the duet act as highly energetic bookends to this state, as if the charge of the former sustains us through to that of the latter. An intermediate injection of movement is provided by Damon's aria ‘Shepherd, what art thou pursuing?', which is the only aria in this section that is not in triple or compound time. From this point onwards there is a sense that Acis and Galatea set up complementary metres in their arias (‘Love in her eyes sits playing' in 12/8, followed by ‘As when the dove' in 3/8) which somehow combine in the joyful gigue of ‘Happy, happy we!'. The junction between this duet and the entirely new world of the chorus ‘Wretched lovers!' is one of the most striking wrenches in the piece, articulated by a break in later performances of the masque but apparently continuous at Cannons (unfortunately, it is impossible to convey this continuity in CD format, but this can be demonstrated in the downloadable version of this recording from www.linnrecords.com). This chorus is the first of several movements that ends differently from how it began, as the graphic depiction of the giant Polyphemus gradually dominates the texture, like a storm appearing on the horizon, and thus heralding his actual appearance. Soon, though, the sequence of da capo arias is resumed (four of them, consecutively, are in triple time). The interventions of Coridon and Damon seem to step into the space of the characters they support; Coridon, continuing in the triple time of Polyphemus's ‘Cease to beauty to be suing' with ‘Would you gain the tender creature', but tempering the latter's minor mode with a move to the relative major. Damon's ‘Consider, fond shepherd' likewise follows on directly from Acis's ‘Love sounds th' alarm' with a slower triple time that seems to temper the latter's reckless mood (perhaps relating to the cross-beat ‘hemiola' of the closing bars?). After this follows one of the most remarkable pieces of all, the trio ‘The flocks shall leave the mountains'. Here then is the obvious contrast of mood between the love duet of Acis and Galatea and the increasingly furious interjections of Polyphemus, culminating in his throwing of the rock, which Handel seems to represent in the final play-out (by a very prominent rupturing of the symmetrical da capo principle, which has dominated all arias and duets so far). Yet there is also the sense of foreboding created in the instrumental accompaniment (marked ‘staccato'), which seems both to support the lovers' duet and to hint at what is to come. In all, the counterpoint of character, mood and steady transformation towards Polyphemus's murderous act shows Handel as a composer with the sort of psychological insight usually accorded to Mozart and his followers. It may well be that he would not have devised such a transformatory process had he not felt the incentive to compensate for the static nature of the poetic genre as a whole. The final transformation is, of course, that achieved by Galatea in her final aria, where the expected da capo form is subverted after the moment when she turns the dead Acis into a fountain. As Winton Dean and Ellen Harris have observed, fragments of the opening of the aria are extended and developed, with both the undulating motive and the final lines of text recast in the latter part of the closing chorus. The ‘missing' da capo (missing, just like Acis himself, according to Harris) is thus aptly compensated by the recurrence of the new material in the final bars of the entertainment. If we cannot avoid death, at least lasting benefit can be found if we exercise the powers we still have. In all, Handel has presented a delightful picture of the human world as a place where the paradise of a mythological past is regained in modest increments, building on the lessons learned from inevitable tragedy. The Cannons performing version of Acis and Galatea While the musical forces at Cannons were excellent (they were, after all, led by the composer Johann Christoph Pepusch), their balance was idiosyncratic - even by the standards of the day. As Graydon Beeks has shown, the forces for the Cannons Anthems and Acis and Galatea seem to match those of the house records almost directly. The vocal complement contained no alto and consisted of a soprano, bass and three tenors (thus, presumably, necessitating the expansion of the masque from three voices to five, who together constituted the five-part chorus). The strings seemed to comprise three violins, two ‘cellos and bass (with no violas); however, given that at least one of the later Cannons Anthems seem to require a fourth violin, an extra player may have been available on occasions (Beeks suggests that this could have been Pepusch himself). The two oboists presumably doubled on recorders, thus providing a different sonority for Galatea's final aria (and the first player providing the high recorder obbligato for ‘Hush, ye pretty, pretty warbling choir!' and ‘O ruddier than the cherry'). Beeks has shown that a bassoonist was available at the time of the first performance too. Around this point hinges a misunderstanding in what would otherwise be the most authoritative modern edition of Acis and Galatea (Hallische Händel-Ausgabe), which interprets sources containing reference to the bassoon as evidence of a second distinct performing version of the piece later in 1718. This edition thus privileges the autograph (which contains no reference to bassoon) as the ‘original' performing version of the piece and consequently undervalues several other revisions that were almost certainly made for the first performance. Part of the difficulty lies in the fact that while Handel's composing autograph survives, his revised score is lost (his practice was normally to commission a working copy, sometimes referred to as the ‘performing score' or ‘conducting score', that contained changes he made in the run-up to performances, and which superseded the workings of the autograph, at least in terms of performing versions). Nevertheless, there is a collection of manuscripts preserving strong traces of the lost score, headed by one (dated 1718), largely in the hand of a copyist who later became closely associated with the preparation of Handel's performing scores, J.C. Smith (senior). This is part of the collection of the Earl of Malmesbury, now lodged at the Hampshire Record Office. While this does not contain any of the tell-tale signs of Handel's own hand (which would be the case with a true ‘performing score') it does indeed seem to be the copy of such a score. Most striking is the designation of the five chorus lines with the names of the five characters, thus suggesting that the work was originally performed with just the five singers and no extra chorus (indeed, Handel's autograph similarly gives the names of some of the original singers for the vocal parts of the first chorus). The Malmesbury score also confirms the character of Coridon, whose aria was only prepared for in the autograph score, and which became associated with Damon in some of the later performances (and in modern editions). Beeks and Anthony Hicks note several other important differences with the autograph text: Handel originally marked the opening of ‘Wretched lovers!' as a ‘cello solo, but sources preserving the tradition of the performing score mark this ‘tutti li bassi', thus implying a much fuller sound at the outset. The decision to use a small recorder (‘flauto piccolo ottavo') for ‘O ruddier than the cherry' was also probably made before the first performance, and the ‘cello and harpsichord originally specified for the beginning of ‘Must I my Acis still bemoan' was expanded with bassoon. The fact that the bassoon is specifically noted for this movement might suggest that it is not used continuously elsewhere (the same goes for the double bass and second 'cello). Certainly, later sources suggest that the bassoon was used mainly in the opening and closing instrumental ritornelli of arias (but throughout in those for bass), and this was taken as the starting point for this recording, but, in the absence of clear evidence of Handel's practice here, the layout of the continuo section was developed on an ad hoc basis (likewise for the places where the oboes might double the violin parts). Closer study of the Malmesbury score suggests a few further refinements that Handel may have made for the first performance: it seems to confirm that no oboes were used in ‘Shepherd, what art thou pursuing?' (something which can be inferred by the range and style of the instrumental line but which is not indicated in modern editions); it contains some differences of underlay and rhythm, some (but not all) of which could be read as improvements rather than errors. Finally, and most interestingly, several of the arias begin with a ‘segue' marking (i.e. an indication that they should ‘follow on'); if these do derive from Handel himself, they suggest that he made particular efforts to cultivate a sense of continuity, something requiring more attention given the large number of arias in a row and the comparative lack of connecting recitative. In sum, it seems that Handel took the peculiarities of both the pastoral genre and the forces available to him seriously, giving considerable attention to the opportunities afforded by a small, chamber-like situation. While Handel's music normally benefits from a large number of string players, for instance, here he has carefully devised the violin parts so that they double one another when a more incisive sound is needed, but are otherwise subtly integrated with oboes and voices to create a sonority of particular flexibility and intimacy. I am very grateful for the extraordinarily helpful advice I have received from a number of Handel scholars: to David Vickers, who urged us to look at the early version of Acis afresh, and to Graydon Beeks and Anthony Hicks who were a constant source of advice and information and patiently kept me further away from scholarly error than would otherwise have been the case. Finally, thanks are due to Hampshire Record Office and the Earl of Malmesbury for access to the microfilm of the Malmesbury manuscript. © John Butt, 2008