Though Handel had already created major narrative works in English (Acis and Galatea, Esther, Deborah, Athalia, the mighty Saul, the epic Israel in Egypt, not to mention his two Cecilian odes, Alexander's Feast and Dryden's shorter Ode to St. Cecilia, and a body of religious works), the great train of English oratorios lay still ahead. Handel was still experimenting with his English voice. His Italianate explorations had taught him the human voice: what it can do, where it can go (and where it mustn't); the declamatory/rhetorical aspects of musical expression; how to paint nature-pictures in myriad dimensions; how to compose a sigh, yearning, laughter, sorrow and the many other emotions Italian composers had been exploring and codifying for a century and more.

With L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato Handel attained a consistency in expressive English text setting that he had already mastered in Italian. Circumstances forced the situation, but Handel's unique musical and linguistic genius provided the means. John Milton's masterly early ode extolling the contrasting temperaments of Mirth and Melancholy offered a vast palette of expressive language, an almost embarrassing richness of imagery and detail, from which Handel created a musical landscape of astounding beauty.

Milton's two contrasting, but parallel, poems are early works written while he lingered in Cambridge after completing his degree studies. A hot-headed young man of early-acknowledged gifts, Milton's purpose in constructing L'Allegro and Il Penseroso may have been academic, but these are wonderful poems portraying a sweep of human activities and some breathtaking descriptions of the English countryside. The poems seem miles distant from the fervent Samson Agonistes and Paradise Lost, but cloaked within their classical/mythological references and resonant elegance there lies a longing for the reassurances of a simpler life that must speak to every generation. L'Allegro/Penseroso's dual structure is in the nature of a debate between personified abstractions. Centuries earlier such works as The Battle of Rhetoric and Grammar and The Dialogue of the Belly and the Head provided models. In Milton's day the formula was sometimes employed in prize essays.

At first, Milton's poems would seem unlikely vehicles for musical setting by a composer whose background was so extensively operatic. L'Allegro offers no compelling characters working their way through dramatic exposition, conflict, denouement. But Handel, "converting to new ends the flexibility of form gained in Athalia and Saul, exploits Milton's concrete imagery to paint a series of genre pictures almost tangible in their sensuous perception, the most vivid evocation in music of the English countryside," says Winton Dean in the New Grove's.

Charles Jennens, Handel's frequent collaborator and librettist, gets a large measure of credit for his work on Milton's twinned poems — and an even larger share of blame for his bravado in adding a final section of his own devising. His method in dealing with Milton was brilliant. By interweaving portions of Milton's two poems rather than presenting each of them complete (and by eliminating about one hundred lines from the two poems in the process), Jennens gave Handel a surrogate for the dramatic conflict the composer needed.

Allegro means brisk, lively. "It depicts a world where people work and play together; their Mirth is not debauchery, but a civilized and social amusement they delight to make for each other," wrote Peter Kronenberg in a note for The Boston Cecilia's performance of this work in 1976. "Penseroso means thoughtful; we could render Il Penseroso as The Philosopher. Our philosopher's Melancholy is a solution for the problems of life: he finds his peace in solitude and contemplation of a beautiful world."

Moderato, so Jennens tells us, was written at Handel's request. It satisfies a Georgian need for balance, an ideal that would have been left unrequited had Milton's two poems been left, as it were, unanswered. The problem is that the poetry is an embarrassment, especially so by comparison with what has preceded it — almost painful to read. Handel dealt with Moderato admirably. The level of inspiration is less consistent than in the Parts One and Two, but at least two movements rank among Handel's finest.

Jennens himself was very aware of Moderato's shortcomings, or at least of the criticism it elicited. Christopher Hogwood quotes from a Jennens letter in which he explains that his purpose was to unite the two Milton poems into one "Moral Design." The effort "met with smart censures from I don't know who. I overheard one in the Theatre saying it was Moderato indeed, & the Wits at Tom's Coffee House honour'd it with the Name of Moderatissimo ..."

The musical marvels of L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato are too numerous to cite here, but a few of the notable moments are worth anticipating in performance. At the very beginning the Allegro character denounces his opposite number over an orchestral sonority (divided bassoons and lower strings) reminiscent of the desolate landscape where "lie unburied the Grecian dead" of Alexander's Feast. Is this to be an evening of tragedy? Penseroso's response, reproving Allegro's "vain deluding joys" might suggest as much, but the following air makes the terms of engagement clear. This will be a contest of competing humors or temperaments, and clearly Milton and Handel see themselves as spokesmen for both, taking great pleasure in making the cases for both.

What Nymph could resist the invitation to join in the upcoming "youthful jollity?" The laughter is infectious and a little crude; the whole town joins in — a good party it is, too. Then we'll dance "the light fantastic" without a care. Surely, Allegro is going to win this debate. Penseroso is not so sure. The pensive nun makes her case for "Calm peace and quiet." The sublime "sweet bird that shun'st the noise of folly" joins an appeal, one of the high points in 18th century music, a gracious dialogue between species, "so musical, so melancholy." In the B section Handel's response to Milton's "moon riding near her highest noon" is an octave and a half diatonic ascent in the voice that can leave no mortal spine untingled.

On it goes. Mirth gets a rousing horn obbligato. Pizzicato basses sound the curfew. Handel's orchestrational genius in L'Allegro is unequalled in any other work of his. Listen for the cricket's chirping on the hearth, and the "bellman's drowsy charm." The air, "Straight mine eye," might have been a conventional da capo, but Handel substitutes a most unconventional and stirring accompagnato for these "mountains...rivers wide...battlements." The first part ends with one of Handel's most rollicking movements in which the quirky carillon (a keyed glockenspiel of a type that Handel used only a few times, but always to felicitous effect) creates a merry stir, that is, until all collapse into sleep.

In Part Two, "Gorgeous tragedy" is portrayed with majestic lines in voice and orchestra. The "sad virgin," seeking to raise "Museaus from his bower," employs virtuoso strains in an elegant duet with the five string cello piccolo. Populous cities appeal to Allegro's taste. Strings, mostly without bass, provide supple support as Penseroso asks to be hidden "from day's garish eye." At the end of Part Two, Penseroso would seem to win the day, as the organ improvises a peal to the "full-voic'd choir below," and, with exquisite resignation, she longs for "a peaceful hermitage" where she may sit "Til old experience do attain/to something like prophetic strain."

With Jennens' Moderato Handel contends honorably and in the case of the air, accompagnato and chorus, "Come with native lustre shine" and the duet, "As steals the morn," with distinction.

"It cannot be accidental that the finest poetry (Handel) encountered — Milton, Dryden, Congreve and a few lines of Pope — inspired some of his richest music," says Winton Dean.

Handel's first performances of L'Allegro made use of a single soprano as Penseroso and a soprano, tenor and bass for Allegro. When Boston Cecilia last performed the work (minus Moderato) in 1976, we followed that same formula but included a second soprano in the Penseroso portions, as in tonight's performance. In the earlier performance the soloists were Diana Hoagland, Elizabeth Parcells, Barbara Wallace, Karl Dan Sorensen and James Maddelena.

The Boston Cecilia performed this piece at New England Conservatory's Jordan Hall in Boston in October 1996.