Program Notes: Handel, Coronation Anthems

The Boston Cecilia performed these pieces at New England Conservatory's Jordan Hall in Boston on November 5, 2005.

Handel's music for the Church is mostly of the ceremonial/celebratory style, honoring a battle won or a national escape from threat. Expressing a purely personal opinion, I must say I have little enthusiasm for most of it. Too often it seems to be inflated beyond what the musical substance can support. Not so for the Coronation Anthems of 1727. Perhaps it was the occasion itself: a German immigrant receiving the highest accolade the English nation could give him, the opportunity to write four works on sacred texts for the installation of a German monarch. Whatever the motivation, the four anthems are indeed ceremonial, as the circumstances required, but they are also fine music, keenly responsive to the texts and so appropriate to the event for which composed that at least one of them, Zadok, has been performed at every coronation since.

Read notes on other pieces performed in the same concert:

Handel's The Choice of Hercules
Handel's solo cantata, Qualor Crudele

© 2004 Donald Teeters. All rights reserved.