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Author
George Fredrick Handel (1685-1759: German)
About the Piece
(much of thedescription comes from elements that were brought out by Forney and Machlis, The Enjoyment of Music, and the accompanying DVD)
- Genre is dance suite
- Ternary form, A-B-A
- multiple motives repeated throughout by different instruments
- clearly designed for an outdoor performance, to be heard from a distance
- homophonic, with interspersed imitative counterpoint
- alternates between disjunct (motive a) to conjunct (motive b)
- switch to minor key in middle of piece
Purpose
- outdoor performance for a royal outing on the Thames River
Reflections
This piece must have sounded quite majestic when played from the Thames river. I certainly find it relaxing as background music, but I don't think I have a good enough appreciation of music (yet!) to enjoy listening to all of the movements of this work without doing something to keep my mind occupied. (I frequently feel the same about modern popular music also). I would like to get better about that over the course of this class.