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214 ELLEN T. HARRIS [2 most biographers as early compositions with relatively uninteresting texts, typically depicting the trials of a lovelorn shepherd and «couched in a fashionable pastoral convention» 3 ; with a few familiar exceptions (such as La Lucrezia and Agrippina condotta a morire) they tend to be passed over quickly on the way to what has been considered Handel’s genuine (and much more substantive) musical contributions of opera, oratorio, anthem, suite and concerto. I have always felt differently. From my first contact with the cantatas, I marveled at their musical richness, and as I continued to study them I became increasingly convinced of their importance to Handel’s life and musical development. Their compositional history paints a distinctive picture of private music patronage, so different from the public arena that quickly absorbed Handel after his arrival in London; the texts, behind a pastoral façade, embody a deeply emotional utterance resonant of personal, political and religious issues; and the musical settings illustrate a composer already in the first bloom of his maturity in both the musical penetration of the text and the development of stylistic features that distinguish his most advanced works. My book Handel as Orpheus: Voice and Desire in the Chamber Cantatas (2001) looks at Handel’s astonishing corpus of cantatas in these three ways – in terms of context, text and music – and my hope is that in time it will prove to have played a role in the increasing recognition of the surpassing beauty of these works4 . I rejoice, therefore, in the plan of La Risonanza to perform and record all of Handel’s instrumental cantatas cangelo Corelli, in «Analecta Musicologica» 5 (1968), pp. 104-177; idem, Ein Beitrag Händels zur Accademia Ottoboniana in Rom, in «Hamburger Jahrbuch für Musikwissenschaft» 1 (1974), pp. 69-86; idem, Händel im Rom- Seine Beziehung zu Benedetto Card. Pamphilj, in «Händel Jahrbuch» 29 (1983), pp. 107-118; idem, Die ‘Giustificazioni della Casa Pamphilj’ als Musikgeschichtliche Quelle, in «Studi Musicali» 12 (1983), pp. 121-187. 3 DONALD BURROWS, Handel, New York, Schirmer Books, 1994, p. 24. 4 ELLEN T. HARRIS, Handel as Orpheus: Voice and Desire in the Chamber Cantatas, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 2001.
3] «Cantate, que me veux-tu?», or: Do Handel’s cantatas matter? 215 with close attention to the autograph scores and the original performing forces and style. I am very grateful to the group for making it possible for me to be here for this first performance in Brescia, and I am honored to have the opportunity to speak to you today. For my paper, I would like to focus on a work we will hear tonight, the first cantata of Handel’s to be named in contemporary documents: Il delirio amoroso. An entry in the account books of Cardinal Benedetto Pamphili dated 12 February 1707 provides a detailed bill for copying «di musica nella Cantata intitolata *Il delirio amoroso… Composta in musica dal S. re Giorgio Hendel» 5 . Although this extremely important document provides the earliest piece of firm evidence about Handel’s Italian compositions, it does not indicate that Il delirio amoroso was the first cantata Handel wrote in Italy. However, the date of the bill must follow the composition and copying, and may postdate the performance as well, taking us as far back as January 1707, close to the time when Handel first arrived in Rome. Francesco Valesio mentions in a diary entry of 14 January «un sassone eccelente sonatore di cembalo e compositore di musica» who has recently arrived in Rome and who had that day demonstrated his skill «in sonare l’organo nella chiesa di S. Giovanni con stupore di tutti» 6 . As Handel probably left Germany soon after the production of Reinhold Keiser’s Octavia in Hamburg in August, 1705, he was probably in northern Italy for at least a year before his arrival in Rome. His first biographer John Mainwaring says just that, placing the composer first in Florence for «near a year» and then in Venice. There can be little doubt that Handel was musically active during this time, as, again, Mainwaring states: «The fame of his 5 MARX, Giustificazioni, p. 177. 6 URSULA KIRKENDALE, Orgelspiel im Lateran und andere Erinnerungen an Händel: Ein unbeachteter Bericht in ‘Voiage historique’ von 1737, in «Die Musikforschung» 41 (1988), pp. 1-9 (1); OTTO ERICH DEUTSCH, Handel: A Documentary Biography, New York, Da Capo Press, 1974, p. 19 (in English translation).
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