do handel's cantatas matter? - BOLbusiness

216 ELLEN T. HARRIS
[4
musical achievements at Florence and at Venice had reached
that metropolis [Rome] long before him. His arrival therefore
was immediately known, and occasioned civil enquires and
polite messages from persons of the first distinction there» 7 .
Cardinal Pamphili stands out as an important patron of
Handel’s not only on account of the early documented evidence
of compositions. In addition, the opportunity Handel,
a Lutheran, had to play an organ recital at the church of S.
Giovanni Laterano, the Pope’s own sanctuary, must likely be
attributed to Pamphili, who had been named archpriest of the
Lateran in 1699, a post he held until his death in 1730 8 . When
Handel arrived in Rome, he probably carried with him letters
of introduction from Florence, or, alternatively such letters
may have preceded him. The early association of Handel in
Rome with Pamphili, suggests that a recommendation might
have come from Cardinal Francesco Maria de’ Medici, a
«grande amico» of Pamphili, according to his biographer Lina
Montalto 9 . The two men apparently shared musical interests;
in 1690 Pamphili had sent Cardinal Medici a richly bound set
of cantatas by Alessandro Scarlatti, including a Lucrezia romana
with a text by Pamphili 10 . Perhaps in late 1706, Cardinal
Medici gave Handel a letter of introduction to Pamphili
to be accompanied with a gift of Handel’s La Lucrezia, a cantata
I place into the pre-Rome compositional period 11 , com-
7
JOHN MAINWARING, Memoirs of the Life of the late George Frederic
Handel, London, R. and J. Dodsley, 1760; fac. ed.: Buren, Fritz Knuf,
1964/1975, pp. 51, 54.
8
LINA MONTALTO, Un mecenate in Roma barocca: Il Cardinale
Benedetto Pamphilj (1653-1730), Florence, Sansoni, 1955, «La colomba
Pamphilja nella basilica lateranense fra il 1699 e il 1730», pp. 433-449.
9 Ivi, p. 232.
10 Ivi, p. 330.
11
HARRIS, Handel as Orpheus, pp. 88-90; 269-270; 49-58, 73-76. KIRK-
ENDALE, Ruspoli Documents, argued that this cantata was written in Rome
(pp. 246-247); see also Idem, Handel with Ruspoli, pp. 326-327, where she
reiterates her argument for a Roman provenance for La Lucrezia and dismisses
the possibility of dating this and other works by style or handwrit-