Mark Windisch
Between June 1994 and June 2015 Mr Clifford Bartlett published an Early Music magazine entitled “Early Music Review.” Mr Bartlett who had been a librarian and later a publisher of music under the name King’s Music was a greatly respected figure within the Early Music field.
Early Music Review was suffused with the highly personal, very learnèd if slightly eccentric nature of the editor. The format was always the same. The front page had an editorial. The following pages were filled with reviews of musical publications, books, (sometimes books only obliquely connected with music) and articles from learned sources, following the latest performance trends. There followed several pages of reviews of CDs and often there was a piece of music, sometimes a piece that was not widely available, arranged by Mr Bartlett or his colleague Mr Brian Clark. Every issue contained a very witty and appropriate cartoon by Mr David Hill. Occasionally there was a seasonal recipe. Finally, there were letters from correspondents, often complaining about a review which was perhaps considered to be unfair. Handel often featured in the magazine and articles were often provided by well-known scholarly people.
Sadly, Mr Bartlett died in 2019 after a spell of mental and physical decline. As both he and the relevant contributor are now deceased, I thought readers might be intrigued by this account – a disagreement between a reviewer and a conductor about a CD of Handel’s music. The conductor was Mr Joachim Carlos Martini (1931-2015) and the reviewer, a name familiar to all Handelians, was Mr Tony Hicks (1943-2010).
The piece in question was a Naxos recording promoted as the premiere recording of Handel’s only Italian choral oratorio, entitled Il Trionfo di Tempo e della Verita. Handel devotees will know that this is one of Handel’s first oratorios and is in the Roman style with conversations between characters representing ideas rather than people. In this particular one, Beauty has to decide between Pleasure and Duty before finally reaching enlightenment. Handel returned to the theme several times as described below.
Mr Bartlett clearly thought that this was an important issue, both stimulating and contentious and gave Mr Hicks sufficient space in the magazine to write a detailed review of the recording, far more than was normally allocated for CD reviews. The recording had been taken from a live performance using Die Junge Kantorei, an amateur choir that Mr Martini had founded and it was subsequently marketed under the Naxos label. Mr Martini had already issued a large number of works by Handel in this way.
Mr Hicks’ first point is that in some of the other recordings prior to Il Trionfo Mr Martini had inserted movements from other works by Handel which Handel had never used in that context. In other words, Mr Martini was rather prone to alter Handel’s compositions without any clear justification. In this case Mr Hicks, who had not long since produced a score for this work for performance at the London Handel Festival, thought that Martini had overstepped the mark and said so.
Readers will no doubt know that this work was first produced by Handel in Rome in 1707 under the title Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno (The Triumph of Time and Disillusion) HWV46a. Cardinal Benedetto Pamphili produced the libretto. 30 years later (1737&1739) Handel revised and expanded it twice into three sections under the title Il Trionfo del Tempo e della Verita (The Triumph of Time and Truth) HWV 46b. After a further 20 years (when the composer was blind and towards the end of his life,) the oratorio was further expanded and revised with a libretto in English by Thomas Morell, (probably with John Christopher Smith assembling the score with Handel’s knowledge) as The Triumph of Time and Truth HWV 71.
It seems that, in the Martini recording, the 1737 version was enhanced by 49 minutes of additional music from the 1707 version and whole pieces from the 1739 version. Mr Hicks’ opinion was that Handel had removed the 1707 extracts in 1737 because they were not appropriate for the mood and context of the 1737 performance. In other words, as the composer, he had his reasons. Mr Martini’s additions from the 1739 version were anachronistic. To make matters worse, the CD notes were no help in explaining how Mr Martini arrived at his decision to create a Frankenstein version of the oratorio.
To his credit, Mr Hicks softens the blow by paying tribute to Mr Martini’s musicianship and praises his attempt to produce as much of Handel’s fine music as possible. However he didn’t hide his disappointment at the lost opportunity to release a recording of a version with integrity at a reasonable price, courtesy of Naxos. Mr Hicks likes the soloists, but the chorus is another matter and comes in for severe criticism.
When it comes to detailed analysis (in which Mr Hicks as a trained mathematician excelled) of the score which Mr Martini had constructed, Mr Hicks highlights a whole raft of solecisms. One is the strange justification given of having consulted another Handel scholar Mr Bernd Baselt about the use of the carillon. It seems that Mr Martini, having found out that Handel used the carillon to replace a solo violin at one point, ignored the fact that the carillon is a transposing instrument and inserted a part for it in the wrong key, thus failing to link properly to Belezza’s aria.
Handel omitted the Sarabande, ‘Lascia la spina’ which opens the 1707 version, but Mr Martini put it back in and follows it with an elaborate harpsichord arrangement taken from Almira and then puts in the aria. Later he adds a section from Acis and Galatea under the title Interludium. There are several more insertions which Mr Hicks considered inappropriate.
Mr Hicks refers to his own work on preparing the 1737 score for the performance at the London Handel Festival with Paul Nicholson conducting. His review of Mr Martini makes it patently clear he considers that to present a work which departs so much from Handel’s intention is an offence to both performers and audience. At this point he reveals his own agenda: he fears any record companies would be reluctant to bring the properly-produced version to the marketplace on the basis that Mr Martini’s version has already captured the market.
The London Handel Festival performed the 1707 version in 1997. On 30th April 1998 they performed Il Trionfo del Tempo e della Verita in the 1737 version in St George’s with Emma Kirby as Belezza, Jeni Bern as Piacere, Catherine Denley as Disinganno and Robin Blaze as Tempo. The following year on 17th April they performed the 1757 Triumph of Time and Truth in the English version complete with Emma Kirkby as Beauty, Joanne Lunn as Deceit, Catherine Denley as Counsel, Ian Partridge as Pleasure and James Rutherford as Time. Paul Nicholson conducted the piece. The 1757 version, The Triumph of Time and Truth was recorded by Hyperion on CDA66071/2 at St Jude-on-the-Hill Hampstead London featuring Gillian Fisher as Beauty, Emma Kirkby as Deceit, Counsel or Truth by Charles Brett, Pleasure by Ian Partridge, and Time by Stephen Varcoe conducted by Denys Darlow.
Mr Martini wrote to Early Music Review in response to Mr Hicks’ article, pleading artistic licence to follow what he calls traditional ways of performing Handel’s oratorios and mentioning discussions with several Handel luminaries. In his rather rambling reply, he offers little evidence but only mentions the names of several people he had conversations with. In reply Mr Hicks outlined at some length the scholarly approach that he himself applied in providing performing scores for these three works. The notes in the London Handel Festival Programmes in 1997, 1998 and 1999 are models of clarity, describing the research Mr Hicks carried out to produce the performing scores for the Festival. The only relevant further contribution from Mr Hicks concerns Mr Martini’s insistence that Handel used amateur choirs in his oratorios. This is patently incorrect. Handel only used professional singers in his choirs.
The question for lovers of Handel’s music is whether we prefer to hear a work as we believe Handel intended or whether an artistic director has the right to create an anachronistic compilation edition at will. The choice is between Mr Hicks’ precise scholarship versus Mr Martini’s cavalier pursuit of his own musical instincts. I have no doubt which path I prefer.