Movement 1: Sonata: Larghetto – Allegro
Movement 2: As pants the hart for cooling streams
Movement 3: Tears are my daily food
Movement 4: Now when I think thereupon
Movement 5: In the voice of praise and thanksgiving
Movement 6: Why so full of grief, O my soul?
Susan Gritton (soprano), Thomas Hobbs (tenor), Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Stephen Layton (conductor)
Movement 7: Put thy trust in God
The opening two-movement sonata features virtuosic writing for the first violin and a cleverly constructed fugue. The chorus that follows, ‘As pants the hart for cooling streams’, is built on a point of imitation that had been used throughout the seventeenth century. Although there are only three vocal parts (soprano, tenor and bass), the contrapuntal texture is often in four parts with the oboe providing the additional voice.
The soprano aria ‘Tears are my daily food’ begins with a duet between the oboe and bassoon and subsequently contrasts the languid nature of ‘tears’ with the pointed interjections of ‘where is now thy God?’. The following recitative features the first violin playing rapidly arpeggiated chords representing the agitation of the singer as he remarks, ‘Now when I think thereupon, I pour out my heart by myself’. The tenor soloist here and elsewhere in the Cannons Anthems needs a light voice with good flexibility and access to reliable high notes. The specific singer for whom Handel wrote may have been a late example of what at the end of the seventeenth century would have been termed a ‘low countertenor’.
The chorus ‘In the voice of praise and thanksgiving’ again displays Handel’s contrapuntal skill, presenting the thematic material in both its original and inverted forms. The following duet, ‘Why so full of grief, O my soul?’, pairs oboe and violin and then soprano and tenor over a walking bass. Most of the interplay is contrapuntal, with the singers posing questions to each other. This makes the moments when they sing together—such as the repetitions of ‘why’ near the end of the movement—especially dramatic.
The concluding chorus, ‘Put thy trust in God’, begins with a long florid passage for the tenor voice. Handel did not explicitly designate this to a solo voice, almost certainly because he had only one tenor singer for the initial performance at Cannons. When performed with larger vocal forces it makes sense to assign it to the tenor soloist, following the practice of contemporary Oxford-based musicians working under the direction of William Hayes, an experienced conductor of Handel’s music.
from notes by Graydon Beeks © 2013