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The Handel organ concertos Op 7, HWV 306–311, refer to the six organ concertos for organ and orchestra composed by George Frideric Handel in London between 1740 and 1751, published posthumously in 1761 by the printing company of John Walsh. They were written for performance during Handel's oratorios, contain almost entirely original material, including some of his most popular and inspired movements.
Contents
Borrowings
Organo ad libitum
Although a complete version of the first set of organ concertos Op.4 appeared in Handel's lifetime in 1738, many of the concertos of the posthumous Op.7 set have missing movements and sections, where Handel would have either used an existing movement solo keyboard from one of his other works or improvised directly. In the case of Op.7 No.1, HWV 306, Handel actually indicates that parts of the Passacaglia from the Suite in G minor HWV 432 for harpsichord are to be played; the score already contains quotations for this work. It is also reported by contemporaries that Handel would often play a slow and quiet voluntary for organ solo as a prelude to his concertos.
After Handel's death, his amanuensis and personal assistant John Christopher Smith collaborated with the mechanical organ maker John Langshaw (1725-1798) in transcribing a selection of Handel's works for chamber barrel organ. Two mechanical "organ machines", operated by a hand crank, were constructed for John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute: the first had 58 barrels, 32 of which were devoted to works by Handel, and was built by the organ-builder John Snetzler and clockmaker Christopher Pinchbeck in 1763, a year after Stuart became Prime Minister; a second had 6 extra barrels and was built by the Bond Street watchmaker Alexander Cumming, who left a detailed inventory for each barrel, including timings in seconds for each movement. One barrel contained the concertos Op.4 No.5 and Op.7 No.3 and another the concerto Op.7 No.4 with the ad libitum slow movement provided by the sarabande and variations on La Folia from Handel's Suite in D minor for harpsichord HWV 437. Cumming's inventory is all that survives of these organs, one having been destroyed in a fire in 1843. There is an existing set of barrels, however, for the chamber barrel organ made by Henry Holland around 1790, now in the Colt Clavier Collection in Kent. These contain two concertos HWV 290 and 294 from Op.4 with elaborate ornamentation supplied by Smith and have been recorded by Erato.
Two modern performing editions of the concertos by the organists and musicologists Peter Williams and Ton Koopman provide missing movements and give suggestions for the ad libitum passages, possibly too earthbound according to some commentators. The recordings of the organists George Malcolm (1976) and Richard Egarr (2009) give further possibilities, which have so far not appeared in printed editions.