Handel and the Chapel Royal
The Gentlemen of the Chapel Royal constituted one of the most important bodies of professional singers in London, and in his theatre oratorios Handel seems to have drawn upon them for his chorus singers, and even occasionally for soloists. The choristers also provided him with a succession of chorus and solo singers, the latter referred to only in Handel’s scores as ‘The Boy’. Handel seems to have developed a close professional relationship with Bernard Gates, the Master of the Children from 1727 onwards, and perhaps the most important contribution that the Chapel made to Handel’s oratorios was through the training that Gates seems to have given to his charges, which enabled the most talented to follow professional careers once their voices had broken and they had left the Chapel establishment. Most notably, the bass William Savage and the tenor John Beard, both of them Gates-trained, featured in Handel’s operas in the later 1730s, and Beard indeed became Handel’s longest-serving English soloist for the oratorios.
Although Handel’s career was initially principally established in London through the Italian operas performed at the King’s Theatre, it is not surprising that he seems to have made early contact with the circuit of English professional singers associated with the Chapel. (The leading singers also held simultaneous posts at Westminster Abbey and St Paul’s Cathedral.) On his return to London in the latter part of 1712, after a sojourn in Hanover, Handel seems to have made a decision that he would complement his activities as an opera house composer by making his mark in English church music. Accordingly he composed one work that related closely enough to the English organ-accompanied ‘verse anthem’, for performance at the Chapel Royal, and then, early in 1713, wrote a setting of the Te Deum and Jubilate that was accepted for performance at the Royal Service at St Paul’s Cathedral on the Day of Public Thanksgiving (7 July) for the Peace of Utrecht. Here, adapting in a general way (but in his own style) the model established by Purcell’s D major canticles from 1694, Handel established a new grand ceremonial style for English church music, that was further extended by his Coronation Anthems for King George II and Queen Caroline in 1727, and then by the Funeral Anthem for Queen Caroline ten years later.
This grand style was appropriate to the large public occasions and the large buildings (St Paul’s Cathedral and Westminster Abbey) for which the music was written, but Handel recognised that it was not appropriate for the more intimate spaces of the Chapel Royal at St James’s Palace. The music that he composed for services at the Chapel Royal is nevertheless on a rather larger canvas than the chamber-scale anthems that he wrote in 1717–18 for James Brydges (subsequently Duke of Chandos) and which were first performed at the Church of St Lawrence that served the Cannons estate at Edgware. A rather more substantial body of performers was involved — probably about 10 Gentlemen, 6 boys and an orchestra of about 15 — but on the other hand the music is more compact in expression and includes few extended solo arias. Nevertheless, the leading Chapel Royal soloists have important roles in the music, alternately slipping into prominence and then merging back into the choral texture. The Chapel’s particular strength was in alto and bass voices, and Handel made full use of the individual talents of Francis Hughes (alto) and Samuel Weely (bass) in the anthems from the 1720s which feature in AAM’s programme, whose roles are taken in our performance by Michael Chance and Michael George.