Handel: Interactions and Influences The Foundling Museum, London, and the Bridewell Centre, London, 19–21 November 2021

Abstract

The 2021 Handel Institute Conference went ahead as an in-person event despite continuing diffi-culties for international travel. Some speakers had to withdraw very late in the day, to be replaced by members of the Institute ’ s council, who gave papers that either had been presented at other recent events or had had to be withdrawn. A small conference in plenary sessions grouping papers into pairs in generous slots of forty minutes each – making for a very welcome convivial atmosphere – it was a triumph in the circumstances. This year ’ s theme, Interactions and Influences, was prompted by the anniversary of Royal Academy opera Muzio Scevola (1721), composed jointly by Amadei, Bononcini and Handel. In the end, only five of the sixteen papers addressed it directly. Nevertheless, many of them, presented by emerging and established scholars based in the UK, Europe and the US, were of extremely high quality. The stimulating tone was set from the beginning by a refreshing and imaginative harpsichord recital by Bridget Cunningham after an evening reception at the Foundling Museum. It interspersed selected movements from Handel ’ s ground-breaking 1720 Suites de Pieces with little-performed contemporary arrangements of arias from Muzio Scevola and Floridante . Fittingly enough, the first paper the following morning, my Woolley, Nova was concerned with the keyboard music Handel composed before his Italian period. I proposed on the basis of the ritornello-like structures in some these pieces that Handel perhaps the first German composer to explore the Italian instrumental-concerto style and that through it he developed skills as a virtuoso keyboard player. This presentation was paired with a wide-ranging paper North Texas) on the eighteenth-century reception of Handel ’ s Water Music and Music for the Royal Fireworks . the role of these suites in framing the monarchy ’ s public image and highlighted their historical significance, they heard in concert-like settings that, for