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Technical Notice
| Classical Composer: | Giuliani, Mauro |
|---|---|
| Work: | Variations on a Theme by Handel, Op. 107 |
| Year Composed: | |
| Duration: | 00:07:00 |
| Work Category: | Instrumental |
Work Information
Available Recording(s)
Baroque composers such as Handel may have been no longer fashionable in Giuliani’s Vienna, but their music was not unknown. Revivals of the music of Bach and his contemporaries became common with the spread of Romanticism; the guitarist Simon Molitor was one of the leaders in this movement. In Giuliani’s day Baroque music was, after all, little more than a half century old, no further removed from him than the music of Gershwin is removed from our own age. Printed editions were too valuable to be thrown away, and a good tune, such as the Air from Handel’s Suite No. 5 for harpsichord, never goes out of fashion. Nor was Giuliani alone in appreciating the theme; his biographer Thomas Heck has observed that the composer Ignaz Moscheles had also varied the theme for the pianoforte at about the same time. Giuliani and Moscheles were friends who occasionally performed and even composed together. In any case, the publication of Op. 107 did not occur until 1827 (also by Ricordi), long after Giuliani had left Vienna and only two years before his death. The name ‘Harmonious Blacksmith’ was not applied to this theme in Handel’s day, nor even in Giuliani’s; it was apparently based on a charming but unverified anecdote first related about a century after Handel’s death by Richard Clark, a Victorian musician and Handel enthusiast.
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