George Frideric Handel

by Herbert F. Peyser

“THUS SAITH THE LORD,” FROM THE “MESSIAH.”

As Handel wrote it, and—

As Christopher Smith transcribed it.

Still, by the spring of 1741, Handel in a moment of profoundest disheartenment prepared to throw up the sponge and leave for good and all his home for the past thirty years. At long last he was fed up on the struggle and announced one last concert for April 8, 1741. And then, when the darkness before dawn seemed blackest, he sat down to create his masterpiece, the most universally beloved choral work ever composed!

That summer Charles Jennens gave Handel a compilation of Scriptural texts which he called “Messiah.” Jennens was a literary amateur, born at Gopsall Hall, Leicestershire and educated at Balliol College, Oxford. Rich and bizarre, he was vastly conceited and especially proud of the manner in which he had assembled the various Biblical texts used in this case. Handel had been associated with him before—in the oratorio, “Saul” (1739), and in “L’Allegro ed Il Penseroso” a year later, as a supplement to which he had added some poor verses of his own to the lines of Milton and called the product “Il Moderato.” Robert Manson Myers thinks it “extraordinary that Handel turned to this eccentric millionaire for his libretto of ‘Messiah’.” Jennens was of another mind and even later wrote to an acquaintance: “I shall show you a collection I gave Handel, called ‘Messiah’ which I value highly; he has made a fine entertainment of it, though not near so good as he might and ought to have done.... There are some passages far unworthy of Handel, but even more unworthy of ‘Messiah’”; and deploring Handel’s “maggots” he added that he had “with greatest difficulty made him correct some of the grossest faults in the composition.” Doubtless Handel, had he so chosen, could have picked his texts himself; he compiled the book of “Israel in Egypt” unaided in 1738 and when, a good deal earlier, the Bishop of London wanted to help him with the words for the “Coronation Anthems” he retorted: “I have read my Bible very well, and I shall choose for myself!” Mr. Myers, in his encyclopedic study of “Messiah” feels certain that Handel must have controlled the choice of passages selected.

Like Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Schubert and other supreme musicians Handel could create with a rapidity which ignominiously shames composers of our supposedly “speedy” age. Even bearing that fact in mind, the composition of “Messiah” between Saturday, August 22, 1741, and Monday, September 14, following remains one of the miracles of music. Shut up in a little room on the first floor of his home on Lower Brook Street, Hanover Square, none can say exactly what went on. Handel is supposed to have uttered afterwards the words of St. Paul: “Whether I was in my body or out of my body as I wrote it I know not.” Nobody seems to have dared intrude upon this mystic concentration. Food was left near him but usually found untouched when the servant came to remove it. He sat at his desk like a stone figure and stared into space. Sometimes his man stood in awe to see his master’s tears drop on the music paper and mingle with the ink. “When he was composing ‘He was despised’ a visitor is reported to have found the trembling composer sobbing with intense emotion.” And after the “Hallelujah Chorus” he uttered those historic words: “I did think I did see all Heaven before me, and the great God Himself!” The autograph score, with its blots, its angry erasures and general untidiness, offers fierce evidence of his tumultuous feelings and flaming ecstasies. Possibly between April and late August of 1741 he was shut up in his four walls planning the work, for we have no clear idea just what he did during this period. Sketches and fragments do not clear up what mystery there may be, for the composer destroyed all but some fugitive scraps.

Handel appears to have “been reluctant to submit such music to the capricious taste of aristocratic London.” So when William Cavendish, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, invited him to visit Dublin and permit the public of “that generous and polite Nation” hear his oratorios Handel assented at once, the more so because it was a question of assisting three benevolent institutions of Ireland (one of them the Charitable Musical Society for the Relief of Imprisoned Debtors). With his usual impulsiveness he even agreed to present “some special oratorio” solely for the benefit of the unfortunates jailed for debt. And he was happy to shake the dust of London from his feet for a while. Before starting on his Irish journey, incidentally, he composed in a fortnight part of another oratorio, “Samson”, based on Milton’s “Samson Agonistes” and containing that noble air of lament, “Total Eclipse”, which was to affect him so poignantly some years later. For his Dublin productions he had two exceptional woman singers—Susannah Maria Cibber (also an illustrious tragic actress) and Signora Avolio, a highly trained Italian. The chorus was recruited from Dublin’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral and Christchurch.

“Messiah” did not receive its first hearing till April 13, 1742. Reports emanating from the last rehearsals greatly whetted public appetite and on the morning of April 13 Faulkner’s Journal ran the following: “This day will be performed Mr. Handell’s new Grand Sacred Oratorio, called the Messiah. The doors will be opened at Eleven, and the performance begin at Twelve. The Stewards of the Charitable Musical Society request the favor of the ladies not to come with hoops this day to the Musick Hall in Fishamble Street. The Gentlemen are desired to come without their swords.” Mr. Myers relates that “Handel’s ‘polite’ audience comprised ‘Bishops, Deans, Heads of the Colledge, the most eminent People in the Law, as well as the Flower of Ladyes of Distinction and other People of the greatest quality.’” The audience was transported. In some ways the heroine of the occasion was Mrs. Cibber, who sang the air “He was despised” with such tenderness and pathos that the Reverend Patrick Delany, who had harbored a bitter prejudice against actresses and singers so far forgot himself that he rose and solemnly exclaimed: “Woman, for this be all thy sins forgiven thee!”

It was late in August, 1742, before Handel returned to London. The hostility of the English aristocracy was still strong and continued for some years, although the forceful voice of Alexander Pope had been raised in his favor, little as that poet is said to have known about music. But Pope’s acknowledged belief in Handel’s “talent” did something toward disarming the composer’s enemies. However, he was in no hurry to let London hear “Messiah” in spite of all the great things spoken and written about it. Not till February, 1743, did Handel plunge once more into the eddies of music-making in the metropolis—not, indeed, with operatic schemes as of old but with a plan for a series of subscription concerts at Covent Garden, offering “Samson” as the first attraction.

He took his time before bringing forward “Messiah”. Even before he could advertise it his hypocritical foes in fashionable circles began a campaign against the “profanation” and the “pious” raised loud cries; clergymen in particular were scandalized “at the sacrilege of converting the Life and Passion of Christ into a theatrical entertainment.” Even the idea of printing the word Messiah on a program led Handel to the expedient of announcing his great work simply as “A Sacred Oratorio.” At that, the embattled clerics tried to enjoin the performance “on the ground that Covent Garden Theatre was a place of worldly amusement and that in any case public entertainments during Lent were sacrilegious.” However, the “Sacred Oratorio” was at last given its first London hearing on March 23, 1743. The composer conducted, Signora Avolio, Mrs. Cibber, John Beard and Thomas Lowe were the chief soloists. And here let us cite once more Robert Manson Myers’ superb study of the masterpiece:

“As the glorious strains of the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’ burst upon the awed assemblage, thick-witted George II found himself so deeply affected by Handel’s music (or so eager to shift his position) that he started to his feet with all the spontaneous verve a sixty-year-old gout-ridden monarch could muster. Instantly his phlegmatic courtiers also rose, and since no Englishman may remain seated while his King is standing, the audience at once followed suit, thus inaugurating a custom which persists to the present day. Actually the King’s gesture was more a tribute to Handel’s impressive music than an instance of exceptional religious devotion....

“It is a curious indication of public taste that this casual Eighteenth Century ‘fashion’ has remained for two centuries an inviolable tradition both in England and in America. Even today thousands who can scarcely distinguish F sharp from middle C punctiliously observe a custom established by a stupid Hanoverian king and his worldly court two hundred years ago.”

Thanks to bigotry and organized religiosity, however, “Messiah” had only three performances in 1743, none in 1744, two in 1745 and none whatever till four years later. Newman Flower recounts that the master, being complimented on the work by a titled hearer, replied: “My lord, I should be sorry if I only entertained people; I wished to make them better.” Yet as late as 1756 a Miss Catherine Talbot, one of Handel’s most devoted admirers, could say that “the playhouse is an unfit place for such a solemn performance.” However, in the words of Robert Manson Myers, “England’s early rejection of ‘Messiah’ may be ascribed as much to personal resentment as to shallow musical taste.... Handel flaunted his independence and moved with resolute determination, snapping his fingers in the face of princely patrons and daring to defy the bluest blood in England. What was to be done with this insufferable German upstart, this mere musician, who despite persistent opposition succeeded in discharging his debts to the uttermost farthing? Chosen leaders of British ‘quality’ resolved to crush Handel at once. They devised a systematic campaign to boycott his oratorios, and no scheme proved too petty for the gratification of their spite.”

* * *

Vain resolve! For Handel, crushed, had a most persistent habit of rising again. If political cabals brought him low, the tides of national politics brought him to the top once more. “Messiah”, to be sure, was not to become an unshakable British (shall we not rather say Anglo-Saxon) monument till after the composer’s death; yet Handel was able to make the most, creatively, of the great national emergencies of his last decade. In 1743, as Composer of Music to the Chapel Royal, he wrote a “Te Deum” and an anthem to celebrate the victory of Dettingen, music that conquered the popular heart. To this period belongs the charming secular oratorio, “Semele”, (source of the beloved airs “Where’er you walk” and “O Sleep, why dost thou leave me?”) at the first production of which Mrs. Delany found it significant that “there was no disturbance in the playhouse.” But the old habit of launching operatic or concert enterprises was upon him once more and again threatened to consume his credit and his substance. Bankruptcy threatened. Other oratorios, “Hercules”, “Belshazzar”, grand masterpieces both of them, were given in 1745 to dwindling audiences. Handel’s health was imperiled. Then came 1745, the Jacobite rising and the landing in Scotland of the Pretender, Charles Edward. There was consternation which culminated in the march of the Highlander army on London. Loyally, the composer identified himself with the national cause; to celebrate the early defeats of the Jacobites he wrote the “Occasional Oratorio”, a call to Englishmen to resist the invader. But this occupies a less considerable niche in history than “Judas Maccabaeus”, next to “Messiah” perhaps the most popular of Handel’s oratorios, unless we choose to set above it the earlier “Israel in Egypt”—to Robert Schumann “the model of a choral work.”

“Judas Maccabaeus”, the text of which a certain divine, Thomas Morell, had based on the Old Testament, was set by Handel between July 9 and August 11, 1746, was produced by Handel at Covent Garden, April 1, 1747. The composer was extraordinarily attuned to the emotional mood of the moment. People saw in the heroic Judas an embodiment of the victorious Duke of Cumberland, who had ferociously scattered the hosts of the Pretender. And the Jews of London, proud of the glorification of their warrior hero of old, rallied to Handel’s support and packed the theatre in such numbers that the composer suddenly found himself with a wholly new public at his feet, which to some degree replaced for a time to come the aristocratic patrons he had lost.

HANDEL’S HOUSE, 1875.
Handel lived here—then 57 Lower Brook Street, Hanover Square—for 34 years, 1725 till his death in 1759; “Messiah” was composed within its walls.

In the martial, heroic score of “Judas Maccabaeus” Handel had incorporated some music he had originally designed for other works. “See the conquering hero comes”, probably the best known chorus in the oratorio, had originally been a part of “Joshua”, and was not heard in “Judas Maccabaeus” till a year after its first production. Even the chorus “Zion now her head shall raise”, was a later addition and had not been composed till after Handel had lost his sight.

This is the place to comment briefly on Handel’s “borrowings” about which so much ado has been made that one writer went so far as to allude to him as “the grand old thief.” It is altogether too easy to lay a disproportionate stress on the practice involved, the more so as it was a fairly legitimate custom in the Eighteenth Century. Besides Handel, masters like Bach, Haydn, Gluck, Mozart and even Beethoven, had a way, more or less frequently, of taking their own where they found it. Often, indeed, they found it in their own earlier creations. In any case no moral or ethical question was involved, for the good reason that the treatment of a theme or a melody according to the esthetic of that period, mattered far more than the phrase in question. Handel, when told of some passage from another composer found in his music had a way of retorting: “The pig did not know what to do with such a theme.” Then, too, he adapted to broader purposes music he had conceived earlier in other connections. “Messiah”, for instance, offers many cases in point. The chorus “His yoke is easy, His burthen is light” was adapted for better or worse from an Italian duet composed originally to the words “Quel fior che all’ alba ride”; the great “For unto us a Child is born”, was a madrigal denouncing “Blind Love and Cruel Beauty” thus: “No, di voi non vo’ fidarmi”, while “All we like sheep have gone astray” was at first the Italian duet “So per prova i vostri inganni.” The great ensemble, “And with His Stripes”, employs the same fugal subject which Bach put to use in the A minor fugue of the “Well Tempered Clavier” and is also found in the Kyrie of Mozart’s “Requiem.” But themes of this type were “in the air” in that period and fairly recognized as general property. It would be preposterous to labor too much the points involved—the more so as every now and then the practice is “avenged” (if we like!) by some awkwardness of accent or clumsiness of declamation which results by forcing the older phrase into a newer textual association. Such things are very different from the barefaced claim Bononcini once made to having composed a certain work which, as it transpired, had been written by a minor musician living in Vienna. Then too, in the phrase of W. McNaught, “Handel did not borrow the thoughts of others; he rescued them.” And it must never be forgotten that men like Bach and Handel faced deadlines unthinkable to any musician of today!

Following “Judas Maccabaeus” Handel’s fortunes rose once more and after his conflicts with ill-will and intrigue he was the incontestable victor. The consequence, far from rest and relaxation, was another stream of great works not all of them, unfortunately, having become as familiar to posterity as they undoubtedly deserve to be. Oratorios like “Alexander Balus”, “Susanna”, “Joshua”, “Solomon” and “Jephtha”, treasurable as they are, are known to few, probably because they are eclipsed by the gigantic shadows cast by “Messiah”, “Judas Maccabaeus” or “Israel in Egypt.” In 1749 he had written “Theodora”, which failed. Its ill luck does not seem to have moved him to more than a kind of “wise-crack” to the effect that “the Jews would not come to it because the story was Christian and the ladies because it was virtuous.” In the same year he composed a scene from Tobias Smollet’s “Alceste”, parts of which he later used in his “Choice of Hercules”.

For the signing of the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748, the King demanded a showy festival, little as there was to celebrate in the termination of a war both unpopular and remote. Handel was commissioned to compose music for an ostentatious show to culminate in a grand display of fireworks in Green Park, where a vast and grotesque wooden building, surmounted by unsightly allegorical figures, had been set up. Twelve thousand people foregathered for a rehearsal of Handel’s music, in Vauxhall Gardens, and traffic as a result, was desperately tangled. At the actual celebration everything went awry, the fireworks fizzled and to provide a humiliating climax the edifice in Green Park caught fire. Newman Flower tells in a colorful account of the event that Handel had “a magnificent band worthy of the occasion ... forty trumpets, twenty horns, sixteen hautboys, sixteen bassoons, eight pair of kettledrums; for the first time he introduced that forgotten instrument, the serpent into his score, but took it out again.... He had for that night as fine a band as he ever conducted.”

Handel’s contribution, indeed, was the one indisputable success of the occasion. He gave the bright and sonorous “Fireworks Music” (a kind of companion piece to the “Water Music”) the month after the Green Park fiasco for the Foundling Hospital, or “The Hospital for the Maintenance and Education of Exposed and Deserted Young Children.” The concert brought Handel the Governorship of the institution.

The Foundling Asylum was a pride and pleasure to Handel in his declining years. He presented it with a new organ, opened it himself with a performance of “Messiah” on May 1, 1750, when countless persons of distinction had to be turned away since the Asylum chapel accommodated only 1,000. From that time on the master saw to it that the oratorio was sung there every year and that the proceeds, always considerable, were donated to the Hospital. Not to be behind his great associate, the artist, Hogarth, who subsequently shared with Handel the governorship, donated a portrait he had painted to the Hospital, raffled it off and gave the proceeds to the Asylum.

The composer went one last time to Halle and arrived in Germany, Rolland points out, just at the time his greatest contemporary, Bach, died in Leipzig. His own health was deteriorating, though his mind remained clear and his brain active. To be sure his sight had begun to trouble him. Yet when Thomas Morell, in January, 1751, gave him a libretto, “Jephtha”, he set to work composing it at once. He who had turned out the sublimities of “Messiah” in four weeks and the martial grandeurs of “Judas Maccabaeus” in even less had, however, to break off for ten days after the opening Largo of the chorus “How dark, O Lord, are Thy ways.” And he painfully set down on the manuscript: “I reached here on Wednesday, February 13, had to discontinue on account of the sight of my left eye.” On his 66th birthday (February 23) he wrote “Feel a little better. Resumed work” and set the words “Grief follows joy as night the day.” Then he stopped for four months and did not complete the whole score till the end of August, 1751. The last four numbers had taken him more time than he usually spent on an entire oratorio. By that time he had gone completely blind.

Two years later he regained control of himself, played the organ at twelve oratorio productions he gave annually in Lent. He was, even, with the assistance of his pupil and secretary, John Christopher Smith, son of an old Halle school friend, to compose some more music and to remodel his old Italian oratorio, “The Triumph of Time and Truth.” He had submitted to the care of a notorious quack, the “opthalmiater” Chevalier John Taylor, who then enjoyed an extensive vogue among distinguished patients and who boasted that he had seen, on his travels, “a vast variety of singular animals, such as dromedaries, camels, etc., and particularly at Leipsick, where a celebrated master of musick (Bach) already arrived to his 88th year (sic!) received his sight by my hands.” In any case, the different physicians hid nothing from their patient. His case was hopeless, he was afflicted with “gutta serena”. With his sight his best source of inspiration was gone.

“This man”, said Romain Rolland, “who was neither an intellectual nor a mystic, one who loved above all things light and nature, beautiful pictures and the spectacular view of things, who lived more through his eyes than most of the German musicians, was engulfed in deepest night. From 1752 to 1759, he was overtaken by the semi-consciousness which precedes death.” He had made his will in 1750 and at different times in the next nine years he added codicils to it. On April 6, 1759, he played the organ a last time at a “Messiah” performance, broke down in the middle of a number, recovered and improvised, it was said, with his old-time magnificence. Then he was brought home and they put him to bed.

Handel expressed a desire to be buried in Westminster Abbey; and he said: “I want to die on Good Friday in the hope of rejoining the good God, my sweet Lord and Saviour, on the day of His Resurrection.” On Saturday, April 14, 1759, the Whitehall Evening Post, announced: “This morning, a little before eight o’clock, died the deservedly celebrated George Frederick Handell Esq.” And a week later: “Last night about eight o’clock, the remains of the late great Mr. Handel were deposited at the foot of the Duke of Argyll’s Monument in Westminster Abbey; and though he had mentioned being privately interr’d, yet from the Respect due to so celebrated a Man, the Bishop, Prebends, and the whole Choir attended to pay the last Honours due to his Memory; the Bishop himself performed the Service. A Monument is also to be erected for him, which there is no doubt but his Works will even outlive. There was almost the greatest Concourse of People of all Ranks ever seen upon such, or indeed upon any other occasion.” Nevertheless, others have testified that Handel was not “burried midst a great concourse of people.” Ironically enough, the music performed at his obsequies was “Dr. Croft’s Funeral Anthem.”

In the Poets’ Corner a rather mediocre monument, by L. F. Roubiliac, was later unveiled to his memory “under the patronage and in the presence of His Most Gracious Majesty, George III.” But the lordly George Frideric Handel might have been prouder of the monument the dying Beethoven reared to his greatness when, pointing to Arnold’s Handelian edition by his bed, he exclaimed: “There lies the Truth!”

COMPLETE LIST OF RECORDINGS
by
THE PHILHARMONIC-SYMPHONY SOCIETY
OF NEW YORK

COLUMBIA RECORDS

Under the Direction of Dimitri Mitropoulos

Khachaturian—Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (Oscar Levant, piano)—LP Gould—Philharmonic Waltzes (Zino Francescatti, violin)—LP Rabaud—La Procession Nocturne (Zino Francescatti, violin)—LP Saint-Saens—Dance Macabre (Robert, Gaby & Jean Casadesus, pianists)—LP Saint-Saens—Le Rouet D’Omphale (Zino Francescatti, violin)—LP Saint-Saens—Violin Concerto, Op. 61 (Zino Francescatti, violin)—LP Sessions—Symphony No. 2

Under the Direction of Bruno Walter

Barber—Symphony No. 1, Op. 9 Beethoven—Concerto for Violin, Cello, Piano and Orchestra in C major (with J. Corigliano, L. Rose and W. Hendl)—LP Beethoven—Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major (“Emperor”) (with Rudolf Serkin, piano)—LP Beethoven—Concerto in D major for Violin and Orchestra (with Joseph Szigeti)—LP Beethoven—Symphony No. 1 in C major. Op. 21—LP Beethoven—Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major (“Eroica”)—LP Beethoven—Symphony No. 5 in C minor—LP Beethoven—Symphony No. 8 in F major—LP Beethoven—Symphony No. 9 in D minor (“Choral”) (with Elena Nikolaidi, contralto and Raoul Jobin, tenor)—LP Brahms—Song of Destiny (with Westminster Choir)—LP Dvorak—Slavonic Dance No. 1 Dvorak—Symphony No. 4 in G major—LP Mahler—Symphony No. 4 in G major (with Desi Halban, soprano)—LP Mahler—Symphony No. 5 in C-sharp minor Mendelssohn—Concerto in E minor (with Nathan Milstein, violin)—LP Mendelssohn—Scherzo (from Midsummer Night’s Dream) (Nathan Milstein, violin) Mozart—Cosi fan Tutti—Overture Mozart—Symphony No. 41 in C major (“Jupiter”), K. 551—LP Schubert—Symphony No. 7 in C major—LP Schumann, R.—Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major (“Rhenish”)—LP Smetana—The Moldau (“Vltava”)—LP Strauss, J.—Emperor Waltz

Under the Direction of Leopold Stokowski

Copland—Billy the Kid (2 parts) Griffes—“The White Peacock”. Op. 7, No. 1—LP 7″ Ippolitow—“In the Village” from Caucassian Sketches (W. Lincer and M. Nazzi, soloists) Khachaturian—“Masquerade Suite”—LP Messiaen—“L’Ascension”—LP Sibelius—“Maiden with the Roses”—LP Schoenberg—Stein-Lied Der Waldtaure sus Gurrelieder (Martha Lipton, soloist)—LP Tschaikowsky—Francesca da Rimini, Op. 32—LP Tschaikowsky—Overture Fantasy—Romeo and Juliet—LP Vaughan-Williams—Greensleeves Vaughan-Williams—Symphony No. 6 in E minor—LP Wagner—Die Walkure—Wotan Farewell and Magic Fire Music (Act III—Scene 3) Wagner—Siegfried’s Rhine Journey and Siegfried’s Funeral March—(“Die Götterdämmerung”)—LP Wagner—Overture “Rienzi”

Under the Direction of Efrem Kurtz

Chopin—Les Sylphides—LP Glinka—Mazurka—“Life of the Czar”—LP 7″ Grieg—Concerto in A minor for Piano and Orchestra, Op. 16 (with Oscar Levant, piano)—LP Herold—Zampa—Overture Kabalevsky—“The Comedians”, Op. 26—LP Khachaturian—Gayne—Ballet Suite No. 1—LP Khachaturian—Gayne—Ballet Suite No. 2—LP Lecoq—Mme. Angot Suite—LP Prokofieff—March, Op. 99—LP Rimsky-Korsakov—The Flight of the Bumble Bee—LP 7″ Shostakovich—Polka No. 3, “The Age of Gold”—LP 7″ Shostakovich—Symphony No. 9—LP Shostakovich—Valse from “Les Monts D’Or”—LP Villa-Lobos—Uirapuru—LP Wieniawski—Concerto No. 2 in D Minor for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 22 (with Isaac Stern, violin)—LP

Under the Direction of Charles Münch

D’Indy—Symphony on a French Mountain Air for Orchestra and Piano (Robert Casadesus, piano)—LP Milhaud—Suite Francaise—LP Mozart—Concerto No. 21 for Piano and Orchestra in C major (Robert Casadesus, piano)—LP Saint-Saens—Symphony in C minor. No. 3 for Orchestra, Organ and Piano. Op. 78—LP

Under the Direction of Artur Rodzinski

Bizet—Carmen—Entr’acte (Prelude to Act III) Bizet—Symphony in C major—LP Brahms—Symphony No. 1 in C minor—LP Brahms—Symphony No. 2 in D major—LP Copland—A Lincoln Portrait (with Kenneth Spencer, Narrator)—LP Enesco—Roumanian Rhapsody—A major, No. 1—LP Gershwin—An American in Paris—LP Gould—“Spirituals” for Orchestra—LP Ibert—“Escales” (Port of Call)—LP Liszt—Mephisto Waltz—LP Moussorgsky—Gopack (The Fair at Sorotchinski)—LP Moussorgsky-Ravel—Pictures at an Exhibition—LP Prokofieff—Symphony No. 5—LP Rachmaninoff—Concerto No. 2 in C minor for Piano and Orchestra (with Gygory Sandor, piano) Rachmaninoff—Symphony No. 2 in E minor Saint-Saens—Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 4 in C minor (with Robert Casadesus)—LP Sibelius—Symphony No. 4 in A minor Tschaikowsky—Nutcracker Suite—LP Tschaikowsky—Suite “Mozartiana”—LP Tschaikowsky—Symphony No. 6 in B minor (“Pathetique”)—LP Wagner—Lohengrin—Bridal Chamber Scene (Act III—Scene 2) (with Helen Traubel, soprano and Kurt Baum, tenor)—LP Wagner—Lohengrin—Elsa’s Dream (Act I, Scene 2) (with Helen Traubel, soprano) Wagner—Siegfried Idyll—LP Wagner—Tristan und Isolde—Excerpts (with Helen Traubel, soprano) Wagner—Die Walkure—Act III (Complete) (with Helen Traubel, soprano and Herbert Janssen, baritone)—LP Wagner—Die Walkure—Duet (Act I, Scene 3) (with Helen Traubel, soprano and Emery Darcy, tenor)—LP Wolf-Ferrari—“Secret of Suzanne”, Overture

Under the Direction of Igor Stravinsky

Stravinsky—Firebird Suite—LP Stravinsky—Fireworks (Feu d’Artifice)—LP Stravinsky—Four Norwegian Moods Stravinsky—Le Sacre du Printemps (The Consecration of the Spring)—LP Stravinsky—Scenes de Ballet—LP Stravinsky—Suite from “Petrouchka”—LP Stravinsky—Symphony in Three Movements—LP

Under the Direction of John Barbirolli

Bach-Barbirolli—Sheep May Safely Graze (from the “Birthday Cantata”)—LP Berlioz—Roman Carnival Overture Brahms—Symphony No. 2, in D major Brahms—Academic Festival Overture—LP Bruch—Concerto No. 1, in G minor (with Nathan Milstein, violin)—LP Debussy—First Rhapsody for Clarinet (with Benny Goodman, clarinet) Debussy—Petite Suite: Ballet Mozart—Concerto in B-flat major (with Robert Casadesus, piano) Mozart—Symphony No. 25 in G minor, K. 183 Ravel—La Valse Rimsky-Korsakov—Capriccio Espagnol Sibelius—Symphony No. 1, in E minor Sibelius—Symphony No. 2, in D major Smetana—The Bartered Bride—Overture Tchaikowsky—Theme and Variations (from Suite No. 3 in G)—LP

Under the Direction of Sir Thomas Beecham

Mendelssohn—Symphony No. 4, in A major (“Italian”) Sibelius—Melisande (from “Pelleas and Melisande”) Sibelius—Symphony No. 7 in C major—LP Tschaikowsky—Capriccio Italien

Under the Direction of Andre Kostelanetz

Gershwin—Concerto in F (with Oscar Levant)—LP

Under the Direction of Leonard Bernstein

Bernstein—“Age of Anxiety”

Under the Direction of Morton Gould

Gould—“Quick Step”—LP

Under the Direction of Darius Milhaud

Milhaud—Suite Francaise—LP

Under the Direction of George Szell

Smetana—Bohemia’s Fields and Groves—LP Smetana—Symphonic Poem, Vltava (The Moldau)—LP LP—Also available on Long Playing Microgroove Recordings as well as on the conventional Columbia Masterworks.

VICTOR RECORDS

Under the Direction of Arturo Toscanini

Beethoven—Symphony No. 7 in A major Brahms—Variations on a Theme by Haydn Dukas—The Sorcerer’s Apprentice Gluck—Orfeo ed Euridice—Dance of the Spirits Haydn—Symphony No. 4 in D major (The Clock) Mendelssohn—Midsummer Night’s Dream—Scherzo Mozart—Symphony in D major (K. 385) Rossini—Barber of Seville—Overture Rossini—Semiramide—Overture Rossini—Italians in Algiers—Overture Verdi—Traviata—Preludes to Acts I and II Wagner—Excerpts—Lohengrin—Die Götterdämmerung—Siegfried Idyll

Under the Direction of John Barbirolli

Debussy—Iberia (Images, Set 3, No. 2) Purcell—Suite for Strings with four Horns, Two Flutes, English Horn Respighi—Fountains of Rome Respighi—Old Dances and Airs (Special recording for members of the Philharmonic-Symphony League of New York) Schubert—Symphony No. 4 in C minor (Tragic) Schumann—Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D minor (with Yehudi Menuhin, violin) Tschaikowsky—Francesca da Rimini—Fantasia

Under the Direction of Willem Mengelberg

J. C. Bach—Arr. Stein—Sinfonia in B-flat major J. S. Bach—Arr. Mahler—Air for G string (from Suite for Orchestra) Beethoven—Egmont Overture Handel—Alcina Suite Mendelssohn—War March of the Priests (from Athalia) Meyerbeer—Prophete—Coronation March Saint-Saens—Rouet d’Omphale (Omphale’s Spinning Wheel) Schelling—Victory Ball Wagner—Flying Dutchman—Overture Wagner—Siegfried—Forest Murmurs (Waldweben)

Special Booklets published for
RADIO MEMBERS
of
THE PHILHARMONIC-SYMPHONY SOCIETY
OF NEW YORK

POCKET-MANUAL of Musical Terms. Edited by Dr. Th. Baker (G. Schirmer’s) BEETHOVEN and his Nine Symphonies by Pitts Sanborn BRAHMS and some of his Works by Pitts Sanborn MOZART and some Masterpieces by Herbert F. Peyser WAGNER and his Music-Dramas by Robert Bagar TSCHAIKOWSKY and his Orchestral Music by Louis Biancolli JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH and a few of his major works by Herbert F. Peyser SCHUBERT and his work by Herbert F. Peyser *MENDELSSOHN and certain MASTERWORKS by Herbert F. Peyser ROBERT SCHUMANN—Tone-Poet, Prophet and Critic by Herbert F. Peyser *HECTOR BERLIOZ—A Romantic Tragedy by Herbert F. Peyser *JOSEPH HAYDN—Servant and Master

These booklets are available to Radio Members at 25c each while the supply lasts except those indicated by asterisk.

Great Performances by the
Philharmonic-Symphony
Orchestra of New York
on Columbia 33⅓ LP Records

DIMITRI MITROPOULOS conducting

Saint-Saens: Danse Macabre; Le Rouet d’Omphale, Op. 40

Rabau: La Procession Nocturne

LP Record ML 2170

Khachaturian: Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (with Oscar Levant, Piano)

LP Record ML 4288

Also on 78 rpm Set MM-905

BRUNO WALTER conducting

Beethoven: Symphony 7 in A Major, Op. 92

LP Record ML 4414

Beethoven: Symphony No. 5 in C Minor, Op. 67

LP Record ML 4297 Also on 78 rpm Set MM-912

LEOPOLD STOKOWSKI conducting

Tchaikovsky: Romeo & Juliet; Francesca de Rimini

LP Record ML 4381

GEORGE SZELL conducting

Smetana: The Moldau; Bohemia’s Fields and Groves

LP Record 2177

EFREM KURTZ conducting

Chopin: Les Sylphides—Ballet (Orchestrated by A. Gretchaninov)

Villa-Lobos: Uirapurú (A Symphonic Poem)

LP Record ML 4288

Columbia LP Records
First, Finest, Foremost in Recorded Music