Choral Public Domain Library

I tried to contact Philip Legge, one of the editors for the motet, Dixit Dominus, by Handel, but was not able to use the e-mail address listed in his edition. This site has a notation highlighted in yellow which states that P, 59 of the full score, bar 47-48, Tenor part has text ommitted which should read a certain way. The correction, as it turns our, is, apparently, incorrect!, and should read, "et Spi-ri-tu-i Sanc-to". Minor thing, but could be disconcerting to the tenors! Could this change be changed?

The other thing I noticed was that the Dixit edited by Alan Dergal Rautenberg only has 9 movements. I checked to see whether the music is all there, and it is. I compared his 9 movements to the list he provides, which shows 10 movements. I can see what happened. He did not separate the movements 7. Judicabit, and 8. Conquassabit. He does not title the movements, either, and this may have even served to confuse the issue further. Consequently, movement 8, as he lists is, is really movement 9. De Torrente via, and movement 9 is really movement 10. Gloria Patri.

If he is going to lump movements together, it may be wise to lump all the movements from 4-8 together, as they are usually performed without stopping between them, I believe. And the list of movements should show that arrangement.

Can someone remedy these things which just need tweaking so that future downloaders will not be confused!

Thanks! Donna Helmich

PS... We will be performing this in Feb 2009 (not sure which edition), Grand Forks, ND, USA, St . Michael's Lutheran Church, Dr. Joshua Bronfman, conducting


Luckily, I am not one of the tenors!

Dear Donna,

unfortunately that e-mail address on the score is long defunct owing to spam infestation, and the current address is on my editor's page and in newer scores.

It is a general rule that even in the most carefully prepared scores - either direct from a composer, or through an editor - occasionally something will "slip" in, or in this case, will be omitted by oversight. I've known about this particular omission for some years, and haven't really considered it worth fixing - the tenors (and every other voice part) have this particular rhythmic figure ubiquitously through this section of the movement, always to the words "et Spiritui Sancto". From memory there are about four repetitions of it in a row, and it's only missing in one of them - if the choir's good enough to sing Dixit, then they should have no difficulty adding the words according to their own musicality. As Jane Austen put it, and Handel would no doubt have agreed with the sentiment:

'I do not write for such dull Elves As have not a great deal of Ingenuity themselves'

In any case, if I do reissue the score, it will be to fix a rather more serious problem in one of the orchestral parts - which is so obvious that it is easily corrected, if something of a nuisance besides.

As for the division of movements, this is a non-issue. Handel himself didn't explicitly write movement numbers, or do anything so mundane as to count the numbers of bars. All of the movement divisions (and possibly variant bar numberings resulting from that division) are completely at the editor's discretion, and having looked at many other editions, it is no surprise the way I decided to delineate the music is different from Chrysander, Robbins Landon, Watkins Shaw, and A.D. Rautenberg, because the original score by Handel doesn't help in any way: sometime he simply writes a double bar between these connected movements, sometimes he doesn't, even though they can be clearly treated as separate sections. As I put it in my editorial notes:

"The sequence from Juravit Dominus to Conquassabit is essentially unbroken, so the editor has labelled the main musical divisions and renumbered bars from the beginning of each section. This may cause problems with numeration of bar numbers should there be a mixture of vocal scores and instrumental parts being used."

In other words: life's complicated...

Best of luck, and regards, Philip

In "Conquassabit", bars 7 and 8, some editions have the alto part that precisely follows the viola Ist part, while notes are different in PML's edition. The edition by Alan Dergal Rautenberg is not available to me, but this is another difference that Donna might possibly observe.

Max

Hi Max,

precisely - as stated at length, my edition follows Chrysander's in the main, and in his score the alto part matches neither viola part - viola 1 has an arpeggiated figure, viola 2 is with the tenors. On the other hand, Rautenberg is in agreement with Watkins Shaw in having the arpeggiated alto part at the point.

Regards, Philip