word-books for Handel's performances of Samson, The

Musical Times, Spring 2005 by Burrows, Donald

SAMSON IS, IN EVERY SENSE, one of Handel's greatest works, and it was with some trepidation that I embarked on the preparation of a new edition for the Novello Handel Edition, both on account of the size of the task and the complexity of reconstructing the score's history through the composer's many performances. A new edition is indeed sorely needed, because the most accessible text for performers has for a long time been the old Novello vocal score, based on a version of the oratorio prepared by Ebenezer Prout for Arthur Sullivan's performance at the Leeds Festival in 1880.1 Given that the circumstances of Sullivan's festival performances involved time constraints, it is not surprising that Prout's edition did not give a full form of the work,2 and was less comprehensive than Vincent Novello's preceding edition: nevertheless, it is difficult to understand the rationale for Prout's choices, particularly in the omission of sections of recitative that were essential to the story. As Winton Dean remarked in 1959, 'there is no defence for the later (1880) and still current Novello score, heavily abridged and otherwise manipulated, which repeats most of Vincent Novello's errors and adds a fresh crop of its own.'3

Obviously the modern editor needs to avoid the arbitrary choices that were made by Prout, and as a general principle an edition of one of Handel's theatre works should present performing versions that follow one or more of the composer's own schemes in terms of content - the order of movements, their forms and key schemes, and their allocation to particular soloists. This is a good principle in itself, and experience in performance over the years has served to confirm the balance and coherence of the composer's practice, and the clumsiness of whimsical or ad hoc deviations. One of the first jobs for an editor, therefore, is to establish the schemes of Handel's performing versions, which usually means disentangling the performing history of the work from the often confusing evidence that is presented by surviving musical sources. In the case of Handel's oratorios, one very useful source of contributory evidence for this task is the printed word-books, giving the full libretto, that were regularly published in London and were purchased by members of the audience to complement their visits to the theatre. Dated word-books survive for most years in which Handel performed Samson; sometimes, either during or soon after the performances, the owners even annotated their copies in pencil with the names of the singers or comments on the music and its execution.

The word-books for Samson were described by Winton Dean in his chapter on the oratorio in Handel's dramatic oratorios and masques, and their evidence contributed to his descriptions of the musical content of Handel's performances in the same chapter.4 Since 1959 a few more exemplars of the word-books have been discovered. Most of them are further copies of previously-known issues, but they also include new items, such as a copy of the issue dated 1753.5 Table 1 summarises the calendar of Handel's performances of Samson, and the issues of the word-books for which copies are known. The sequence of books associated with Handel's performances all came from the same publishing house, that of J. & R. Tonson, for some years in partnership with S. Draper. In what follows, I supplement Dean's information with further details or speculations that have arisen in the course of my new examination of the word-books in preparation for the edition.

FIRST, it is necessary to give some consideration to general matters concerning the word-books. They appear to have been authorised publications, carrying the implied approval of the composer and the librettist: the title-pages included the rubric 'As it is Perform'd at the Theatre-Royal in Covent Garden', and the texts were revised to conform to the score as performed (or as planned) for the relevant season. The editions of the word-book up to 1749 include a dedication to Frederick, Prince of Wales, over the name of the librettist (Newburgh Hamilton), and the first issue includes a Preface which, although unsigned, was clearly a first-person statement by Hamilton. The text of the oratorio as found in the first issue is also closely related to that in the manuscript libretto that was sent to the Inspector of Stage Plays about a month before the first performance of Samson in March 1743.6 The printed text was, of course, a literary rather than a musical document, and the first versions of the word-book included lines from Hamilton's libretto that were not performed, and in most cases were not set to music.7 In principle, the word-books would be brought up to date with changes in content from season to season, or even if necessary from performance to performance, so that they matched what was performed: most likely, a copy of the most recent word-book would be marked up with revisions in the preparation of each new issue. It was not practical for the printer to leave the type set up for nearly a year between the oratorio seasons, so the books were re-set as needed, and the pages incorporated a number of wood-cut decorations (unconnected with the story of the oratorio, and also found in other oratorio word-books from the 1740s) that would be inserted during the preparation of the formes.8