The Water Music is a collection of orchestral movements, often considered three suites, composed by George Frideric Handel. It premiered on 17 July 1717 after King George I had requested a concert on the River Thames. The concert was performed by 50 musicians playing on a barge near the royal barge from which the King listened with close friends, including the Duchess of Bolton, the Duchess of Newcastle, the Countess of Godolphin, Madam Kilmarnock, and the Earl of Orkney. George I was said to have enjoyed the suites so much that he made the exhausted musicians play them three times over the course of the outing.[1]
Legend has it that Handel composed Water Music to regain the favour of King George I. Handel had been employed by the future king before he succeeded to the British throne when he was Elector of Hanover. The composer supposedly fell out of favour for moving to London in the reign of Queen Anne. This story was first related by Handel's early biographer John Mainwaring; although it may have some foundation in fact, the tale as told by Mainwaring has been doubted by some Handel scholars.[5]
There are many recordings. The Music for the Royal Fireworks, which was also written for outdoor performance, is often paired with the Water Music on recordings. Together, these works constitute Handel's most famous music for what we would now consider the orchestra. Older recordings tend to use arrangements of Handel's score for the modern orchestra, for example the arrangements by Hamilton Harty and Leopold Stokowski. More recent recordings tend to use historically informed performance methods appropriate for baroque music and often use authentic instruments.
Unfortunately, though, we have no reliable documentation of just what was played. Although many of the pieces became instant hits throughout London, none was published at the time. The chronology has been traced by Roger Fiske in his preface to the Eulenburg score. Two of the minuets appeared in 1720, followed by the overture in 1725. John Walsh published The Celebrated Water Musick in 1733, but with only eleven of the nineteen movements that he included in a 1743 harpsichord arrangement as Handel's Celebrated Water Musick Compleat. Up to a dozen other selections, including an entire five-movement 1733 Famous Water Peice, once were claimed to be part of the work but later rejected as spurious. Extensive research by Samuel Arnold led to a 1788 edition of nineteen pieces that is generally accepted as the authoritative Water Music. Yet, questions of structure remain.
