... ad uso di Serafino Agostini - Agostini, Serafino; Handel, George Frideric 1685-1759; Marcello, Benedetto 1686-1739 (Florence)
Tu fedel, tu costante (HWV 171a) / Handel -- Aure soavi, e liete (HWV 84) / Handel -- Più che porto / Marcello -- In di selve e prati / Marcello -- Or de' miei lunghi / Marcello -- Onda d'amaro pianto / Marcello -- Cori che amando andate / Marcello -- Mi costa sante lacrime / Marcello -- Occhi del viver mio dolci sostegni (two versions) / Marcello -- Varia pur dolce Amor / Marcello -- Deh volate all'idol mio / Marcello
Contains 12 cantatas for soprano and bc
The first cantata, an early version of Händel's soprano cantata 'Tu fedel? Tu costante?', was recorded by Ton Koopman for Antoine Marchand/Challenge Classics, in 2016. The cantata was noticed by Eline Holl and authenticated by the American musicologist John Roberts. Probably composed in Venice in 1706, near the start of Handel’s Italian sojourn, the ‘new’ cantata initially follows the course of the familiar version, HWV171 (with oboe added to the strings), then goes its own way. While the text, a woman’s taunting of her rustic Fileno, is the same, the music of this newly discovered version is more wistful, even sorrowful in cast, epitomised by the plangent siciliano aria ‘Se Licori, Filli ed io’.
According to John Roberts, 'Tu fedel? tu costante?: Two Versions of Handel Cantata', Händel-Jahrbuch 64 (2018), 335-366: 337, the manuscript was probably already bound at the time it was copied in Florence and long before Serafino Agostini acquired it. Handel probably composed this cantata in Venice, in keeping with Benedetto Marcello's cantatas.
Digitized by iGuana, Spring 2022. A facsimile of 'Tu fedel? tu costante?' (HWV 171a) was edited by John H. Roberts for the Hallische Händel-Ausgabe, V:5a (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2016).
Keywords: 18th Century (1701-1800); Cantata; Pastoral; Italy