Abstract
It was recently announced that summer 2012 will see Handel’s Water Music, first performed in 1717 for George I, take to the Thames once more to celebrate Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee. While it seems improbable that the occasion will exactly replicate the original one, which saw the work played three times as the royal party voyaged to and from a midnight supper party in Chelsea, it should still offer a unique opportunity to re-create something of the effect of that first performance, even helping to provide answers to such fascinating practical questions as whether anybody would actually have been able to hear the quieter movements at all. This matter, along with the practicality of playing brass instruments on a moving boat, is raised in the booklet accompanying Marc Minkowski’s new recording with Les Musiciens du Louvre-Grenoble, Handel: Water Music (naïve V 5234, rec 2010, 68′). Somewhat contrariwise, however, these...
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