On August 17, for our last Saturday concert of the season, our good friend (and good neighbor to the north)—Santa Fe Opera Music Director Harry Bicket—makes his first-ever Festival appearance conducting Handel’s wonderful Water Music, which was first performed not in the high desert but on the River Thames for King George I. Bicket leads an ensemble of Santa Fe Opera musicians—many of whom you’ll recognize as our longtime friends and collaborators—and plays the harpsichord, too!
In July 1717, King George I threw a boat party that took him and his companions on a roundtrip excursion from Whitehall to Chelsea, with a stop in the latter London neighborhood for (a very late!) supper. (According to two published accounts, the party started at 8 p.m., and the king alighted for his meal at either 11 p.m. or 1 a.m.) The king had asked Handel, his principal court composer, to provide music for the evening, and Handel obliged, leading an orchestra of roughly 50 musicians on a boat that sailed alongside the king’s.
This river party wasn’t the first one the king had thrown (there were ones held the previous two summers), so it’s possible that some of the music Handel provided in 1717 had been written earlier. But in any event, the music—a collection of suites made up of brilliant dance-music movements—was a tremendous hit, with the king asking it to be repeated multiple times over the course of the evening.
A portrait of George Frideric Handel, presenting his Water Music to King George I.
In an article in the Festival’s 2024 Program Book, Bicket says that part of Water Music’s enduring appeal is that it’s “music that is instantly recognizable yet still takes one by surprise.” Water Music was groundbreaking in its late-Baroque day for several reasons, including the fact that it was composed specifically to be played on the water (“in probably extremely uncomfortable and less than ideal circumstances,” Bicket writes in a program note he provided for the Festival). Water Music also seemingly marks the first time an English composer included horns in an orchestra, most likely due to the fact that the music needed to be heard by countless revelers whose boats packed the Thames. (Regarding Handel’s nationality, Handel, like the king, was German, but he moved to London in 1712 and became a naturalized British citizen in 1727.)
Water Music has become one of the most famous pieces in the classical music repertoire, yet, despite its familiarity, Bicket is able to keep any and all of his performances of the work fresh. “I always work from the premise that it’s a brand-new composition, hot off the press,” Bicket says in the program book article. “I also try to see the music through the prism of what came before rather than what came afterwards. That way, we can hopefully recreate the frisson of how revolutionary much of the writing was to the ears of the 18th-century listener.”
So, attention all 21st-century listeners: Tickets to Saturday’s performance are going fast, but you can still get good seats and hear this wonderful music—and catch Harry Bicket in his Festival debut!—by contacting our Ticket Office at 505-982-1890 or visiting our website here.