Tag Archives: Handel “Ode for the Birthday of Queen Anne”

post updated

 

My post

patriotic music

has been updated with a couple of new pieces by Beethoven and Handel.

 

— Roger W. Smith

March 9, 2022

patriotic music

 

Aaron Copland, Fanfare for the Common Man

 

Beethoven, Wellington’s Victory

 

Carl Nielsen, Den danske sang

 

Handel, “Eternal Source of Light Divine” (from Ode for the Birthday of Queen Anne)

 

Handel, Zadok the Priest (Coronation Anthem No. 1)

 

Prokofiev, from Alexander Nevsky

 

Purcell, “Come If You Dare” (from King Arthur)

 

Rimsky-Korsakov, Russian Easter Overture

 

Shostakovich, “The Sun Shines Over the Motherland”

 

Sibelius, Finlandia

 

Smetana, The Moldau

 

Tchaikovsky, The Year 1812, Solemn Overture

 

 

— posted by Roger W. Smith

   March 2022

Handel, “Ode for the Birthday of Queen Anne”

 

 

Posted above.

The opening of George Frideric Handel’s cantata “Ode for the Birthday of Queen Anne”:

Eternal source of light divine
With double warmth thy beams display
And with distinguish’d glory shine
To add a lustre to this day.

which comprised the processional to the marriage of Harry and Meghan today.

 

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An acquaintance with whom I sometimes exchange thoughts about music wrote me recently: “I am still am not high on Handel. Great composer for his time and parts of the oratorios are moving (to me), but overall doesn’t impress me.”

I don’t agree. For a long time, I was thoroughly into Handel. One could devote a lifetime to exploring his works.

The cantata celebrates Queen Anne’s birthday, and the accomplishment of the Treaty of Utrecht (negotiated by the Tory ministry of Anne in 1712) to end the War of the Spanish Succession.

 

— Roger W. Smith

   May 19, 2018