Monthly Archives: March 2021

Music

George Frideric Handel’s Arrival of the Queen of Sheba (1749)

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The Ger­man-born George Frid­er­ic Han­del moved to Lon­don in 1712 and remained there until his death in 1759. My first mem­o­ry that involves Han­del was a piece of music called Water Music, pos­si­bly from some sheet music my grand­ma had but equal­ly pos­si­bly not (it’s one of those ear­ly “not sure where” mem­o­ries). It was com­posed in 1717 in response to a request from King George I for a con­cert on the Thames. Han­del was obvi­ous­ly well in with the Court; ten years after Water Music he was com­mis­sioned to write four anthems for the Coro­na­tion cer­e­mo­ny of King George II. One of these, the glo­ri­ous Zadok the Priest, has been played at every British coro­na­tion cer­e­mo­ny since.

Anoth­er notable com­po­si­tion of Han­del’s was Music for the Roy­al Fire­works in 1749, writ­ten for a “par­ty in the park” to cel­e­brate the end of the War of the Aus­tri­an Suc­ces­sion. Mozart called it a “spec­ta­cle of Eng­lish pride and joy”. A year lat­er, Han­del arranged a per­for­mance of his famous Mes­si­ah to ben­e­fit Thomas Coram’s Foundling Hos­pi­tal in Lon­don. The per­for­mance was con­sid­ered a great suc­cess and was fol­lowed by annu­al con­certs that con­tin­ued through­out his life – an ear­ly fore­run­ner of our “ben­e­fit con­certs” today.

It is, how­ev­er, Handel’s piece from his great opera Solomon, name­ly the open­ing instru­men­tal of Act III, Arrival of the Queen of She­ba, that I’m show­cas­ing today. If you don’t already know it from its name, you will instant­ly recog­nise it when you play it below. It has been used exten­sive­ly for any­thing that could ben­e­fit from some viva­cious “pro­ces­sion­al” music (includ­ing the 2012 Lon­don Olympics open­ing cer­e­mo­ny in which the music accom­pa­nies Daniel Craig’s James Bond as he meets the Queen at Buck­ing­ham Palace) and you can hear why: it’s a joy­ous romp of vio­lins and oboes.

The wider piece, Solomon, was wide­ly recog­nised by com­men­ta­tors of the day as a eulo­gy for Geor­gian Eng­land, with the just and wise King Solomon rep­re­sent­ing King George II, and the mighty, pros­per­ous king­dom of Israel reflect­ing the sim­i­lar­ly hap­py state of Eng­land at the time of the work’s pre­miere. Also, since it was in Eng­lish (Han­del had writ­ten his operas in Ital­ian up until Mes­si­ah in 1742), it became huge­ly pop­u­lar with the pub­lic. So put some san­dals on, grab your palm, and wel­come the Queen of She­ba as she dis­em­barks!

George Frid­er­ic Han­del
Film, TV, and Theatre

Cosgrove Hall’s Pied Piper of Hamelin (1981)

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Along­side Aard­man Ani­ma­tions, those bril­liant stop-motion clay ani­ma­tors of Wal­lace and Gromit fame, anoth­er great favourite of the British pub­lic was Cos­grove Hall Films. Bri­an Cos­grove and Mark Hall first met as stu­dents at Manchester’s Col­lege of Art and Design, and then worked togeth­er in tele­vi­sion graph­ics at Grana­da Tele­vi­sion. They left Grana­da in 1969 to form their first pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny, Stop Frame Pro­duc­tions, mak­ing TV com­mer­cials, pub­lic infor­ma­tion films and also the open­ing cred­its and graph­ics for TV clas­sic Rain­bow in 1972.

The Rain­bow work led to Thames Tele­vi­sion cre­at­ing a sub­sidiary ani­ma­tion stu­dio in Chorl­ton-cum-Hardy, in Man­ches­ter, with Cos­grove and Hall as its lead ani­ma­tors. Cos­grove Hall Films was born. Its first series, Chorl­ton and the Wheel­ies, was pop­u­lar and ran from 1976 to 1979, but it was 1981’s Dan­ger Mouse that spawned their great­est suc­cess, run­ning through­out the rest of the eight­ies and being syn­di­cat­ed around the world. With famil­iar voiceovers from David Jason as Dan­ger Mouse and Ter­ry Scott as lov­able side­kick Pen­fold, it remains a firm favourite with every­one who lived through that decade.

How­ev­er, it is Cos­grove Hal­l’s mag­i­cal 1981 TV spe­cial, The Pied Piper of Hamelin, that I’m look­ing at today. I remem­ber stum­bling across it and being mes­merised by its bril­liant ani­ma­tion tech­niques. It takes the sto­ry of the Pied Piper as laid down in the words of the poem by Robert Brown­ing (whose lines are used ver­ba­tim) and bril­liant­ly illus­trates the strange tale of Hamelin’s plague of rats, the enig­mat­ic piper who offers to rid the town of them, and the dire con­se­quences when the town fails to pay him the agreed amount lat­er.

Here is a clip of the Pied Piper work­ing his mag­ic on the rats, with the narrator’s won­der­ful­ly rhyth­mic ren­der­ing of Browning’s poet­ry dri­ving the sto­ry along. Inci­den­tal­ly, whilst you could be for­giv­en for think­ing the Pied Piper sto­ry to have come from the imag­i­na­tion of the Grimm broth­ers (who did indeed tell the tale lat­er), the first ref­er­ence to the sto­ry was in a stained glass win­dow in Hamelin itself, and con­tem­po­rary accounts make ref­er­ence to some actu­al event that led to the town’s chil­dren dis­ap­pear­ing in the late 1200s. The stuff of leg­end!

Pied Piper of Hamelin