Review

G.F. Handel
Messiah:

Arranged by W.A. Mozart. Compiled and edited by Mark J. La Fratta

Three trombones: 1 alto, 1 tenor, 1 bass trombone

Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Publisher: Cherry Classics Music
Date of Publication: 2021
URL: http://www.cherryclassics.com

Alto, Tenor, Bass trombone parts using the same numbering as the Barenreiter 1961 edition.

Primary Genre: Orchestral Material
Secondary Genre: Trombone Ensembles - 3 trombones

George Frideric Handel’s oratorio, Messiah, has been beloved by audiences since its premiere in Dublin in 1742. This work for vocal soloists, chorus, and orchestra, tells some of the story of the advent, birth, passion, death, resurrection, and second coming of Jesus Christ, and it is frequently performed in the Christmas and Easter seasons by professional, civic, church, and school ensembles. Handel orchestrated Messiah for a small Baroque orchestra: strings, trumpets, timpani, organ, and harpsichord continuo. Soon after its premiere, oboes, bassoons, and horns were added for various performances.

It did not take long for Messiah to be rescored for different types and sizes of ensembles. In 1784, during the reign of King George III, a performance of Messiah with an orchestra of 250 players—including six trombones—was given in London. These kinds of large-scale arrangements and performances reached their zenith with the 1959 recording of Messiah (RCA) with Sir Thomas Beecham conducting the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus. Beecham used the version of Messiah arranged by Sir Eugene Goossens which employed the full, modern symphony orchestra including trombones and tuba, percussion instruments, and harp. The recording features superb playing by the trombone section of Evan Watkin, John Hawling, and Harry Spain. There is even an arrangement of Messiah with British brass band accompaniment, arranged by Denis Wright and first performed in 1946 (it was recorded in 2001 on Doyen by Black Dyke Band and the Halifax Choral Society). With the popular emergence of the historically informed performance movement in the last quarter of the twentieth century, these kinds of arrangements began to fall out of favor, but today, recordings of a host of Messiah editions show us that one’s music library can be large enough to enjoy many different interpretations of this classic work. Whether the crossover to bring Messiah to the rock, gospel, and pop music worlds is a good idea—such as David Axelrod’s “Rock Messiah” (1971, RCA, with arrangements by Julian “Cannonball” Adderley—Ebony magazine called it, “Jesus Christ Superstar on a bad trip”), the Grammy-award winning “Handel’s Messiah: A Soulful Celebration (1992, Warner Alliance), and “Handel’s Messiah Rocks” (2008, Integrity Music/Sony Classical)—is something that each person will decide for their self.

In 1789, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart joined the ranks of Messiah editors with his German-language version of Handel’s classic work, Der Messias (K.572). The arrangement was made at the suggestion of Mozart’s friend, Gottfried van Swieten, and Mozart expanded Handel’s scoring to the classical orchestra of his day that was commonly used in choral works, including flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns, trumpets, trombones, and timpani. Mozart scored for trombones in two movements—the Overture, and the chorus “Since by man came death”—and, following the Viennese practice at the time, trombones would have played along with the altos, tenors, and basses of the chorus in the contrapuntal choral movements, a practice known as colla parte. Whether Der Messias was conceived to be played by a trombone section that employed a small alto trombone in E-flat is a matter for discussion among musicologists. Some scholars, notably Howard Weiner, posit that the late eighteenth-century orchestra trombone section in Vienna consisted of three trombones in B-flat, distinguished as alto, tenor, and bass by the size of their mouthpieces. Today’s players do well to read up on the latest research and then choose instruments that will blend well with their performance circumstances.

Mark J. La Fratta has compiled and edited Mozart’s trombone parts to Der Messias for Cherry Classics, which publishes them under the English title, Messiah. This is a helpful service to the trombone community since the trombone parts in all published editions of Der Messias contain only the two movements for which Mozart wrote dedicated trombone parts, but they do not include the copious colla parte movements which are present in La Fratta’s publication. Cherry Classics has laid out the parts in its customary clear, readable way with good page turns, notwithstanding some curious looking multimeasure rests (such as in the first trombone part of “And the Glory of the Lord” at measures 18 and 118). Two quibbles: In the chorus, “Hallelujah,” La Fratta leaves out the high d2 for first trombone in measure 46, a note which appears in Handel’s manuscript and in Mozart’s version as well. And, curiously, in “Since by man came death,” La Fratta's trombone parts do not conform to Mozart’s intentions, and some notes have been changed from those Mozart wrote that appear in the first published edition (1803, Breitkopf und Härtel), the 1867 C.F. Peters edition, and the 1961 Bärenreiter Mozart Neue Ausgabe sämtlicher Werke (Serie X, Werkgruppe 28, Band 2). For the differing notes, it seems La Fratta used the heavily modified 1884 edition by Robert Franz (published by Fr. Kistner) as his source. If La Fratta believes the 1803, 1867, and 1961 editions of Messias are the ones that are wrong, we should see the evidence. It is frustrating that this Cherry Classics edition does not include an introductory note from La Fratta that would explain the situation. Also, Mozart specifically scored for two different orchestral sonorities in “Since by man came death,” with trombones playing the two, somber Grave sections (Coro primo and Coro terzo), and then the trombones not playing in the two Allegro sections that follow (Coro secondo and Coro quarto). This is the same scoring that Mozart used in the “Overture,” with trombones playing the Grave section but not the Allegro moderato that follows. La Fratta’s edition does not make this important distinction in “Since by man came death”; he erroneously scores the trombones to play the entire movement.

The Cherry Classics website promotes this publication with the enthusiastic exhortation, “Trombonists. . . this is your chance to be bold and insist that the trombones perform in the next Messiah. Just do it!! Is the conductor going to argue with Mozart?” Well, maybe the conductor won’t want to get into an argument with the ghost of Mozart, but without the rest of the orchestra using Mozart’s edition and a chorus that is large enough to support colla parte trombones, it may take more than the trombone section being bold to convince a conductor to allow three trombones to play along in Handel’s classic work. Still, Mark J. La Fratta’s edition of the trombone parts for the Handel/Mozart Der Messias is a welcome addition to one’s library, and a trombone section will benefit greatly from playing it, either for their own enjoyment or in performance with orchestra.