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Exactly what triggered King George I\u2019s decision to mount a royal boat trip on the Thames in the summer of 1717 is uncertain.<\/strong> <\/p> Was it a desire to upstage his son, the Prince of Wales, a more charismatic and popular figure with whom he frequently argued? Or an attempt to bolster his social and constitutional standing at a period of considerable political unrest in the country? Perhaps he simply hankered for a pleasantly stress-free evening on the river, accompanied by his two mistresses and assorted \u2018Persons of Quality\u2019.<\/p> Whatever his precise motivation, on the evening of Wednesday 17 July 1717 a grand flotilla of boats assembled at Whitehall, headed by the King \u2018in an open barge\u2019. Beside him, in another barge, was clustered an orchestra of some 50 musicians, tuned and ready to play. <\/p> Presiding over them was the 32-year-old German composer George Frideric Handel<\/a><\/strong>, who for the previous five years had lived in England. A sequence of instrumental movements by Handel, later entitled the Water Music<\/em>, was scheduled to provide the entertainment for the evening.<\/p> It was not the King\u2019s first encounter with Handel\u2019s music. Seven years previously Handel had briefly served as George\u2019s Kapellmeister (director of music) at his electoral court in Hanover. George\u2019s undiminished enthusiasm for Handel\u2019s music made his former employee a natural choice for the boat trip commission. <\/p> In the event, Handel produced a total of 22 movements to be performed on the evening \u2013 \u2018the finest Symphonies\u2019, as a contemporary news report put it. Most are assumed to have been newly written by the composer, though some may have been recycled from earlier pieces.<\/p> To match the splendour of the occasion, Handel truly pushed the boat out in terms of orchestral colouring and spectacle for his Water Music<\/em>. A pair of horns<\/strong><\/a> was included \u2013 a novelty at that period in England \u2013 and they ring out imperiously in several of the movements. <\/p> Two trumpets<\/a><\/strong> were also present, adding their gleaming triumphal brightness to the mix. A dazzling sequence of dance movements \u2013 minuets<\/a><\/strong>, bourr\u00e9es, rigaudons, gigues \u2013 kept the energy levels high. And, as a cap-doff to his country of residence, Handel even slotted in a pair of perky English hornpipes.<\/p> Quite what order the 22 movements were played in is not recorded, though they were subsequently arranged into three key-related suites for publishing purposes. What we know for sure is that King George was enraptured by the music he was hearing, as his barge headed the three miles upstream on a rising tide to Chelsea. \u2018His Majesty\u2019s approval of it was so great that he caused it to be played three times in all,\u2019 wrote Friedrich Bonet, a contemporary observer, \u2018even though each performance lasted an hour\u2019.<\/p>When was Handel’s Water Music first performed?<\/h2>
What instruments are called for?<\/h2>