Händel - Music for the Royal Fireworks - Academic Brass Ensemble

Mogens Andresen
$50.00
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Music for the Royal Fireworks by George Friederich Händel (1685-1759), arranged for Academic Brass Ensemble by Mogens Andresen.

This arrangement for academic brass ensemble consists of 3 movements:
1 – OUVERTURE (Adagio – Allegro)
2 – LA PAIX (Largo alla Siciliano)
3 – LA RÉJOUISSANCE (Allegro)

The product is available for digital download only - the item includes :

  • Score (36 pages)
  • Piccolo Trumpet part in Bb
  • Trumpet part in Eb
  • Trumpet part in Bb
  • 2 Cornet parts in Bb
  • 2 French Horn parts
  • Alto Trombone part 
  • Tenor Trombone part
  • Bass Trombone part
  • Euphonium part
  • Tuba part
  • 2 Percussion parts

THE MUSIC FOR THE ROYAL FIREWORKS  (HWV 351) is a suite for wind instruments composed by George Friedrich Händel in 1749 under contract of King George II of Great Britain. It was to celebrate the piece after the end of the War of the Austrian Succession and the signing of the Piece-Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (Aachen) in 1748.
When England’s King commissioned Händel to write the music, he specified that the piece should be played by a military band without stringed instruments that he disliked. Handel scored the music for until then was the biggest wind band ever: 9 trumpets, 9 horns, 24 oboes, 12 bassoons, 1 contrabassoon, 1 serpent, 6 kettledrums, and 2 side drums -  but he later anyway added strings for the first indoor performance.

A picture showing what the Royal Fireworks might have looked like
- if it had worked properly

The fireworks were constructed by an imported Italian theater designer and master of fireworks Giovanni Niccolò Servandoni. On 21 April 1749 there was a full general rehearsal of the music in Vauxhall Gardens. An audience, claimed to be over twelve thousand people, rushed to get there, causing a three-hour traffic jam of carriages on London Bridge. Six days later, on 27 April 1749, the actual event took place. The performing musicians were placed in a specially constructed building that had been designed by Servandoni. The fireworks were a disaster, it suddenly went off disastrously too soon and the musicians building caught fire – but Händels music was successful.