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The ripieno concerto is a somewhat later type of Baroque music, the term concerto here reverting to its earlier meaning of work for an ensemble. The word ripieno is from the Italian for "padding". The ' was sometimes referred to as a "" (or "" if the orchestra included two viola parts, a standard scoring in the 17th century). These were merely compositions for the ripieno alone (i.e.

A concertino, literally "little ensemble", is the group of soloists in a concerto grosso. This is opposed to the ripieno and tutti which is the larger group contrasting with the concertino. Though the concertino is the smaller of the two groups, its material is generally more virtuosic than that of the ripieno. Further, the concertino does not share thematic material with the ripieno, but presents unique ideas.

Title on autograph score: Concerto 5to à une Traversiere, une Violino principale, une Violino è una Viola in ripieno, Violoncello, Violone è Cembalo concertato. Concertino: harpsichord, violin, flute Ripieno: violin, viola, cello and violone Duration: about 23 minutes The harpsichord is both a concertino and a ripieno instrument. In the concertino passages the part is obbligato; in the ripieno passages it has a figured bass part and plays continuo. This concerto makes use of a popular chamber music ensemble of the time (flute, violin, and harpsichord), which Bach used on its own for the middle movement.

This concerto is one of Mozart's two horn concerti to have ripieno horns (horns included in the orchestra besides the soloist), though, in contrast to K. 417, the solo horn in this one duplicates the first ripieno horn's part in the tutti passages.

The cantata opens with a choral movement which combines two fugues, each on a psalm verse, with concertante parts. The vocal scoring indicates a ripieno group at times. The movement has an "energetic and ebullient" instrumental introduction. The first section highlights the contrast between ripieno and full chorus, while the second section is dance- like.

Bach scored the concerto for the same instruments as his fifth Brandenburg Concerto, BWV 1050, with the addition of a second violino di ripieno part. The concerto has three concertato parts (harpsichord obligato, flute and violin) and four ripieno parts (first and second violins, viola and continuo).(manuscript) Mus.ms. Bach St 134(score edition) Rust 1869 Throughout the concerto the harpsichord has the predominant solo part.

The ripieno (, Italian for "stuffing" or "padding") is the bulk of instrumental parts of a musical ensemble who do not play as soloists, especially in Baroque music. These are the players who would play in sections marked tutti, as opposed to soloist sections. It is most commonly used in reference to instrumental music, although it can also be used in choral music. An individual member of the ripieno is called a ripienista.

A review notes the accent on a contrast, as the composer intended, between the soloists (favoriti) and the choir (ripieno): > These soloists, the so-called 'favoriti' are given the responsibility of > bringing illustrative power to their sung lines, to sing 'as well and as > sweetly' as possible. These solo singers are vested with the conveyance of > the texts’ imagery in all its power and immediacy, whilst the ripieno > choruses have a different function, which is, in the composer's words, 'for > a strong sound and for splendour'.

Title on autograph score: Concerto 4to à Violino Principale, due Fiauti d'Echo, due Violini, una Viola è Violone in Ripieno, Violoncello è Continuo. Concertino: violin and two recorders (described in the original score as "fiauti d'echo"). Ripieno: two violins, viola, violone, cello and basso continuo (harpsichord and/or viola da gamba) Duration: about 16 minutes The violin part in this concerto is extremely virtuosic in the first and third movements. In the second movement, the violin provides a bass when the concertino group plays unaccompanied.

The Ripieno:- the accompanying group. There would be some musical confrontation between these two groups. This movement is surprising for the Baroque era as the harpsichord has a dual role. The general role of the harpsichord in baroque music was to fill in harmonies.

1\. ' – (Chorus I & II – Cantus firmus by ripieno soprano choir) ::2. Mt 26:1–2, with Vox Christi ::::3. ::4. Mt 26:3–13, with Vox Christi, and Turba on (Chorus I & II) and on (Chorus I) ::::::5–6. Recitative ' and Aria ' (alto) ::7.

After this dialogue, a second extended solo episode introduces new semiquaver triplet scale figures in the harpsichord, accompanied by detached quavers in the strings derived from the ritornello. 1000px This is followed by another dialogue between soloist and ripieno based on the ritornello material. It ends with the harpsichord doubling the highest and lowest string parts—the "unison" method by which Bach incorporates the soloist in the ripieno—bringing section A to a close in the dominant key of E major. In section B the thematic material from section A is developed more freely in the harpsichord part with semidemiquaver figures modified to semiquaver triplets.

The last movement, with a da capo structure, has no clear ritornello: this is the only extant da capo concerto movement by Bach that has no ritornello structure. In this movement the concertato violin no longer doubles the ripieno violin in tutti passages according to the Italian practice, instead the ripieno violin is mostly doubled by the flute in the tuttis: it is a French practice (with the traverso at that time also being a French novelty) to have a woodwind instrument double the highest string part. This practice is for instance also found in Bach's rather French than Italian orchestral suites, e.g. in BWV 1067, but only in this movement in his concertos.

For example, on English-style organs, the stops called Principal and Fifteenth sound one octave and two octave pitches respectively above the 8′ Diapason; on German-style organs, the name Octav is used to indicate the stop an octave above the 8′ Prinzipal, and similarly for French instruments, the names Octave and Doublette for 4′ and 2′ pitches respectively are commonly used. In Italian organs, the 8′ and sometime the 16′ pitches are called "Principale" and form the foundation of the entire organ. One characteristic of the classic Italian organ (starting from the 16th century on) is the separated "Ripieno". The "Ripieno" includes many Diapason stops, all separate, in contrast to the German and French style "Fourniture" and "Mixtur".

2000 The opening chorus, "" is also notable for the use of chorale cantus firmus, in which the soprano in ripieno crowns a colossal buildup of polyphonic and harmonic tension, singing a verse of "". This was sung only in 1742 and 1743–1746 and had been played on the organ before.

In the coda, the first concertino violin restates the main theme, joined two bars later in thirds by the other solo violin and finally by repeated sustained pianissimo chords in the ripieno, modulating through unexpected keys. This is answered twice by two forte unison cadences, the second bringing the movement to a close.

The music of the ritornello, including the different quaver figures in the accompaniment, is re-used throughout the rest of the movement, the thematic material recurring mostly in shortened fragments. After the ritornello, the harpsichord enters in the first of its solo episodes, 16 bars long. Its new melodic material contrasts with the ritornello, with sustained notes and graceful ornamentation typical of the galant style, at first accompanied only by repeated quavers in the left hand and upper strings. 700px The ripieno section responds with one of the later segments of the ritornello; this is followed by a shorter episode for harpsichord which incorporates semiquaver motifs from the ritornello; and the ripieno responds with a variant of the semidemiquaver motto.

Bach's version is scored for soprano and alto soloists, two concertante violin parts, two ripieno violin parts, viola, violone, violoncello, and basso continuo. Bach's orchestration is richer than Pergolesi's original. Where in Pergolesi's version the viola often plays in unison with the continuo, Bach increases the independence of this instrument, thus creating the four-part harmony typical of his own style.Clemens Romijn.

The concerto grosso (; Italian for big concert(o), plural concerti grossi ) is a form of baroque music in which the musical material is passed between a small group of soloists (the concertino) and full orchestra (the ripieno or concerto grosso). This is in contrast to the solo concerto which features a single solo instrument with the melody line, accompanied by the orchestra.

Douglas 1997, p. 1 The middle movement is performed by the concertino without the ripieno instruments.Douglas 1997, pp. 2–10 The concerto has three movements: # (No tempo indication, usually interpreted as Allegro) – based on BWV 894/1 # Adagio ma non tanto e dolce, in C major – based on BWV 527/2 (there in F major) # Tempo di Allabreve – based on BWV 894/2 (there in )Abravaya 2006, p.

Title on autograph score: Concerto 2do à 1 Tromba, 1 Flauto, 1 Hautbois, 1 Violino, concertati, è 2 Violini, 1 Viola è Violone in Ripieno col Violoncello è Basso per il Cembalo. Concertino: natural trumpet in F, recorder, oboe, violin Ripieno: two violins, viola, violone, cello and harpsichord (as basso continuo) Duration: about 13 minutes The trumpet part is still considered one of the most difficult in the entire repertoire, and was originally written for a clarino specialist, almost certainly the court trumpeter in Köthen, Johann Ludwig Schreiber. After clarino skills were lost in the eighteenth century and before the rise of the historically informed performance movement of the late twentieth century, the part was usually played on the valved trumpet sometimes on a modern F trumpet, a French Horn, or even a Bb Piccolo Trumpet. The clarino does not play in the second movement, as is common practice in baroque era concerti.

The concerto began to take its modern shape in the late-Baroque period, beginning with the concerto grosso form developed by Arcangelo Corelli. Corelli's concertino group was two violins, a cello and harpsichord. In J. S. Bach's Fifth Brandenburg Concerto, for example, the concertino is a flute, a violin, and a harpsichord;Steinberg, p. 14 although the harpsichord is a featured solo instrument, it also sometimes plays with the ripieno, functioning as a continuo keyboard accompaniment.

He followed the format of the French overture by instrumental slow sections framing the fast choral section. The French overture, normally played upon the arrival of the king to a performance, seemed suitable to greet the King of Heaven. The laughter mentioned in the text is "often made quite graphically audible", as the Bach Scholar Alfred Dürr words it. When Bach performed the work again later, he marked some vocal sections as "ripieno", achieving even more variety in the "concerto".

Part I is closed by a four-part Chorale Fantasia (both choirs) on the chorale (O mankind, mourn your great sins), recapitulating that Jesus was born of the Virgin to "become the intercessor". The sopranos sing the cantus firmus, the other voices interpret aspects of the narration. In the 1742 and 1743–1746 versions, a ripieno soprano choir was added to the soprano line. In the 1727/1729 version, this part is concluded by a four-part setting of verse 6 of the Chorale "".

The work was first recorded by symphonic choirs and orchestras. From the late 1960s, historically informed performances (HIP) tried to adhere more to the sounds of the composer's lifetime, who typically wrote for boys choirs and for comparatively small orchestras of Baroque instruments, often now called "period instruments". Some scholars believe that Bach used only one singer for a vocal part in the choral movements, termed "one voice per part" (OVPP). On some of these recordings, the solo singer is reinforced in choral movements with a larger orchestra by a ripieno singer (OVPP+R).

Finales are most often binary in form and dancelike in style. The sinfonia type gradually merged with the early concert symphony beginning in the 1720s, doubtless in part because the term concerto was by that time acquiring an indelible association with the notion of tutti-solo contrast. A special class of 20th-century concertos is the Concerto for Orchestra. These works are not for the most part ripieno concertos in the Baroque sense but rather display pieces in which the orchestra itself is the virtuoso, from soloists to sections of the orchestra, choirs or tutti.

Citation on p. There are numerous other examples of secular cantus firmi used for composition of masses; some of the most famous include: "Se la face ay pale" (Dufay), "Fortuna desperata" (attributed to Antoine Busnois), "Fors seulement" (Johannes Ockeghem), "Mille Regretz", and "Westron Wynde" (anonymous). German composers in the Baroque period in Germany, notably Bach, used chorale melodies as cantus firmi. In the opening movement of Bach's St Matthew Passion, the chorale "O Lamm Gottes, unschuldig" appears in long notes, sung by a separate choir of boys "in ripieno".

The following is a complete list of orchestral suites by Christoph Graupner (1683-1760), the German harpsichordist and composer of high Baroque music. The works appear as given in Christoph Graupner : Thematisches Verzeichnis der Musikalischen Werke (thematic catalogue of Graupner's instrumental works).Oswald Bill And Christoph (editors), Christoph Graupner : Thematisches Verzeichnis der Musikalischen Werke (1683-1760), Stuttgart: Carus-Verlag, 2005. Apart from the string orchestra composed of 2 violins, viola and basso continuo, the additional instruments mentioned in the title of the work often play solo and ripieno parts.

600px The arresting dotted rhythms of the opening largo recall the dramatic style of the French overture, although the movement also serves to contrast the full orchestra with the quieter ripieno strings. The following highly inventive movement is a brilliant and animated allegro, a moto perpetuo. The busy semiquaver figure in the theme, passed constantly between different parts of the orchestra and the soloists, only adds to the overall sense of rhythmic and harmonic direction. Although superficially in concerto form, this movement's success is probably more a result of Handel's departure from convention.

Arcangelo Corelli Concerto grosso in G minor, Op. 6, No. 8 by Arcangelo Corelli, known commonly as the Christmas Concerto, was commissioned by Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni and published posthumously in 1714 as part of Corelli's Twelve concerti grossi, Op. 6\. The concerto bears the inscription ' (made for the night of Christmas). Its composition date is uncertain, but there is a record of Corelli having performed a Christmas concerto in 1690 for the enjoyment of his new patron. The concerto is scored for an ensemble consisting of two concertino violins and cello, ripieno strings and continuo.

Cantor, and responsible for the music in the church) since 1723. In this version the Passion was written for two choruses and orchestras. Choir I consists of a soprano in ripieno voice, a soprano solo, an alto solo, a tenor solo, SATB chorus, two traversos, two oboes, two oboes d'amore, two oboes da caccia, lute, strings (two violin sections, violas and cellos), and continuo (at least organ). Choir II consists of SATB voices, violin I, violin II, viola, viola da gamba, cello, two traversos, two oboes (d'amore) and possibly continuo.

In the concerto grosso, it refers to the larger of the two ensembles as opposed to the group of soloists called the concertino.The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd Ed. (2001) In a ripieno concerto, there is no dominant soloist, so it resembles an early symphony. It can also refer to the main body of orchestra in early orchestral music, although this use is today often disregarded. In band music, the term (or its variant spellings repiano and ripiano) is used similarly to designate the players not at the leading desk, especially the clarinet and cornet players in military bands.

The second allegro is an energetic fugue, the brief exchanges between concertino and ripieno strictly derived from the unusually long subject. The sombreness of the movement is underlined by the final cadence on the lowest strings of the violins and violas. The largo e piano in F major is one of Handel's most sublime and simple slow movements, a sarabande in the Italian trio sonata style. Above a steady crotchet walking bass, the sustained theme is gently exchanged between the two violin parts, with imitations and suspensions; harmonic colour is added in the discreet viola part.

This time he set it in C minor and removed the brass parts from the final movements and revised its vocal parts. Finally, on 29 March 1736, 23 March 1742, and between 1743-1746, Bach revived his St Matthew Passion in a new form. In this version, he replaced the original four-part chorale setting that ends Part I with the chorale fantasia that he used in both the Weimarer Passion and as movement 1 of the 1725 (second) version of the St John Passion. This time, he scored it in E major for 2 choirs, 2 orchestras, 2 organs (and ripieno soprano choir in the 1742 and 1743-6 versions).

They are reminiscent of Heinrich Schütz's pieces from Kleine geistliche Concerte. Six of the surviving masses were published during Kerll's lifetime as Missae sex, cum instrumentis concertantibus, e vocibus in ripieno, adjuncta una pro defunctis cum seq. Dies irae (Munich, 1689). The complex imitative counterpoint that dominates Kerll's chamber music is also present in most of his sacred vocal works: in Missa non sine quare every movement ends with a grand fugue, a similar technique is seen in Missa Renovationis (which is almost entirely based on five themes used for the Kyrie movement), where every division of the mass also closes with a large fugal section.

Previous commentators have suggested that perhaps an extra improvised voice was intended by Handel, but such a demand on a soloist would have been beyond usual baroque performing practices. The second and third movements are reworkings of the first two movements Handel's organ concerto in F major, HWV 295, often referred to as "The cuckoo and the nightingale", because of the imitation of birdsong. The allegro is skillfully transformed into a more disciplined and broader movement than the original, while retaining its innovative spirit. The solo and orchestral parts of the original are intermingled and redistributed in an imaginative and novel way between concertino and ripieno.

Arcangelo Corelli Twelve concerti grossi, Op. 6, is a collection of twelve concerti written by Arcangelo Corelli probably in the 1680s but not prepared for publication until 1714. They are among the finest and first examples of concerti grossi: concertos for a concertino group (here a 1st violin, a 2nd violin and a cello) and a ripieno group of strings with continuo. Their publication – decades after their composition and after Italian composers had moved to favor the ritornello concerto form associated with Vivaldi – caused waves of concerto grosso writing in Germany and England, where in 1739 Georg Frideric Handel honored Corelli directly with his own “Opus 6” collection of twelve.

3) contain fugal elements as well as influences from the sonata da chiesa form, and feature an interesting concertino group of horns and timpani, with the strings in the ripieno. Finally, the Sei Antifones ("Six Antiphonies"), which are among Barsanti's last published works, show Barsanti as a mature composer in a reflective, contemplative mood. They were composed, according to StenhouseStenhouse, William: Illustrations of the Lyric Poetry and Music of Scotland, Blackwood, Edinburgh & London, 1853 shortly before his departure from Scotland in 1743, and were dedicated to ~20-year-old Lady Catherine Charteris,Stenhouse, ibid. The dedication does not appear on the Welcker edition, which was published much later (c.

The cantata begins with a Sinfonia, which Bach derived from the first movement of his Brandenburg Concerto No. 3, possibly composed already in Weimar. For the cantata, he added to the nine string parts two new parts for corno da caccia and a ripieno trio of oboe I and violin I, oboe II and violin II, taille and viola, parts that are also new, but reinforcing existing parts. John Eliot Gardiner hears in the result the addition of "new-minted sheen and force to the original concerto movement, its colours and rhythms even sharper than before". In the first aria, two obbligato oboes in imitation introduce themes which the voice picks up.

Dean and Knapp write that the theatre's history was "enlivened and envenomed by a maelstrom of controversy, pursued in pamphlets, broadsheets, sermons and prefaces to librettos ... and by financial crises which persisted on and off throughout the sixty years of its existence". A preponderance of biblically inspired works in the earliest years was soon replaced by a range of more secular subjects, often drawn from Roman history and myth, or from recent events such as the 1683 siege of Vienna. Performances tended to be of considerable length, often extending to six hours. The 18-year-old Handel entered this hectic environment in mid-1703, to take up a place in the theatre's orchestra as a ripieno (ensemble) second violin.

Dalla Casa was a virtuoso player of the cornett (; ), which he described as 'the most excellent of all the wind instruments ... because it mimics the human voice better than the other instruments do' . The use of the Dalla Casas by Gabrieli and St. Mark's foreshadowed, and may have influenced, the development of the concertino- ripieno style of the concerto grosso in the later Baroque. Being a smaller group of virtuoso instrumentalists playing in contrast to larger instrumental and vocal forces arrayed around them, and being in the center of a hugely influential stylistic movement, they functioned as an early form of concertino. Much of the music which Gabrieli and the other Venetians wrote for them survives.

The third andante allegro is original and experimental, taking a short four-note figure from Handel's opera Agrippina as a central motif. This phrase and a repeated quaver figure are passed freely between soloists and ripieno in a movement that relies on musical texture. The following brief adagio, melancholy and expressive, would have been instantly recognized by Handel's audience as starting with a direct quotation from Cleopatra's aria Piangerò la sorte mia from Act III of his popular opera Giulio Cesare (1724). The siciliana is similar in style to those Handel wrote for his operas, always marking moments of tragic pathos; one celebrated example is the soprano-alto duet Son nata a lagrimar for Sesto and Cornelia at the end of act 1 of Giulio Cesare.

Most ripieno concertos fall into one of two distinct classes: a sonata type and a sinfonia type. The sonata type generally mirrors the form and style of the ' in its use of four-movement slow–fast–slow–fast cycles and predominantly fugal texture. The more modern sinfonia type was firmly established in Torelli's second publication to include concertos, Op. 6 (1698), and in Giulio Taglietti's , Op. 4 (1699), which turn to the three-movement (fast-slow-fast) pattern and more homophonic texture familiar to us from the solo concerto and opera sinfonia. The opening movements also parallel the solo concerto in utilizing ritornello form (without solo sections), in which the opening material recurs from one to several times in various keys, the last statement normally in the tonic.

A specific idiom for violin solo passages in such concertos, for instance a technique called bariolage, had developed. The solo passages were often in a faster tempo (shorter note values) than the accompaniment. The tutti passages of these concertos, that is where the whole orchestra joins in, were characterised by a ritornello theme which was often quite independent of the thematic material developed by the soloist(s). A typical concerto movement in this Italian style of solo concerto (as opposed to concerto formats not centred around one or more soloists such as the ripieno concerto) opened with a ritornello, followed by a solo passage called episode, after which a tutti brings back (a variant of) the ritornello, followed by further alternating solo and tutti passages, the movement being concluded by the ritornello.

Clothing the naked, detail from Caritas, The Seven Acts of Mercy, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1559 The short second section in common time is a 12 bar bridging interlude linking the first and third sections. The key modulates from D minor to C minor, so that the surrounding first and third sections can modulate from their starting key to its dominant and thus the whole movement can return to its original key at the close. The bridging section is composed in the seventeenth century concertato style, adopted in many of Bach's earlier Weimar cantatas, with the chorus playing the role of the concertino soloists and the orchestra the ripieno. The movement starts off with the basses singing "so du einen nacket siehest" (when thou naked seest), without any accompaniment even from the continuo.

Of all the Op. 6, it comes the closest to Vivaldi's concerto writing, with its stern opening unison ritornello; however, despite a clear difference in texture between the solo violin sections and the orchestral tuttis, Handel breaks from the model by sharing material between both groups. Although the charming and graceful fourth movement in G major is described as a polonaise, it has very few features in common with this popular eighteenth century dance form. The lower strings simulate a drone, creating a pastoral mood, but the dance-like writing for upper strings is more courtly than rustic. The final short allegro, ma non troppo in time brings the concerto back to E minor and a more serious mood, with chromaticism and unexpected key changes in the dialogue between concertino and ripieno.

He moved on to Cologne as a student of Mauricio Kagel but was persuaded to change to studying with Karlheinz Stockhausen, which Deane abandoned after six months "due to Stockhausen's lack of engagement with his students at this period".Fitzgerald (2013), p. 289. With a DAAD scholarship, Deane continued his studies with Isang Yun in Berlin. In the 1991 Accents Festival in Dublin, he was the featured composer (with Kurtág), also at the 1999 Sligo New Music Festival (with Roger Doyle). He represented Ireland in several ISCM festivals (Mexico City, Manchester, Hong Kong), and works were performed at the festivals l'Imaginaire irlandais (Paris 1996), Voyages (Montreal 2002), Warsaw Autumn (2004), and more than once at the UNESCO International Rostrum of Composers (his Ripieno for orchestra winning a special prize in 2000).

Concertato is a term in early Baroque music referring to either a genre or a style of music in which groups of instruments or voices share a melody, usually in alternation, and almost always over a basso continuo. The term derives from Italian concerto which means "playing together"—hence concertato means "in the style of a concerto." In contemporary usage, the term is almost always used as an adjective, for example "three pieces from the set are in concertato style." A somewhat oversimplified, but useful distinction between concertato and concerto can be made: the concertato style involves contrast between opposing groups of voices and groups of instruments: the concerto style, especially as it developed into the concerto grosso later in the Baroque, involves contrast between large and small groups of similar composition (later called "ripieno" and "concertino").

Bach used the same theme for the opening chorus of his cantata Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis, BWV 21, first performed on 17 June 1714, shortly before ill health forced Prince Johann Ernst to leave Weimar for treatment in Bad Schwalbach. 450px Although each return of the theme with its chromatic falling bass accompaniment is instantly recognizable, Bach's allotting of parts between the two manuals (Oberwerk and Rückpositiv) can occasionally obscure Vivaldi's sharp distinction between solo and ripieno players. Various elements of Vivaldi's string writing, that would normally be outside Bach's musical vocabulary for organ compositions, are included directly or with slight adaptations in Bach's arrangement. As well as the dissonant suspensions in the opening quaver figures, these include quaver figures in parallel thirds, descending chromatic fourths, and rippling semidemiquavers and semiquavers in the left hand as an equivalent for the tremolo string accompaniment.

George Frideric Handel, engraving by John Faber after a painting by Thomas Hudson The Concerti Grossi, Op. 6, or Twelve Grand Concertos, HWV 319–330, are 12 concerti grossi by George Frideric Handel for a concertino trio of two violins and violoncello and a ripieno four-part string orchestra with harpsichord continuo. First published by subscription in London by John Walsh in 1739, in the second edition of 1741 they became Handel's Opus 6. Taking the older concerto da chiesa and concerto da camera of Arcangelo Corelli as models, rather than the later three-movement Venetian concerto of Antonio Vivaldi favoured by Johann Sebastian Bach, they were written to be played during performances of Handel's oratorios and odes. Despite the conventional model, Handel incorporated in the movements the full range of his compositional styles, including trio sonatas, operatic arias, French overtures, Italian sinfonias, airs, fugues, themes and variations and a variety of dances.

Like the similarly popular aria Son confusa pastorella from Act III of Handel's opera Poro re dell'Indie (1731), it was inspired by Telemann's Harmonischer Gottes Dienst. The musette starts with a gravely beautiful main theme: Handel creates a unique dark texture of lower register strings over a drone bass, the traditional accompaniment for this dance, derived from the drone of the bagpipes. This sombre theme alternates with contrasting spirited episodes on the higher strings. The movement divides into four parts: first a statement of the theme from the full orchestra; then a continuation and extension of this material as a dialogue between concertino and ripieno strings, with the typical dotted rhythms of the musette; then a section for full orchestra in C minor with semiquaver passage- work for violins over the rhythms of the original theme in the lower strings; and finally a shortened version of the dialogue from the second section to conclude the work.

Letter dated 16 July 1958, quoted in After the score had been published, and in the face of an imminent performance in Ettal, Britten suggested that he could attempt to rewrite the music for a handbell ensemble in D, since sets in that key were more common than in E flat.Letter dated 28 February 1959, quoted in Britten never prepared this alternative version for reduced instrumentation. He did agree, however, to make the published full score "less bulky" by presenting the amateur forces of recorders, ripieno strings and percussion in the form of short score, on the understanding that full scores for those groups would be available to hire for rehearsal and performance purposes. The full score was published in 1958,(Click "View Sample" for first page of score with copyright details) and the vocal score, prepared by Imogen Holst with the libretto translated into German by Prince Ludwig of Hesse and the Rhine, under the pseudonym Ludwig Landgraf, was published in 1959.

This culminates in two bars where the music is at its most intense: the upper and middle strings play a variant of the original uninverted ritornello theme; in the harpsichord a descending chromatic fourth in the left hand plays beneath sighing figures reprised from the first episode which descend to a closing cadence in B minor. At the cadence there is a full orchestral tutti—the lowest strings once more joining the ripieno section—in a version of the opening ritornello, but now with a rising chromatic fourth in the top notes of the first violin, as the key modulates to F minor. The harpsichord enters with a five bar episode formed by three phrases starting on sustained notes off the beat: the first three bars long with a falling chromatic fourth in the left hand of the hand harpsichord; the second and third, fragmentary one bar statements. These lead into a full recapitulation of the eight-bar Seitensatz, but now with darker colours: the harpsichord starts lower down in the key of D major and the left hand part is joined by the lowest strings.