Suites de Pieces pour le CLAVECIN, composées par G. F. Handel. SECOND VOLUME.

[London]: [Printed by Wright & Co.]. [ca. 1784]. Oblong 4to (300 x 235mm). Engraved throughout, no PN, and lacking or rubbed out price and publisher imprint (small hole at foot of title in that area). Title [vb]; 2 - 83 pp. contemporary half calf, marbled boards with leather plate to upper "Handel's Lessons Vol: 2d.", upper cover and a couple of pages detached, a little worming, generally clean throughout. An early edition of the second set of Handel's Suites, reprinted from the Walsh plates with an altered title-page, including HWV434-442. This copy from the library of English army officer and politician Theodore Henry Broadhead (1767-1820) and including his armorial bookplate to to the inner front board. References: Terence Best, 'Handel's Keyboard Music', Musical Times, CXII, 1971, p.845; Smith No.8 (p.250); A/I/4 H1439. 

The two collections of suites that Handel himself issued in 1720 and 1733 form the main pillars of his keyboard music. For Handel, the suite was a self-contained genre with a cyclic formal design. Thus, although indebted to the sequence of movements customary at the time, each suite in these two collections has distinctive features all of its own. 

According to historian Sir John Hawkins, Handel's keyboard improvisations "stole on the ear in a slow and solemn progression; the harmony close wrought, and as full as could be possibly be expressed; the passage concatenated with stupendous art, the whole at the same time being perfectly intelligible, and carrying the appearance of great simplicity." These same improvisatory characteristics carry over into his Suites for harpsichord, which refuse to follow the traditional order of movements of a French dance suite, each instead with its own number and ordering of dances. The suites contain a variety of styles, ranging from arias with variations to Italian-style sonata movements, highly academic fugues (which Charles Burney apparently found inappropriate for the instrument) and even a magnificent passacaglia. (20945)

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