A King's Music on the River

London, July 1717. Boats are drifting out onto the Thames as the evening cools. In the large covered barge sit King George I and his guests. Right beside them, keeping pace, is another barge carrying nothing but musicians.

Welcome to the first stop. I'm Bach, your guide. The man who wrote tonight's music, Handel, was born in Germany in 1685, the same year as me. Yet the two of us never met. I stayed with German churches and courts; Handel went to Italy, then crossed to London and made his name there.

That night on the river made the newspapers. There were about fifty musicians, and the king liked what he heard so much that he had the music played again and again. The boats went up from Whitehall to Chelsea and back, and the playing went on late into the night.

Think about where this was happening. No walls, no ceiling. Wind, slapping water, and a crowd of boats full of curious Londoners all around. A quiet lute would simply vanish out there. So Handel reached for instruments that carry: trumpets and horns.

The piece we hear today, the Alla Hornpipe, borrows the beat of the hornpipe, a dance the English loved. Over a rhythm that almost stamps its feet, the brass flashes. Trumpets and horns of the time had no valves. Players picked out notes with their lips alone, so on a rocking barge they must have been working hard.