What’s in a name? Handel’s autograph annotations

Abstract

The facsimile shows one of the most often-reproduced pages of Handel’s autograph music, the final side of his score of Messiah. At the end of the music, in the bottom margin, he wrote a sequence of non-musical annotations. To take the principal ones in the order that they appear, which is probably also the order that they were written, there is first “S. D. G.” (“Soli Deo Gloria”), a Latin phrase that seems particularly appropriate for this oratorio, then “Fine dell’Oratorio”, in Italian even though the work itself had been in the English language and Handel had been living in London almost continuously for 30 years. Then follows Handel’s name in its English form (“G. F. Handel”), and the date “Septembr. 12. 1741” in what I also take to be an English form, accompanied by the astrological symbol for Saturday. One further annotation followed a couple of days later, in German and written in German kurrentschrift: “ausgefullet den 14 dieses”. To the right, below the last chord, Handel wrote the bar-count “87” for the movement: I think that he wrote that in 1741, but the preceding “NB” dates from 1749, when Handel used the final Amen progression to close his Anthem on the Peace1.

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