Remixes on Handel's Lascia ch'io pianga

Remixes on a Theme by Handel (2018) 1. Largo vivace 2. Andante comodo 3. Più mosso 4. Tranquillo 5. Adagio 6. Andantino 7. Fuga from the debut album REMIXED by Raphael Fusco A remix is a song or recording which has been modified from its original version by adding, removing, or changing any of its elements. Although we associate the term most often with digital sampling and popular genres, composers were at work remixing music by their colleagues and predecessors centuries before the advent of audio engineering. Johann Sebastian Bach, for example, arranged hymn melodies by Martin Luther and concertos by Antonio Vivaldi as intricate pieces for solo organ. Mozart arranged Handel’s Messiah to include the new orchestral timbres of his day. Beethoven composed masterful piano variations on themes by Händel and Mozart. From Buxtehude to B.B. King, Classical composers and Blues musicians alike have improvised on hand-me-down bass lines in passacaglias, chaconnes and the 12-bar blues. Georg Friedrich Händel had originally conceived Almirena’s aria “Lascia ch’io pianga" (Let Me Weep) from the 1711 opera Rinaldo as an instrumental sarabande in his 1704 opera Almira .  He later reworked the melody as an aria for the oratorio Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno, and finally, in Rinaldo he replaced the text to create one of the greatest songs in opera history. The present set of variations deconstructs Almirena’s Baroque lament and remixes its melodic and harmonic content with Minimalism, Pop, Polytonality, Jazz, Romanticism, Gospel, concluding with a four-voice fugue.  The work was premiered in 2018 during a faculty concert for the inaugural season of the Opera Lucca festival. © 2019 Raphael Fusco