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Handel’s La Lucrezia: a discussion of text, music, and historiography

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Handel’s La Lucrezia: a discussion of text, music, and historiography

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Content Handel’s La Lucrezia:
A Discussion of Text, Music, and Historiography
by
Ariana E. Davis
A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC THORNTON SCHOOL OF MUSIC
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS
MUSIC (EARLY MUSIC PERFORMANCE)
December 2021
Copyright 2021 Ariana E. Davis

ii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thank you to my incredible professors for helping me complete this thesis. I could not have done
it without their support, the support of my family, or without the constant companionship of my
cat Zee. Finally, thank you to COVID-19 for providing such an interesting and different time in
our strange little lives.

iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements..........................................................................................................................ii
List of Tables..................................................................................................................................iv
List of Examples..............................................................................................................................v
Abstract...........................................................................................................................................vi
Introduction....................................................................................................................................vii
Chapter 1: Historiography..............................................................................................................1
Chapter 2: Lucretia as Legend ……...............................................................................................7
Chapter 3: Musical Analysis, Rhetoric, & Performance Practice..................................................18
Treatises on Recitative.......................................................................................................24
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................29
Text & Translation.........................................................................................................................30
Works Cited...................................................................................................................................34

iv

LIST OF TABLES
La Lucrezia Rhyme Schemes……………………………………………………………...……..15
Major Key Areas & Affect Indications...………………………………………………………...22

v

LIST OF EXAMPLES
Ex. 1: La Lucrezia, “Il suol che preme”, mm 143-146.………………………………………...19
Ex. 2: La Lucrezia, “O numi eterni”, mm 1-18. …………………………..……………………19
Ex. 3: La Lucrezia, “Alla salma infedel”, mm 212-215………………………………………...20
Ex. 4: La Lucrezia, “Alla salma infedel”, mm 255-260................................................................21
Ex. 5: La Lucrezia, “Alla salma infedel”, mm 266-269………………………………………...23
Ex. 6: La Lucrezia, “O numi eterni”, mm 17-18……………………………………….……….27

vi

ABSTRACT

This thesis aims to examine George Frideric Handel’s La Lucrezia through various lenses
of understanding, first by tracing the legend of Lucretia from the first surviving Roman account
until Handel’s retelling of the story in the 18
th
century. The accounts of Livy, Ovid, and others
provide a general scope of the events, as well as diverse responses and opinions on Lucretia’s
moral values. These sources are all compared with the libretto of La Lucrezia and with Handel’s
other early compositions to highlight the history and growth of the legend. In the second chapter,
the music is taken into consideration through rhetorical analysis and historically informed
performance practice. The terms of Johann Mattheson and Christoph Bernhard support this
discussion, as do treatises by Pier Francesco Tosi, John Ernest Galliard, and Johann Freidrich
Agricola. The third and final chapter summarizes the historiography of the cantata. La Lucrezia
is without patron, date, or location of composition, raising question to be answered through
references to recent scholarship. With all of these factors in combination, we can understand,
perform, and appreciate Handel’s La Lucrezia in a historically informed and poignant way.

vii

Introduction
The tradition of men finding their voices through the experiences and emotional
complexity of women has a long history. Just as Pygmalion was inspired to sculpt the mythical
Galatea, and as epic poets invoked the female muses, men have found their voices and scope of
expressed feelings through feminine power. George Frideric Handel could not have been the
same musician without his deep exploration of emotion and expression through the stories of
women. The first 25 years of his life are enfolded with female heroines, charted through pagan,
Christian, Greek, Roman, and Arcadian traditions. As he grew and his narrative choices
broadened, his music reflected a highly expressive style that he curated through the large breadth
of emotions encompassed in his female heroines. This thesis focuses on Handel’s early Italian
cantata La Lucrezia, which shares the tale of the Roman matron Lucretia. In his early 1700s
Italianate style, Handel expresses Lucretia’s assault and journey to suicide through passionate
and precise musical figures, rhetorical devices, and affect changes.
The first chapter of this thesis centers around the historiography of the cantata. It
highlights where Handel may have composed La Lucrezia, for whom and for what reason, and
the various ways historians and musicologists have researched manuscripts to inform modern
scholarship about the creation of this piece. It presents evidence cited in arguments for its
possible composition in Rome, Florence, and Venice.
The second chapter introduces the cantata’s text by briefly tracing its prominent history
and representations. Lucretia began as a real person in Rome, her story first told by Livy and
then Ovid. Her noble suicide was revered by some, but other figures and academics in history,
such as St. Augustine of Hippo, considered it a sin. Chaucer referenced Lucretia in his time and
in good light, as did his contemporary John Gower. In order to trace Lucretia’s story from

viii

inception to Handel’s hands, the focus turns to Scarlatti’s Lucrezia Romana of 1688. After
discussing this musical representation, the chapter concludes with an analysis of Handel’s
libretto for La Lucrezia, including a chart of its rhyme schemes.
The third and final chapter explores the music of the cantata, with analysis informed by
rhetorical devices defined by Johann Mattheson and Christoph Bernhard. The work of these
theorists helps outline the narrative structure of the music and illustrate how Handel successfully
expresses the story through his composition. In addition to discussing its musical rhetoric, this
chapter includes a chart describing the order of recitatives and arias within the cantata to better
demonstrate the winding path of the music. Finally, the recitatives are further examined through
the treatises of Pier Tosi and Johann Agricola.
This thesis aims to recount the story of Lucretia, the history of Handel’s composition of
the cantata, and share a brief analysis of the music itself. Through these three chapters, we can
improve our understanding of the mythical power of this legendary woman and how it translated
into the world of the 18
th
century Italian chamber cantata.

1

Chapter One: Historiography
“As women who live outside familiar roles, as transgressive figures who are often quite
capable of independence, they do not just die—they must die so that everything can go back to
normal.”
-Adriana Cavarero, For More than One Voice
1

George Frideric Handel composed his solo cantata La Lucrezia early in his career, while
traveling between various patrons and finding his first footholds in the world.
2
The powerful
story of Lucretia’s rape and sacrificial suicide was ideal for the young composer’s dramatic style.
An important and fascinating side to the analysis and understanding of this cantata is its journey.
The combined efforts of years of different researchers make it possible to piece together the
historiography for Handel’s La Lucrezia. The first question to answer is where this cantata was
composed. John Mainwaring, Handel’s first biographer, cites that La Lucrezia “was made at
Rome, and its merits are much better known in Italy than in England”.
3
Handel first visited Rome
in 1707, where he stayed with Prince Ruspoli, Benedetto Pamphili, and Cardinal Ottoboni. The
latter two provided Handel with libretti for many of his sacred works, and Ruspoli’s Arcadian
Academy fueled Handel’s pastoral cantatas. Because Lucretia is of Roman origin, it makes sense
that it would be conceived in Rome or commissioned by a Roman patron. In addition, the Santini
Collection holds the majority of music composed in Ruspoli’s court, as collected by Fortunato
Santini throughout the late 18
th
century.
4
Yet this anthology contains very few works by Handel,
even though he was “known to have been associated, at least for a time, exclusively with the
Ruspoli household,” which “supports the idea that an entire body of the Roman cantata repertoire

1
Adriana Cavarero, For More than One Voice, Stanford University Press (2005), 125.
2
The entire La Lucrezia cantata is also referred to by its first line of text, “O numi eterni”.
3
John Mainwaring, Memoirs of the Life of the Late George Frederic Handel, (1760), 200-201.
4
Sergio Lattes, "Fortunato Santini," Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy, (2001).

2

was composed and performed specifically for the Arcadian Academy.”
5
Of course, the Roman
Lucretia is not an Arcadian figure, so where is her place within the Academy’s Sunday cantata
performance? Kimberly Harris notes that the Academy began with works “based on the ideas of
Aristotle and the Greek classics” which “moved further and further away from these ideas as the
Baroque period progressed”.
6
Through the “broad range of interests of the Academy”, fitting La
Lucrezia in between the pastoral stories of Arcadia makes more sense.
7
In Ursula Kirkendale’s
Ruspoli Documents¸ Lucretia is not mentioned until 1709 through a copyist’s payment receipt.
Kirkendale notes that it is likely that the cantata was composed earlier and simply recopied then,
but that “all roads lead to Rome” in terms of compositional origin.
8
Handel was performing for
Ruspoli through 1710, though Mainwaring fails to mention him once, which Kirkendale cites as
“one more proof that this author's information is rather sketchy”.
9

Contrary to this theory of Roman origin is that of Florence. Freidrich Chrysander, a 19
th
-
century German musician and scholar, states that Handel’s La Lucrezia “must have been
particularly valuable to him; it was probably the first significant proof of his high ability to the
Florentine court and won him a higher position” (“muß ihm besonders werth gewesen sein, sie
war dem florentinischen Hofe wohl der erste bedeutende Beweis seiner hohen Fähigkeiten und
errang ihm eine höhere Stellung”).
10
He also links the cantata to Florence with a soprano named
Lucrezia d’Andre who supposedly had a relationship with Handel. Chrysander’s final date and

5
Kimberly Coulter Hale Harris, Poetry and Patronage: Alessandro Scarlatti, The Accademia
Degli
Arcadia, and the Development of the Conversazione Cantata in Rome 1700-1710, (University of
North Texas, 2005), 36.
6
K. Harris, Poetry and Patronage, 2-3.
7
K. Harris, Poetry and Patronage, 5.
8
Kirkendale, Ruspoli Documents, 246.
9
Kirkendale, Ruspoli Documents, 251.
10
Freidrich Chrysander, G. F. Haendel, 159.

3

location for La Lucrezia’s composition is between January and March 1707 in Florence while
working for the Medici family. Kirkendale expressed doubt about the validity of the soprano
Lucrezia tying the cantata to Florence rather than Rome, as the virtuosa was employed with
Ruspoli as well—not to mention that two other sopranos named Lucrezia were present in the
court. The popularity of this Roman heroine extends far beyond music, confusing biographers
and conflating stories. The next piece of striking evidence comes from the watermark analysis of
Daniel Burrows and Martha J Ronish, whose classification of paper provides a guiding light into
the past.
11
In the early 18
th
century, Venetian music paper was watermarked with a symbol of
three crescent moons, while paper of Roman make was marked with a fleur de lys. The paper
was also staved using a rastrum, with each having its own size specifications for the line layout.
Likely a scribe was attached to a specific place would do this task, and that scribe would further
help identify date and location for Handel’s unmarked works. The La Lucrezia manuscript is
entirely watermarked with the Venetian three crescent moons, along with eight various other
pieces. Ellen Harris refers to this period as “Moons 1706 group” from Florence and/or Venice, as
the paper’s “wide distribution across Northern Italy makes a specific identification of provenance
impossible without further evidence”.
12
To further support the theory of a late 1706 composition,
Harris points out the watermark analysis of Handel’s first date Roman piece “Dixit Dominus” of
April 1707. The first 68% of the folios are on Moons paper, but the remainder changes to the
Roman Fleur.
13
Harris interprets this to mean that “Dixit Dominus” was either composed “before
arriving in Rome or used paper left over from an earlier visit in northern Italy”, placing it after

11
Daniel Burrows & Martha J Ronish, A Catalogue of Handel’s Musical Autographs, (1994).
12
Ellen Harris, Handel as Orpheus, 269.
13
35 out of 51 folios in the Latin motet “Dixit Dominus” use Moons 10, Moons SS10, and
Moons AZ10, a “northern Italian (non-Roman) paper”. The final 16 folios bear the Roman Fleur
watermark.

4

the composition of La Lucrezia.
14
If the La Lucrezia had been composed after 1707 and “Dixit
Dominus” while in Rome, Handel’s paper would have used the Roman Fleur watermark. It
seems much more likely that the cantata was composed in 1706 before his journey to Rome, and
the first 35 folios of “Dixit Dominus” used the rest of the paper he had accumulated while living
and working in Venice and Florence before transitioning to Roman watermarked paper for the
remainder of his stay in the city. Musically speaking, La Lucrezia is an Italianate cantata that
demonstrates Handel’s early style, further placing it in pre-Rome 1706. Finally, he signed his
name as the German G. F. Händel, found only in this early group of watermarks. After that point
in Italy he signed his name as Hendel, beginning with “Dixit Dominus”.
15

With a more definitive date and location established, the reason for the composition
comes into question. Was La Lucrezia requested by a patron, or composed as an example of
Handel’s style as a Brandenberg-esque application for employment? While few sources exist
listing where Handel stayed during his first journey to Northern Italy, his Medici residency is the
only known with confidence. Kirkendale questions whether Lucretia would have been a story of
interest the Grand Duchy of Florence, as their performances were “always a representative
matter”.
16
She continues that “it is rather improbable that the Medici would have ordered a
Lucrezia story from their own chapel master.” Harris counters that it “has to remain a possibility
as long as there is no documentary evidence that excludes it”.
17
Another clue comes from
Benedetto Marcello, who used the same libretto to compose his own La Lucrezia presumably
near the same time and place. Marcello lived and worked in Venice in the early 1700s and often

14
Harris, Handel as Orpheus, 270.
15
Harris, Handel as Orpheus, 270.
16
Kirkendale, The Ruspoli Documents, 246.
17
Harris, Handel as Orpheus, 393.

5

wrote the libretti himself.
18
He also worked with the Italian poet Antonio Schinella Conti, on
several cantatas focusing on female protagonists. Conti could be the mystery librettist, though
how it was requested and reached Handel’s hands remains a mystery. In many instances,
Benedetto Pamphili is suggested by default as the librettist for Handel’s La Lucrezia due to their
many years of partnership and the supposed tie to Rome. He did compose the Lucretia text from
1690 for Scarlatti, so he was certainly versed in the story. But if his name is listed on other
works, why not on this one? Ellen Harris notes that “Pamphilj’s absence from these various
records, given his continued musical patronage, points not to a lack of influence in musical
patronage, but, it would seem, to a less public persona”.
19
Perhaps then this Lucretia represents a
condensed version of the Scarlatti libretto altered by Pamphili for this specific setting.
Ultimately, we can only speculate given the research available.
In regards to Handel’s role in choosing Lucretia as a musical subject, his other cantatas of
the time can provide insight. Handel’s early Italian cantatas frequently feature solo heroines from
history, legend, and literature, sharing their emotional turmoil. Harris notes that “the individual
abandoned woman in music frequently symbolizes a singular category of human loss or
abandonment”, and categorizes Handel’s cantatas depicting abandoned women into three groups:
The Irrational (Armida, Agrippina), who are “dangerous and fear-inspiring”; the Political
Metaphor (Lucrezia), whose rape represents the loss of liberty to the powerful; and the Deserted
Soul (Clori, Hero), who are abandoned by God.
20
Rarely do we see men in these emotional
positions unless under the spell or influence of a woman. As Handel stayed and adapted to
working in Rome, especially considering his connection with Ruspoli’s Arcadian Academy, he

18
Eleanor Selfridge-Field, “Benedetto Marcello”, The Oxford Dictionary of Music, (2001).
19
Ellen Harris, “Pamphilj as Phoenix”, The Pamphilj and the Arts, 194.
20
Harris, Handel as Orpheus, 78.

6

“had to learn to control this feminized voice with rational (“masculine”) principles of style and
structure”.
21
And in Handel’s pastoral cantatas of this period we see just that: poetry with stricter
rhyme schemes that depict a “nameless and more conventional conceit” without the fire and fury
of his earlier pieces. Overall, it is clear that “Handel found the breadth and depth of his own
expressive voice by trying on the voices of abandoned women”.
22

21
Harris, Handel as Orpheus, 84.
22
Harris, Handel as Orpheus, 84.

7

Chapter Two: Lucretia as Legend
Although the precise time and place of its composition remains unresolved, the first
known performance is well documented. While staying with Prince Ruspoli outside Rome,
Handel’s La Lucrezia was copied by his primary copyist Giuseppe Antonio Angelini and
performed by Handel himself.
23
The audience included Ruspoli’s family, friends, and court
members, all eager to hear the soprano (likely Margarita Durastante) perform Handel’s work.
24

While we do not know the precise familiarity they would have had with the story of Lucretia, the
paths connecting her story from its early Roman beginning to their ears can be sketched and
traced today. To do this, we will shortly survey sources of the original story and subsequent
responses that help color in the shades of Lucretia’s portrait.
Titus Livius recorded Lucretia’s story first in Ab urbe condita, written between 27 and 9
BCE. This collection of Roman history covers events from the fall of Troy and the arrival of
Aeneas to Livy’s day. He describes Lucretia as a chaste and modest woman (pudicitia), wool-
working late into the night with her servants while her husband Collatinus rests in his tent, away
at war. He boasts to friends that the best example of a Roman wife must be his Lucretia and
invites them to his home to see for themselves. The son of the King, Sextus Tarquinius,
accompanies them to behold Lucretia. She was as Collatinus had described, and Tarquinius grew
attracted to her, “cum forma tum spectata castitas” (“not only her beauty, but her proved chastity

23
“Angelini is known as a collaborator of Handel not only from a bill for Cardinal Pamphilj,
dated May 14, 1707; a large number of extant Handel manuscripts have already been identified
as copies from the pen of this scribe”, Ursula Kirkendale, “The Ruspoli Documents on Handel”,
Journal of the American Musicological Society 20, no. 2 (1967): 227.
24
Kirkendale, “The Ruspoli Documents on Handel”, 228.

8

as well”).
25
He returned alone the following night, crept into her bedroom, and threatened to kill
her if she did not submit to his assault. She continued to refuse, so Tarquinius changed his threat:
kill her and kill a slave and leave them in bed together, claiming that he found them and slayed
both to uphold the honor of Collatinus. She can resist no further and Tarquinius rapes her and
flees the castle. In the morning, Livy gives Lucretia her first words (as she has no dialogue until
after the assault), when she gathers her husband, father, and Lucius Junius Brutus. They question
her sad countenance, and she discloses what occurred. She feels ashamed, though her family
insists that she is blameless. Her father and husband vow to avenge the violation, and she
declares that no “unchaste woman [shall] live through the example of Lucretia”, and plunges a
concealed knife into her breast and dies.
26
In Livy’s records, Brutus takes the knife and leads the
family to incite rebellion against the Roman King. They collect the townspeople, head to the city,
and successfully dethrone the king to create the Roman Republic. Livy mentions Lucretia once
more in Book II at the funeral for Brutus, where the matrons of the town mourned him for a year
because he fought so hard to avenge Lucretia’s rape and bring justice. This text has served as the
archetype for all adaptations of Lucretia’s story to come. Both Handel and Pamphili read Livy to
understand her story and character, as did Ovid some 17 years later.
This next record of Lucretia is found in Ovid’s Fasti, published in 8 CE. This collection
of epic poems is spread between six books, each representing one month and including the
festivities, rituals, and history of that month. Lucretia’s story begins in Book II, February, with

25
Titus Liviticus (Livy), Ab urbe condita, Book I, trans. B.O. Foster (William Heineman Ltd,
1938), 201. While the majority of the 142 books are lost, the foundation of the Republic survives
in the first and second books.
26
Livy, Ab urbe condita, 203.

9

the explanation of the “Regifugium”.
27
Ovid’s Lucretia is more human than Livy’s: she speaks
before the assault, a more fleshed-out character, and struggles to share what happened with her
family the next morning. Ovid describes her as pale skinned and blonde (niveusque color
flavique capilli),
28
highly sought-after characteristics in Roman women, as “black hair and an
olive complexion were most commonly to be seen” in Italy.
29
Her voice is soft, her countenance
pleasant, and her eyes fill with tears at the thought of harm to her husband. After she shares the
horrible truth of what occurred, she refuses her family’s assurance of her guiltlessness and stabs
herself with a concealed sword. In their basic structure, Ovid and Livy’s accounts are relatively
similar, and scholars have noted that Ovid had read his predecessor’s work.
30
Eleanor
Glendenning highlights notable differences in her paper Reinventing Lucretia: “Ovid portrays
her suicide graphically, using the polysyllabic 'sanguinulenta' to attest to the bloodiness and
violent nature of the scene”.
31
Livy uses no words to describe her death beyond the motion of
Lucretia falling to the ground. When Lucretia struggles to share her story, Ovid writes that she
takes until the fourth try to speak successfully. This creates a more realistic image of Lucretia:
where Livy has her disclose the assault immediately after spending the past few pages silent.
Overall, Ovid depicts a realistic story of Lucretia that supports the chaste Roman matron with
greater dimension. She dutifully spins wool and vocalizes her hopes for her husband’s safety
while knowing little of the world beyond. But one must take into consideration Ovid’s intent. His
calendar book had stories as explanations for the major holidays and dates, so he would be

27
This “flight of the King” was reference to the expulsion of the Tarquins following Lucretia’s
suicide and Brutus’ call to action.
28
Ovid, Fasti, Book II: February, trans. James G. Frazer, Line 763.
29
AG Lee, “Ovid’s Lucretia”, Greece & Rome 22, no. 66 (1953): 114.
30
Lee, “Ovid’s Lucretia”, 108.
31
Eleanor Glendenning, “Reinventing Lucretia: Rape, Suicide and Redemption from Classical
Antiquity to the Medieval Era”, International Journal of the Classical Tradition 20, no. ½
(2013): 67.

10

compelled to describe things viscerally (so the reader remembers), dramatically, and with more
depth than his predecessor. Livy was writing a historical account, and Lucretia’s rape was a
“poetic” reason for Brutus to create the Roman Republic. Both of their representations of
Lucretia make sense considering the worlds in which they lived.
Around 400 years later, the staunch Christian judgement of Augustine of Hippo revealed
a more negative and contrary opinion of Lucretia than found in previous accounts. Published
around 420 CE, De civitate Dei contra paganos was St. Augustine’s response to the sack of
Rome in 410. As Christianity gained popularity, and the fall of pagan Rome became a sign to
many that the pagan gods had abandoned them for Christianity.
32
Augustine found Lucretia to be
guilty: either she consented to the rape and killed herself out of guilt, or she did not consent and
committed the sin of suicide. He makes the point that suicide without sanction from a Christian
God is the greatest sin in Lucretia’s story. St. Augustine wanted his readers to embrace
Christianity and leave Paganism, of which Lucretia was a “heroic female figurehead”.
33
He does
not understand why Lucretia would kill herself if she committed no sin, but also forgives the
Christian women who killed themselves after being raped during the attack of the Goths due to
their faith.
In contrary to Augustine’s interpretation comes the Lucretia of Christine de Pizan.
Christine de Pizan wrote Le Livre de la Cité des Dames in the early 15
th
century, briefly
including the story of Lucretia in a series of examples to contradict the notion that women
“enjoy” or consent to rape.
34
Sexual assault was a very real and present fear in Pizans’ lifetime,

32
Glendenning, “Reinventing Lucretia”, 70.
33
Glendenning, “Reinventing Lucretia”, 71.
34
Christine de Pizan, Le Livre de la Cite des Dames, trans. Earl Jeffrey Richards (Persea
Publishing, 1998).

11

as “historians of medieval crime have documented that sexual violation was a severe problem in
France and Burgundy during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries”.
35
Choosing to speak on
Lucretia was Pizan’s way of sharing a more feminist view “into Livy's politicized, male-
dominated account”.
36
Other contemporaries of Pizan wrote popular accounts of Lucretia’s story,
such as Chaucer and John Gower. Both added a “swoon” during the assault, so that Lucretia
“feels nothing”. Pizán does not include this addition, as her Lucretia submits to the rape out of
fear of death and is driven to suicide due to the horror and trauma of it all. Following her suicide
and the abolishment of the Kings, Pizan adds that a law was passed condemning rapists to death.
She creates a female presence throughout her adaptation, focusing on the trauma of the victim
coupled with her judicial hopes for the future. The Ovidian tale informed all of these three
accounts of Pizan, Gower, and Chaucer, because research has found the “increasing number of
Ovidian texts in England between 1200 and 1500”, and that Livy was not “brought out of the
oblivion” until the early 1300s.
37

Another well-known account is Shakespeare’s The Rape of Lucrece (1594), a lengthy
poem from the beginning of the playwright’s output. In his critical analysis, Joel Fineman
discusses the link between poetic praise and sexual violence, as seen in the first stanzas of
Shakespeare’s work: “Happ'ly that name of "chaste" unhapp'ly set / This bateless edge on his
keen appetite;” as Collatinus (Shakespeare’s Collatine) speaks highly of Lucretia to Tarquinius,
and it is the words of her husband that attract him, not her chastity or beauty in itself.
38

35
Diane Wolfthal, “Douleur sur toutes autres”: Revisualizing the Rape Script in the Epistre
Othea and the Cité des dames”, from Christine de Pizan and the Categories of Difference, ed.
Marylinn Desmond (University of Minnesota Press, 1998), 42.
36
Glendenning, 77.
37
Glendinning, 77.
38
William Shakespeare, The Rape of Lucrece, (1594), lines 8-9.

12

Shakespeare presents the sequence of events for the reader to learn from: beautiful praise, while
well intentioned, was the first and primary cause of the future sexual violence. In other words,
“the poem understands Collatine's praise of Lucrece, his ‘boast of Lucrece' sov'reignty’, as
fundamental cause of Tarquin's rape of Lucrece”.
39
Jane Newman, in a response to the same
work, connects Lucretia’s story with Philomela, a victim of rape from Greek mythology seen
most prominently in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Philomela is raped by her sister’s husband, Tereus,
who then cuts out her tongue to prevent her from sharing what happened. Philomela weaves a
tapestry telling the story and gifts it to her sister Procne, who promptly kills and cooks her and
Tereus’s son and feeds him to Tereus for dinner. Upon seeing his son’s head on a platter, Tereus
understands what has happened, and pursues Procne and Philomela with the intent to kill them
both. In a final plea to the Gods, the women are turned into a swallow and nightingale
respectively, escaping death in a flurry of feathers. In some accounts, Tereus is also turned into a
bird, often a hawk. Hawks and wolves were predators often used when describing rapists, with
their victims being songbirds, sheep, and lambs. While Tereus is punished for his violence, there
is no political change or true alteration in life: the characters simply become animals,
transfigured by the divine and “free” from need for justice or change. Lucretia, on the other
hand, can speak after she is raped, and is able to share her story with the male figures in her life.
Her suicide was “the only form of political intervention available for women”.
40
And still, her
lifeless body parading through Rome served as a silent vessel for change, driven by the men who
held all the control. Lucretia’s last acts were in complete control of her own body, for once, as

39
Joel Fineman, “Shakespeare’s Will: The Temporality of Rape,” in Representations,
(University of California Press, 1987), 30.
40
Jane Newman, "And Let Mild Women to Him Lose Their Mildness": Philomela, Female
Violence, and Shakespeare's The Rape of Lucrece”, in Shakespeare Quarterly (Oxford
University Press, 1994), 308.

13

she used a dagger (a traditionally male weapon) to kill herself, “cancelling out” the uncontrolled
penetration of Tarquinius with a penetration she can control.
In the musical world, a retelling of Lucretia’s story that connects with Handel’s is
Scarlatti’s “Lucrezia Romana” of 1688. The librettist, Benedetto Pamphili, was a Cardinal that
Handel wrote with in the early 1700s. Some scholars have presumed that Pamphili wrote the text
for Handel’s “La Lucrezia” as well, though this is not definitive.
41
Scarlatti’s cantata for soprano
begins with an introduction in third person explaining the situation in recitative form. The
following aria changes to first person and remains so for the remainder of the story. Lucrezia
calls for vengeance from heaven and hell, listing off the ways to strip Tarquinius of his title and
life, jumping quickly from idea to idea to create a feeling of madness. There is a great deal of
description and roughly twice the amount of text than in Handel’s. As she kills herself, she
converses with her heart and hopes that “they will say that your death was the repentance of your
sin, not glory for honor”.
42
She calls out to her father, husband, and Rome, then dies with a final
“farewell”.
The text of Handel’s La Lucrezia pulls from many of these previous sources. The piece
alternates between recitative and aria, with the recitative containing most of the text.
43
The
music begins with Lucretia calling to the heavens to strike down Tarquinius and the Roman
Kings, a bold start when compared to Ovid. She reiterates the pain of her lost honor and calls to

41
Pamphili serves as a “best guess” for authorship due to no other information on the librettist
existing, as well as his known relationship with Handel, location in Rome, and previous
experience in composing a Lucretia libretto.
42
Alessandro Scarlatti, ed. Rosalind Halton, Lucretia Romana, (1688), 3.
43
I reference two available scores of the cantata. G. F. Handel, ed. Jean-Christophe Frisch, La
Lucrezia, (2018): provides a modern edition without continuo realization. The Friedrich
Chrysander copy of 1887 contains figured bass.

14

hell should heaven not answer. Lucretia curses Tarquinius and again calls for celestial beings to
step in. When the world remains unchanged, she worries that the Gods do not pity her. The focus
for the former half of the cantata outward and filled with rage, but here it pivots inwards.
Lucretia reveals the sword and calls to her husband, father, Rome, and the world, to offer her
death as pardon for her sin. This connects with her story according to Livy and many others—
she kills herself in order to not become an example for future unchaste women, and her sin
therefore lies in not seeking death before the assault began. For a modern sensibility this concept
is tough to digest. Lucretia describes the sword slowly killing her before returning to her
previous anger as she vows to seek vengeance from hell herself, dying in a rapid and intense
recitative. Her world was steeped in patriarchal and misogynistic ideals where rape was quite
prevalent, and for many women suicide was the only politically possible statement. Glendenning
summarizes this and states that “according to the social and moral ethics of her day, Lucretia had
little choice but to commit suicide”.
44
This brings other questions to mind: if Lucretia were not of
the Roman elite, would Brutus have pulled the bloody knife from her still warm body and
marched to the Kings’ castle? Or, if the true story of Lucretia more a fiction, was her rape and
suicide an emotional plot point created by Livy to dramatically justify and add narrative to the
creation of the Roman Republic? And within the frame of Handel working and performing for a
court or chamber company, it is possible that choices were made about the text to properly suit
the occasion and patrons. When compared to the first record of Lucretia in Livy, the bare
structure of the legend is all that is the same. Lucretia was raped by Tarquinius, her father and
husband were present as she asks them to avenge her, she finds herself guilty of sin and does not
want to live as an example for other sinners and commits suicide with a sword to the chest. In

44
Glendenning, “Reinventing Lucretia”, 75.

15

Ovid’s eyes, Lucretia must ask her maids for news of the world outside her home, where
Handel’s opening recitative links Tarquinius’ actions to the fall of the Roman monarchy. Handel
and Ovid’s different purposes for sharing this story help explain the librettists’ choice. They also
express Lucretia’s experience through the dimension of structure and rhyme scheme.
The style of the late 17
th
-century Italian secular chamber cantata was shaped by
Alessandro Scarlatti. It “consisted almost always of two arias, usually preceded by recitatives:
RARA or ARA”.
45
Benedetto Marcello, a contemporary of Handel’s who composed a Lucretia
cantata with the same text, often follows this same structure in his cantatas. In her book Handel
as Orpheus, Ellen Harris states that Marcello’s Lucrezia “is based on recitative-aria alternation”
in a style that is “less passionate, less irrational, and less abandoned” than Handel’s setting.
46

Handel’s work with the same text produced quite a different cantata for likely being composed in
the same city and time. Harris maps the route and rhyme scheme for La Lucrezia, which
highlights the lack of strong rhyme patterns and the unconventional structure (Table 1).
47

45
Caroline Sites, Benedetto Marcello’s Chamber Cantatas, Doctoral Thesis (University of North
Carolina Chapel Hill, 1959), 8.
46
Harris, Handel as Orpheus, 76.
47
Ellen Harris, Handel as Orpheus, Harvard University Press (2001), 90 Table 3.1. She
abbreviates recitative as r, aria as A, arioso as s, and the final arioso/recitative as “a”. To describe
rhyme, x denotes an unrhymed line, | shows the break between da capo arias and sections of
recitative, and lowercase a, b, and c signify a paired rhyme with their matching letter. *While
this is an arioso (no da capo, no rhyme), it is as long as the previous arias.

16

Table 1 La Lucrezia Cantata Rhyme Scheme
r xxxxaaxxbb
A abc | abc
r xxxxxxaa
A ab | ab
r xxaa | xxxxx
s x
r x
s* x
r xxxxxxx
a xxxxx | xxaaxbxb

The first four sections create the RARA formula, with both da capo arias containing the
clearest rhymes of the entire cantata. From there the structure begins to dissolve, mirroring
Lucretia’s shift in character as she nears her demise. Overall, the recitatives contain the vast
majority of the text, while the arias focus on one or two lines. Handel alters this expectation by
blending arioso and recitative in the latter half of the cantata so that the delineation between story
and emotion blurs. In the company of Ruspoli in 1709, Handel frequently composed for the
Arcadian Academy, though he was never a member himself. This Roman group focused on
“saving” poetry from the overindulgence of the Italian style, which translated into more
structured poetic forms and emphasis on clarity of rhyme. Harris uses this as evidence for La
Lucrezia being composed before Rome and Ruspoli’s Arcadian tradition, as Handel’s cantata is
“more asymmetrical and more dramatic than the conventional pastoral”.
48
The text setting it
equally as dramatic, pairing powerful words with strikingly large intervals. In the first recitative

48
Harris, Handel as Orpheus, 108.

17

alone, impugnate (“grasp”) and oridi (“horrible”) fall a minor ninth, and viscere sue (“its
bowels”) a minor seventh. This is primarily employed in the recitatives, whereas the arias blend
the dramatic leaps within long melismas.
In conclusion, only with all the components present can one perform Handel’s La
Lucrezia in a historically informed manner. The records of Lucretia throughout the centuries
provide our outline, and the comparisons and considerations within the 1706 Handel text color in
the shades of her full character. The history of the librettist and his journey to the text combined
with comprehending the scope of the person & story of Lucretia are what creates it in flesh and
blood. This discussion of the text will take on another dimension when the music is brought into
play and the complete vision of the cantata comes into clarity.

18

Chapter Three: Musical Analysis, Rhetoric, & Performance Practice

Handel’s La Lucrezia highlights his first forays into his Italian compositional style. The
cantata is written for soprano and basso continuo, consisting of cembalo and strings. The inner
musical clockwork of chromatics is exposed with this small ensemble. While Handel’s later
cantatas are more formally structured, his early ones focus on dramatic expression through
chromaticism, unexpected leaps, and changing time and key signatures. Handel’s style can be
further understood through the rhetoric concepts of paronomasia, epizeuxis, passus duriusculus,
and aposiopesis, as defined by German rhetoricians Johann Mattheson and Christoph Bernhard.
To sharpen the lens, we will focus on Handel’s approach to recitative and its place in music
composition through several 18th century treatises.
The world of rhetorical analysis in music offers another angle to view Handel’s work.
Christoph Bernhard was a musician, teacher, and published rhetorician of the 17
th
century. In
Handel’s time, his colleague Johann Mattheson followed a similar path of musical analysis. Both
Mattheson and Bernhard’s terms for rhetorical figures provide a unique window of
understanding into La Lucrezia, especially as they are clearly presented within the music.
Mattheson used the word paronomasia to describe a repetition of a passage with alterations for
greater emphasis. In the B section of “il suol”, Handel repeats “se il guardo gira” twice, with
melodic and harmonic variations to call attention to the reiteration of the text. It also provides
insight into the style of ornamentation in Handel’s time.

19

Example 1, La Lucrezia, “Il suol che preme”, mm 143-146.
Next is Mattheson’s term epizeuxis, used to describe an immediate and emphatic
repetition of a short word or phrase. While this is present throughout the cantata, a clear example
lies within the first recitative “o numi eterni”. Lucretia repeats the word stelle, the intervals
altering from a minor 6
th
to a tritone, clearly calling to the heavens with fervor. The identification
of this rhetorical device can be traced to Joachim Burmeister’s climax, referring to “a sequence
of note in one voice repeated either at a higher or lower pitch” which creates “a growth in
intensity”.
49

Example 2, La Lucrezia, “O Numi Eterni”, mm 1-18.
A lamenting sigh begins the larghetto movement “alla salma”, functioning as a fantastic
example of chromaticism. Every aria and arioso opens with voice alone for the first measure, but
the silence here is louder and lengthier than the others. For the first four measures Lucretia sings

49
Dietrich Bartel, Musica Poetica, University of Nebraska Press (1997), 220.

20

alone with fragmented descending chromatic figures before the continuo joins, repeating the
opening vocal line in higher registers.

Example 3, La Lucrezia, “Alla salma infedel”, mm 212-215.
This aria serves as the heart of the cantata, with its liquid and languishing lines so
exposed from the start. Lucretia asks that the sword she holds will “do justice to my faithless
body”, repeating the phrase for the duration of the aria.
50
Examples of Bernhard’s passus
duriusculus are found throughout as the voice crawls stepwise from A up to E
b
, stopping at the
tritone. This chromatic fourth is a “familiar and widely used specific form of the passus
duriusculus” that adds to the emotional intensity.
51
In the final melodic climax of the aria on the
word “pain” (pena), the voice rises by step, falls into a trill, rises again, and stops mid-word.
There is a quarter and eighth beat of silence, a great example of Mattheson’s term aposiopesis: a
rest in all parts. Then the voice sounds again, rising stepwise a final time before descending to
the end of her line. Handel disrupts the word “when emphasizing the emotional turmoil these
things cause”.
52
The expanded trill adds anticipation to the already tantalizing ascending half-
steps. This moment reveals the deepest trauma of Lucretia’s experience.

50
Harris, Handel as Orpheus, 323.
51
Bartel, Musica Poetica, 357.
52
Ellen Harris, “Sound as Silence: Handel’s Sublime Pauses”, The Journal of Musicology, Vol.
22, No. 4 (2005), 537.

21

Example 4, La Lucrezia, “Alla salma infedel”, mm 255-260.
As the aria “alla salma” draws to a close, Handel includes an added treble line for
cembalo which appears nowhere else in the cantata. After the final vocal cadence, the cembalo
echoes the opening theme a perfect fifth higher and alters from the original voice part only when
filling in the texture. This closes the aria and provides a break for the vocalist and a time for the
audience to ruminate in the emotion. The cembalo also provides a window into the desired vocal
technique. It is a chamber-oriented instrument, with a clear vibrato-less sound. The singer
emulates this through a focused and bright tone with carefully chosen trills, where the voice
serves as a meticulous instrument.
La Lucrezia begins traditionally with alternating recitative and aria sections. As the piece
continues, this structure diverges into more segmented and rapidly changing sections. The fourth
movement, “il suol che preme”, is the longest of the three major arias (others being “gia
superbo” and “alla salma”). Within two of these arias Handel employs a different time signature,
changing from common time to 3/8 in “il suol che preme” and 3/4 in “alla salma”. Handel
notates the first three movements with three flats but reduces to two notated flats by the second
aria. However, this A
b
does not disappear entirely, as he writes it in for the majority of the rest of
the cantata. Only in moments of F Major, B
b
Major, and g minor, does it stay natural.

22

Table 2 Major Key Areas & Affect Indications
La Lucrezia
r o numi eterni 4/4 f minor, 3
b
’s Measures 1-18
A gia superbo | tu punisci Adagio fm 19-47
r ma voi D
b
Major-gm 48-63
A il suol che preme | se il passo move 3/8, Allegro cm-gm-cm, 2
b
’s 64-181
r ah che ancor 4/4 B
b
M-FM 182-194
s questi la disperata Furioso FM 195-208
r ma il ferro Adagio e
b
m 209-211
s* alla salma infedel 3/4, Larghetto Gm 212-279
r a voi 4/4 E
b
M-fm 280-292
s gia nel seno E
b
M 293-298
r sento | ma se qui Furioso E
b
M-FM-fm 299-316
r: recitative, A: da capo aria, s: arioso, *: extended arioso

Handel uses a variety of rhetorical figures within this cantata to shade his characterization
of Lucretia. His recitatives are “sustained and song-like, flowing easily into arioso sections”,
demonstrating a “trajectory toward regular structures and more flowing melody and harmony” as
he developed and adapted his musical style.
53
This cantata is both beautifully and intelligently
written, and any rough nature of this early composition exposes the sensitive underbelly of
Handel’s musical ideas, best exemplified in his recitative. “Gia superbo” cadences in f minor,
and after which the continuo abruptly strikes D
b
Major as the recitative “ma voi” begins. Already
Handel sets the tone of Lucretia’s confusion and rapid-fire thoughts by quickly altering key areas
through chromatics. The continuo chords serve as brief tonicizations with the voice employing
the neutral ground between them. The voice steps and skips to avoid integral notes to leave the
tonal center blurry, easy to change, and representative of the texts’ inner turmoil. For several
measures, the continuo settles in C minor as a pedal point while Lucretia calls to the demons of
the abyss to aid her. The barren accompaniment puts the “heavy lifting” of moving through the

53
Ellen Harris, Handel as Orpheus, 94.

23

accidentals on the performer, just as Lucretia herself stands alone. It ends in G minor, leaning on
a penultimate F# to usher in the new key. This recitative comes into focus like an impressionist
painting: too close, and the subject is inscrutable. The scene becomes clear and whole when one
steps back. The nature of Handel’s unexpected choices is what adds to the drama and art of the
piece.

Example 5, La Lucrezia, “Alla salma infedel”, mm 266-269.
As seen in Table 2, the cantata only moves into triple meter for two movements: “il suol”
and “alla salma”. The former is an allegro da capo aria in 3/8, the latter a larghetto arioso in 3/4.
The continuo in “il suol” repeatedly has a sixteenth rest at the beginning of each measure before
a descending arpeggio. The heartbeat of this piece is one pulse per measure, with each offbeat
entrance adding to the rushing sensation. The use of triple meter here allows the tempo to fly
faster, with each beat falling like a decisive strike. The B section offers a similar sound, with an
extended run at the end that alternates from duple division to triplets. The cadence exemplifies
the singers’ capabilities: if six 16
th
notes in a measure was not enough, now there are nine! The
9/8 feel calls to mind a quick paced Italian minuetto. This technique also increases the perceived
speed of the piece and heightens the drama. In contrast, “Alla salma” is slow and lamenting but
maintains a similar level of melismatic contour. The gentle pace creates three pulses per measure

24

with stress on the first and final beat, perhaps emulating a slow sarabande. The sarabande is
closely paired with the ground bass La Folia, and “Alla salma” carries a similar bass progression.
The rhythmic pattern of a dotted quarter and eighth is repeated throughout, ever seeming a touch
behind. The triple here helps pull the listener into the slow and constant lilt of Lucretia’s
thoughts. The opposite of this poignant moment is found in the arioso “questi la disperata”,
marked furioso and brimming with 16
th
notes. This use of Pyrrhic rhythms for extreme dramatic
effect can be traced to Monteverdi’s genera concitato, as exemplified in Il Combattimento di
Tancredi e Clorinda.
54
Monteverdi refers to Plato's instruction to “take that harmonia that would
fittingly imitate the utterances ... of a brave man who is engaged in warfare” to create this
rousing piece.
55

This wild movement begins like a trumpet call with the vocalist repeating a B
b
four times
before jetting off into melismas. This imitation serves as Lucretia’s war horn before entering the
musical and emotional battlefield. Her fury is like the wrath of God with trumpets heralding her
arrival. The sequences are repetitive, with Handel echoing the same beginning gesture several
times before continuing the phrase. This arioso is short for a reason: the speed, agility, and vocal
“fireworks” occurring could not be sustained for a long period of time. This appears to be the
cantata’s frenzied climax, but Handel surprises us once again at the very end. He sets the final
movement of text as a “recitativo accompagnato”, a manic declaration after Lucretia calmly
sings the previous arioso “gia nel seno”. Rather than a stoic death, Handel’s Lucretia dies

54
Geoffrey Chew, “The Platonic Agenda of Monteverdi's Seconda Pratica: A Case Study from
the Eighth Book of Madrigals”, Music Analysis, Vol. 12, No. 2, 147-168, 1993.
55
Monteverdi quotes the beginning of this extract in Ficino's Latin translation: “Suscipe
Harmoniam illam quae ut decet imitatur fortiter euntis in prelium, voces atque accentus” (Sabine
Ehrmann-Herfort, Claudio Monteverdi, 1989, p. 143).

25

vengefully, resentfully, and brutally, leaving her beauty far behind. Her final earthly promise is
to avenge her rape from Hell itself.
Treatises on Recitative
Pier Francesco Tosi published his Opinioni de’cantori antichi e moderni in 1723 as a
guide for all musicians. Within it we can find ample information about the stylistic ideals of the
period, specifically on the subject of early 18
th
-century recitative. Tosi states that the chamber
recitatives are “nearer to the heart”, relating to the most intense emotions, and therefore call for
no ornaments as they would distract from the beauty and complexity of the affect within the
text.
56
In the world of tempo, Tosi states that the church recitative has no strict adherence to
meter, the theatrical lacks “arbitrary artificiality”, and the chamber lies somewhere in between.
57

He then lists the many ways singers can perform recitative incorrectly- from mistakes in text, to
“barking” the pitches, or worst of all, no longer teaching students how to perform recitative due
to it being outdated. To cultivate a truly artistic performance, Tosi advocates for phrasing using
punctuation as a guide, refraining from adding modulations or dissonant leaps, and clearly
understood text sung as it would be spoken to truly create a noteworthy rendition.
Soon after the publication of Tosi’s treatise, and later the translation by John Ernest
Galliard in 1743, Johann Friedrich Agricola also published his own translation and commentary
to Tosi’s original in 1757. Within this treatise and response, the musical views of 18th century
Germany come into view. In regards to recitative, Agricola agrees with much of what Tosi
wrote, in fact extrapolating off of his original arguments and providing musical examples to aid

56
Pier Francesco Tosi, Opinioni de’cantori antichi e moderni, trans. Edward Foreman
(Minneapolis, 1986) 41.
57
Tosi, Opinioni de’cantori antichi e moderni, 42.

26

the reader and better convince them of Tosi’s teaching. Most importantly, Agricola goes into
detail about the type of small cadential ornaments found within all three types of recitatives, and
provides examples of each type with text, voice, and continuo accompaniment. While Tosi’s
original writings do not describe any specific ornaments or give musical examples, Agricola is
clearly building upon his understanding of Tosi’s earlier statements. In them, Tosi informs his
reader that some ornaments are appropriate, but nothing that could come across as “unnatural”.
58

In addition to Agricola, Bénigne de Bacilly wrote his Remarques Curieuses sur l’Art de
bien Chanter in 1668, and his commentary on recitative included only that it was quite difficult
to set the French text to the Italian style, and that perhaps the language was simply unfit for the
type of song- or vice versa.
59

First, when working through a recitative, its tempo must be taken into consideration. Tosi
writes that there should be no strict tempo, and Galliard quotes C.P.E. Bach in his commentary
saying that “the accompanist must never desert the singer” when playing a recitative.
60
Instead,
the two should communicate, as the singer may bend the meter, and the continuo should be strict
in their tempo when the singer rests. Thus, the tempo is able to fluctuate as the affect of the text
calls for it, but not without the steadiness of the ground bass.
Next of concern is the issue of cadences. Tosi states that operas are littered with “broken
cadences”, meaning inauthentic cadences, but that changing them all to “final cadences” would

58
Tosi, Opinioni de’cantori antichi e moderni, 43.
59
Bénigne de Bacilly, “A Commentary upon the Art of Proper Singing”, translated and edited by
Austin B. Caswell (Brooklyn: The Institute of Medieval Music): 1968.

60
John Ernest Galliard, Observations on the Florid Song; or, Sentiments on the Ancient and
Modern Singers, London (1743), 30-31.

27

be even worse (meaning perfect authentic cadences). Instead, he suggests a 90% to 10% ratio of
the former and the latter, with perfect authentic cadences at the “points that conclude a period”,
referring to full stops that conclude a sentence.
61
Cadences also bring the problem of “Cadential
Delay”, as outlined by Sven Hostrup Hansell in his article The Cadence in 18th Century
Recitative, published in 1968. This delay refers to the final cadences of a recitative, in which the
singer’s final three notes are the tonic, a repetition of the tonic, and a decent to the fifth. During
this, the continuo delays their written ending as to not collide their dominant and tonic chords
with that of the singers, waiting to play their two final chords until after the singer finishes.
Hansell writes that this is a late 18th century style, well-suited for Mozart but not for Handel.
62

Instead, the performance practice of the time would have been to move as written- the continuo
playing their dominant chord on the second tonic from the singer, and resolving to the tonic on
the next beat as the singer finishes. An example, as found in La Lucrezia, is shown below:
Example A details the correct and written cadence, and Example B shows the incorrectly stylized
counterpart.

61
Galliard, Observations on the Florid Song; or, Sentiments on the Ancient and Modern Singers,
32.
62
Sven Hostrup Hansell, The Cadence in 18
th
-Century Recitative, (1968), 288.

28

Example A: Example B:

Example 6, La Lucrezia, “o numi eterni”, mm17-18.
In his commentary, Galliard agrees that a lack of delay “probably” applies to Handel
oratorios, as it is operatic and dramatic in nature. He also states that it is specifically a German
style to carry through the cadence, which was in an effort to create a seamless narrative. While
Tosi himself offers no guidance on the matter, his contemporaries and later experts seem to agree
that the cadence would’ve been without delay.
As any student studying recitative knows, the text is the most important part, and Tosi
agrees wholeheartedly (as do his cohorts). Each treatise states that to perform a recitative well,
the singer must know the text, be able to deliver it clearly with proper diction, and not let the
affect of the piece overpower the strength of the text itself. Tosi warns against clipping the ends
of words or not knowing the words you are speaking. While memorization is mentioned several
times, it does not seem to have been a strict requirement, and often was a hindrance when
specifically rehearsing recitatives, which can be numerous and exceedingly similar within a large
work. For La Lucrezia, the performer could easily be on book, and enunciate within reason to
display their mastery of the text.

29

Finally, Tosi’s advice for phrasing is particularly applicable to Handel’s recitative. He
simply says that singers must honor the punctuation of a piece completely. This would mean
lifting at commas and pausing at periods, finding the correct tone in a question mark, and so on.
While this is considered common practice for many singers, it is certainly a skill that one can
never be reminded of enough. The opening text of this cantata has exclamation points, commas,
periods, a semi-colon, and long sustained lines. With the application of Tosi’s writing, we end up
with a phrasing that fits the music well too, and helps the singer to deliver the text without
confusion. It can also aid in breath, as the poem was written to be read aloud and has natural
breaks.

30

CONCLUSION
Lucretia was everything her Roman society desired her to be, had done no wrong, and
still suffered greatly. She had little control over what happened to her, so she reclaimed that
power through ending her life. Many other powerful women would follow in similar footsteps, as
Lucretia’s story could be used to reflect morals and values of any time period. Her chastity,
strength, and sacrifice transcended from its pagan roots to Christianity, at a time when the two
groups were at great conflict. And for the brief moments we hear this cantata, she gets to live
again, share her experience, condemn and curse the man who raped her, and die once more.
Handel captures her spirit with a style that favors vocal agility, dramatic expression, and
complexity through chromatics. He was not the first or only artist to look to Lucretia for
inspiration, with her story serving as an adaptable canvas for dramatic expression with a painful
moral. It can be a commentary on society, an “instruction manual” for the behavior of chaste
women, a funeral lament to keep her memory and sacrifice alive and remembered. Handel’s
early compositional techniques highlight the bareness of Lucretia’s story without sacrificing her
capacity for demonstrating her strength and anger. The performers have ample opportunity to
highlight the inner thoughts of the protagonist through the well-crafted language, especially clear
in the recitatives, and through the depth of musical styles. Lucretia covers a range of emotions,
reflected in changing tempi, wide range, and rhythmic complexities. Handel does her story
justice with his composition, as he honed his early tone and style through the stories of powerful
women. Their breadth of emotion expanded the possibilities of Handel’s compositional
repertoire. All of these elements combine to create this powerful story and piece of music. And it
is with all of this understanding in mind that we can perform, study, and appreciate Handel’s La
Lucrezia in a powerful and historically informed manner.

31

Text & Translation
63

Recitative: O Numi eterni
O Numi eterni! o stelle stelle! che fulminate empii tiranni, impugnate a miei voti orridi strali,
voi con fochi tonanti incennerite il reo Tarquinio e Roma; dalla superba chioma, omai trabocchi
il vaccilante alloro s'apra il suolo in voragini, si cli, con memorando essempio, nelle viscere sue
l'indegno e l'empio.

Oh eternal deities, oh stars, stars, whose rays strike down the heinous tyrants, answer my prayers,
grasp your deathly arrows and with thunderous fires turn the wicked Tarquinius and Rome to
ashes. May then the uneasy laurels now fall from his proud head and the ground become an
abyss to swallow in its bowels, as memorable example, the unworthy evil one.

Aria: Già superbo del mio affanno
Già superbo del mio affanno, traditor dell'onor mio Parte l'empio lo sleal. Tu punisci il fiero
inganno del fallon, del mostro rio, giusto Ciel, parca fatal.

The cruel and disloyal traitor of my honour now departs, rejoicing in my misfortune. Avenge,
fate and righteous heaven, the vile misdeed of the felon, of the wretched monster.

Recitative: Ma voi force nel Cielo
Ma voi forse nel Cielo, per castigo maggior del mio delitto, stateoziosi, o provocati Numi; se son
sorde le stelle, se non mi odon le sfere, a voi tremende Dietà, Dietà del abisso mi folgo, a voi, a
voi s'aspetta del tradito onor mio far la vendetta.

But if in heaven, to greater punishment of my dishonour, the provoked gods remain unmoved; if
the stars are deaf and do not hear my pleas, I turn to you, tremendous deity of the abyss, from
you my betrayed honour awaits its revenge.

63
Trans. by Ellen T. Harris, Handel as Orpheus, 321.

32

Aria: Il suol che preme
Il suol che preme, l'aura che spira l'empio Romano, s'apra s'infetti. Se il passo move, se il
guardo gira, incontri larve, ruine aspetti.

May the ground, upon which the foul Roman treads, open under him, may the air he breathes
become infected. As he walks or looks around, may he meet only with larvae and ruins.
Recitative: Ah! che ancor nell'abisso
Ah! che ancor nell'abisso dormon le furie, i sdegni e le vendette. Giove dunque per me non la
saette, e pietoso l'inferno? Ah! ch'io già sono in odio al Cielo ah! dite: e se la pena non piomba
sul mio capo a' miei rimorsi è rimorso il poter di castigarmi. Questi la disperata anima mia
puniscan, sì, sì, puniscan, sì. Ma il ferro che già intrepida stringo. Alla salma infedel porga la
pena.

Alas that still in the abyss the Furies, wrath and vengeance, sleep. Has Jupiter no arrows for me,
has hell no pity? Alas that the gods already hate me; alas, tell me, and if their sorrow does not
fall upon my head, their power to punish me shall be the penance of my remorse. Let them
punish me, yes, punish my desperate soul but with that sword which I fearlessly hold in my hand.
Let it give this deceitful body its retribution.

Aria: Questi la disperata anima mia

Recitative: A voi, a voi padre
A voi, a voi, padre, consorte, a Roma, al mondo presento il mio morir; mi si perdoni il delitto
essecrando ond'io macchiai involontaria il nostro onor, un'altra più detestabil colpa di non
m'aver uccisa pria del misfatto mi si perdoni.

To you, to you, father, husband, to Rome, to the world I offer my death. May my execrable sin
be forgiven, as unwillingly I blotted our honor; may I be pardoned for an even more detestable
guilt, that of not having sought my death before sinning.

33

Arioso: Già nel seno comincia
Già nel seno comincia, comincia a compir questo ferro i duri uffizii; sento ch'il cor si scuote più
dal dolor di questa caduta in vendicata, che dal furor della vicina morte. Ma se qui non m'è dato
castigar il tiranno, opprimer l'empio con più barabro essempio, per ch'ei sen cada estinto
stringero a danni suoi mortal saetta, e furibonda e cruda nell'inferno faro, faro la mia vendetta.

Already in my bosom this sword begins its deathly task. I feel my heart tremble more with the
grief of this unavenged fall than with the fury of approaching death. But if here on earth I was
not granted the punishment of the tyrant, or that he may be crushed with a more barbarous
example, from hell I shall seek his ruin with mortal arrows and with savage and implacable fury,
from there I shall achieve my vengeance.

34

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Abstract (if available)

Abstract This thesis aims to examine George Frideric Handel’s La Lucrezia through various lenses of understanding, first by tracing the legend of Lucretia from the first surviving Roman account until Handel’s retelling of the story in the 18th century. The accounts of Livy, Ovid, and others provide a general scope of the events, as well as diverse responses and opinions on Lucretia’s moral values. These sources are all compared with the libretto of La Lucrezia and with Handel’s other early compositions to highlight the history and growth of the legend. In the second chapter, the music is taken into consideration through rhetorical analysis and historically informed performance practice. The terms of Johann Mattheson and Christoph Bernhard support this discussion, as do treatises by Pier Francesco Tosi, John Ernest Galliard, and Johann Freidrich Agricola. The third and final chapter summarizes the historiography of the cantata. La Lucrezia is without patron, date, or location of composition, raising question to be answered through references to recent scholarship. With all of these factors in combination, we can understand, perform, and appreciate Handel’s La Lucrezia in a historically informed and poignant way.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Davis, Ariana Elizabeth (author)

Core Title Handel’s La Lucrezia: a discussion of text, music, and historiography

School Thornton School of Music

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program Music (Early Music Performance)

Degree Conferral Date 2021-12

Publication Date 11/24/2021

Defense Date 06/22/2021

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Baroque music,cantata,early music,Handel,La Lucrezia,Lucretia,OAI-PMH Harvest

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Gilbert, Adam (committee chair), Gilbert, Rotem (committee member), Kampani, Jennifer Ellis (committee member)

Creator Email aedavis@usc.edu,arianadavis862@gmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-oUC17239126

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