Georg Friedrich Händel

The 3 Authentic Sonatas

As the title of this edition, 'The Three Authentic Sonatas', implies, the sonatas contained herein are in some ways different from those that have been accepted until now as the oboe sonatas of Handel.

The differences are in fact of three kinds: (a) an addition, (b) a subtraction, and (c) new sources.

Firstly, a sonata in F major that Handel almost certainly wrote for the oboe has previously been known only in the G major version for flute that was published in Handel's lifetime as Opus 1 No. 5. Secondly, a sonata in G minor (published as Opus 1 No. 6) that Handel wrote for the violin or viola da gamba has been thought of as an oboe sonata because it was misattributed by the 18th-century publisher John Walsh. Thirdly, in preparing modern editions of the sonatas, the autograph manuscript of the C minor sonata (Opus 1 No. 8) and the copyists' manuscripts of both this and the F major sonata have not been made use of, and accordingly all the available sources have never been properly evaluated. In addition, the Bb major sonata, although it has been available in an edition for thirty years, does not seem to be widely known.

This edition, then, is an attempt to present all three of the sonatas that Handel intended for the oboe (C minor, Bb major and F major) in a critical text that takes account of all the extant sources, both manuscript and printed.

The Basso Continuo part and full details and a discussion of the sources, as well as a statement of the editorial procedures and a listing of important differences among the sources are all available to download from this webpage.