The Royal Fireworks by Handel and Beyond

Even before the Fourth of July, fireworks are beginning. Here in the Detroit metro area there will be many including on the Detroit riverfront on Monday the 22d. To find even more, the local Oakland County Moms newsletter has listed still more places where they will appear.

I'm a lover of classical music, so I expect to hear Music for the Royal Fireworks played on local classical music stations. I knew George Frideric Handel had composed it for a celebration for England's king George II, but I had no idea there was much more to the story. 

Hand colored etching of the fireworks and illuminations at his Grace, the Duke of Richmond's, at Whitehall and on the River Thames on Monday 15 May 1749. The occasion for which George Frideric Handel composed his Music for the Royal Fireworks.  

The actual story is a tale of difficulty satisfying the king's musical taste and fireworks that seem almost cursed. 

The firework display was for the benefit of King George II of Great Britain to celebrate the signing of the treaty at Aix la Chapelle in 1748 marking the end of the War of Austrian Succession. 

During the preparations, Handel and Duke John Montagu, the Master-General of the Ordnance and the officer responsible for the Royal Fireworks, had an argument about adding violins. The duke made clear to Handel that King George had a preference for only martial instruments (winds and percussion), and hoped there would be "no fiddles." Handel omitted the string instruments against his will. 

Also, against Handel's will, there was a full rehearsal of the music in Vauxhall Gardens and not in Green Park, where he wanted it. On April 21, 1749 an audience estimated to be over twelve thousand people, each paying two shillings and six pence (half a crown), rushed to attend the rehearsal, causing a three-hour traffic jam of carriages on London Bridge, the only vehicular route to the area south of the river.

The fireworks themselves were devised and controlled by Gaetano Ruggieri and Giuseppe Sarti, both from Bologna. The Ruggieri family was one of the longest surviving dynasties in the pyrotechnical trade, later firing the celebrations for the French Revolution and were still around to supervise the display in New York harbor when the Statue of Liberty was rededicated in 1986. Charles Frederick was the controller, captain Thomas Desaguliers was the chief fire master. Unfortunately the display was not as successful as the music itself. The weather was rainy, causing many misfires, and in the middle of the show one of the fireworks landed on the pavilion of the Temple of Peace, igniting the several thousand fireworks inside, killing three spectators. Also, a woman's clothes were set on fire by a stray rocket and other fireworks burned two soldiers and blinded a third. (Even before the performance another soldier, at an earlier rehearsal for the 101 cannon used during the event, had his hand blown off.)

Certainly the official fireworks part of the performance for the king seems ill-fated, but Handel re-scored the suite for full orchestra for a performance on May 27 in the Foundling Hospital. From the very first in both the original and later full orchestral version, the music has always proven very popular. . . just don't add actual fireworks!