How Does Handel's Use of the Orchestra in Handel's Water Music Suite No.2 Reflect the Style of His Time?

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How does Handel's use of the orchestra in Handel's Water Music Suite No.2 reflect the style of his time? During the baroque period, a vast number of the instruments used to day were not available, so Handel’s composing of the water music suite was tailored to the instruments available at his disposal. The oboe for example became popular in the baroque period often doubling up the violin parts to provide greater clarity. Handel also used it in his water music suite as it was a common instrument to be played outdoors. In Suite No.2 of The Water Music, the oboes mostly double violins 1 and 2 however did not double their quavers suggesting they were not yet as agile as the oboes used today, or occasionally play their own motifs with the bassoon. In a baroque orchestra the bassoon was used to double the bassline and in Water Music it plays alongside the oboes to proivde timbral contrast. The horns in a typical baroque orchestra had a problem at the time, they could only play notes of the harmonic series in which they were crooked. This meant their melodic material was limited by what they could play however Handel solved this problem in Water Music by using D major for each movement and rarely straying from it in sections where the horns were playing. He also devised a second horn part to harmonise the first using the notes of a D major arpeggio. In some cases the second horn parts were doubled by various instruments to fill in neccesary notes that could not be played, such as the leading note C#. The trumpets and horns play off each other through Suite No.2, especially in movements 1 and 2, where the trumpet parts were an octave higher than the horns which exploited their contrasts of register and timbre. Trumpets in the baroque period had similiar problems to the horns as they did not have valves and were commonly written in either D or C. Therefore Handel

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