I love bungled 'musicology' experiements by composer/arranger charlatans. These poor dead composers have no outlet other than to be passively violated by the staff arangers of the American publishing firms. (Lorenz, Alfred, Hal Leonard, etc. )
These often prove to be nothing more than a Frankenstein experiment. Someone takes a chorus or aria from a lesser known oratorio, cuts off the head (aka libretto) and attaches a new one (often pretty trite and benign and nowhere near the original libretto).
In most cases I can recognize the merit of 'rescuing' such a piece from relative obscurity by resurrecting it with a new text. I don't really like it but see it as a necessary evil (like political parties, abortion, seperation of church and state).
However....consider Linda S. (i'll protect her anonymity) and her recent bastardization of Handel's "Hail Judea Happy Land" from
Judas Maccabaeus. She has written her own text:
"
Sing for Joy! Sing out in Joyful Song, and praise forevermore. Joy! Joy! Sing!"
This text is by no means a marked improvement over the original. However Ms. S has given herself credit in the publication not for writing a new (albeit trite) text. Rather the note says, "The English text is not meant to be a literal translation"
Literal translation from what......ENGLISH??? Handel wrote JM in England, with a libretto by Reverend Thomas Morrell (an English priest). I know that we American's don't always speak the King's English, but that doesn't require a translation. Furthermore
"Sing for Joy" is nothing like
"Hail, Judea happy land". You might try to chalk this up to a printing error or miscommunication, but I think not. Consider Douglas W. 's "arrangement" of "
Sing Joyfully" from Handel's
Saul. If you open a vocal score and look for the title "Sing Joyfully" you'll come up empty handed. Why? Because someone has grafed their own trite text onto Handel's works.
I mean we all know Handel was kind of a bastard, but let's not blame him for this kind of crap.
Ok....Discuss!
