# High Notes in Mozart and Handle



## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

What is the rationale in Mozart and Handle in not exploiting high notes in climaxes in their music. If there are high notes , you just run up to the stratosphere and then get off that note very quickly and usually have a run back down. Quite often there is not climax at all to their arias. Was it Verdi who began the emphasis on climax notes. Someone with a better musical history background, please fill me in.


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

*Handel*..........


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## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

Bulldog said:


> *Handel*..........


I think Seattle is well aware of that. I suspect predictive text is the culprit here, that and not proofreading.


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

I'm mortified but can't change it now. I have always been dyslexic with the spelling of his name. Sorry. Don't kick me off the board.


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## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

Seattleoperafan said:


> I'm mortified but can't change it now. I have always been dyslexic with the spelling of his name. Sorry. Don't kick me off the board.


Ask the mods they are very helpful.


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## PlaySalieri (Jun 3, 2012)

No shortage of high notes in Mozart


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

stomanek said:


> No shortage of high notes in Mozart


I don't think Seattle was talking about a shortage, but lack of exploiting those notes. If Mozart and Handel don't exploit the high notes, I'm glad for that. As it happens, those two composers are my favorites for opera.


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

Bulldog said:


> I don't think Seattle was talking about a shortage, but lack of exploiting those notes. If Mozart and Handel don't exploit the high notes, I'm glad for that. As it happens, those two composers are my favorites for opera.


You can't fault the music or the skill needed to sing it, but later music is flashier, not necessarily better. In Questa Reggia is anti Mozart/Handle.


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## Jermaine (Apr 23, 2016)

No need for it in my opinion. Their works, especial Handle is complex enough that the additional complication of vocal gymnastic would take away from the magnificence of the work itself.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Jermaine said:


> No need for it in my opinion. Their works, especial Handle is complex enough that the additional complication of vocal gymnastic would take away from the magnificence of the work itself.


Musicians did improvise in 18th-century music, and the truth is that we don't know how much vocal display would have been considered within the bounds of good taste in operas of the period, or how much alteration of the written notes composers would have found tolerable. French Baroque style was highly ornamented, and surviving examples of written-out suggestions for embellishing Italian violin music can be astonishingly complex. It seems likely that singers interpolated unwritten high notes, whether composers always liked it or not.


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