Händel: Dícente mis ojos, HWV deest - Kirkby

Dícente mis ojos, HWV deest

Spanish song for soprano, guitar and basso continuo

Text: -

Music: Georg Friedrich Händel

Composed: Rome, 1707; reworked in the 1740s
___

In this video:

Emma Kirkby, soprano
David Miller, archlute / theorbo
Katherine Sharman, violoncello

Recorded in 2000
___

This song is a shortened and reworked version of the second aria from the Spanish cantata No se enmendará jamás, HWV 140, with a slightly modified melody, and a different bass, much more contrapuntal. It was discovered in 1954, together with three other works by Händel (two very short French arias and a German one).

"The manuscript containing these songs came to light only when it appeared in an auction in 1954 and was purchased for the Bodmer Collection (Bibliotheca Bodmeriana) in Geneva. Handel himself added the songs at the end of the manuscript, probably early in the 1740s, though why he did so, and for whose benefit, we do not know," Anthony Hicks says.

This version of Dicente mis ojos, of course, does not appear in the Chrysander edition (1858-1902). I decided to reconstruct it from the score of the cantata aria, but with only the voice and the bass, highly edited. I also modernized the spelling and the punctuation, but I used the archaic white notation. My version does not pretend to be an exact copy of the manuscript, that I do not know, but only an illustration of Emma Kirkby's delightful interpretation.
___

Dícente mis ojos
en muda pasión
lástimas sin quejas,
palabras sin voz.
___

Translation:

To you my eyes
in silent passion utter
laments without complaints,
words without voice.
___

Marc D.