Music for the Royal Fireworks
Right from their composition the four anthems have been popular and regularly played in concerts and festivals even during Handel's own lifetime. He re-used substantial extracts from them in many of his oratorios without many changes (other than to the text), notably "Esther" and "Deborah". Two of the anthems were played at the 1742 inauguration of the Holywell Music Room in Oxford, a hall dedicated to chamber music. Their success perhaps contributed to the popular image of Handel as a composer whose music required a huge number of singers and musicians (the more the better)—in other words, the character criticised by Berlioz as "a barrel of pork and beer". In practice, Handel often adapted his music to the occasion and to the skill of those for whom he was writing, and no occasion could be grander than a coronation. The ceremonial style of the anthems differs from his music for the theatre just as his "Music for the Royal Fireworks" (the latter designed for open-air performance) differs from his instrumental concertos. The anthems show a completely extrovert tone, managing massed forces and important contrasts rather than delicate colours—with the wide spatial reverberation in Westminster Abbey, he did not waste time and effort trying to show small points of detail.