Handel wrote his English masque setting of Acis and Galatea whilst composer-in-residence to the Duke of Chandos at his opulent country seat of Cannons, near London. During this period, 1717-1719, Handel composed the 11 Chandos anthems for church use, as well as a further masque on a sacred theme, Esther. Acis and Galatea was his second and more perfect composition on the Ovidian pastoral story, as he had written an Italian serenata, Aci, Galatea e Polifemo in Naples in 1708. The Cannons music was written for very small forces and was performed, probably in the summer of 1718, by five solo voices (soprano, three tenors and bass) taking both solo and chorus parts, with a orchestral group of seven players (two each of violins, oboes doubling recorders, and cellos, with the harpsichord continuo probably played by Handel himself). The scoring, without alto voices and violas, reflects an apparent limitation in the forces available at Cannons and is found also in the Chandos Anthems. At times in the music the orchestral textures are reduced even further, and the varied colours - an “exquisite web of sound" according to the musicologist Winton Dean — are beautifully varied and adjusted to the pastoral intimacy of the narrative. Tonight's performance uses a slightly enlarged orchestra of baroque instruments to balance the separate chorus in accordance with most of the performances given later in Handel's lifetime.

The original Cannons performance was given in a single act, without the chorus of “Happy we" which Handel added later. No further performances in precisely this form were given. Although published in 1722 (without the choruses), no complete performance was given until 1731 at the Lincoln's Im Theatre. The following May a pirated version was mounted by Thomas Arne (father of the composer) at the New Theatre Haymarket with “all the Grand Chorus's, Scenes, Machines, and other Decorations". Handel quickly retaliated at the King's Theatre with a new revised version “performed by a great Number of the best Voices and Instruments" : this version, staged and costumed but not acted, extended to three acts and amalgamated the 1708 Italian Serenata with the 1718 English masque, and added - in typical Handelian fashion - excerpts from other works. The soloists were increased to eight, two of them singing in English and the remainder in Italian. Thereafter varied versions abound with about 70 performances recorded up until the middle of the 18th century, including a bilingual Oxford performance on 11th July 1733 ; it was the most frequently revived of all Handel's works during his lifetime. None of these however precisely reproduced the Cannons version, and the arias "Cease to beauty" and “Must I my Acis" were never again included by Handel. During the later 18th and 19th centuries it was subjected to a number of rearrangements and other indignities, although these included a beautiful rescoring made by Mozart in 1788, The years 1715-18 saw the flourishing of a number of English masques on the London stages, particularly fostered by the composer Pepusch, who was Master of Music at Cannons. These were effectively short operas generally on pastoral or classical themes, set in English but after the manner of Italian opera with sung recitative and arias, rather than the spoken dialogue interspersed with dances and incidental music of the older English masque tradition. Handel's Acis and Galatea is the finest of these, and expertly tuned in its dramatic and emotional contrasts. Against the generalized idealism of the pastoral lovers is contrasted the irresistable bluffness of the giant Polyphemus, faintly awkward in his unaccustomed love-struck state ; his music is characterised by large leaps and rushes of semiquavers (present from the first mention of his name in the opening chorus of Act 2). The chorus is used not merely for outbursts of superficial jubilation, but has a fundamental role in posing the issues of conflict between desire and fate : particularly effective are the darkened tones of "Wretched lovers" at the opening of Act 2, and the antiphon "Must I my Acis still bemoan" in which Galatea's lament is repeatedly interrupted by pragmatic advice from the chorus. The convention of the da capo aria is used for a sequence of 10 arias, and is then wonderfully frustrated in Galatea's final and wniquely structured air “Heart, the seat of soft delight". Throughout the orchestral colours are used with economy, grace and dramatic colour ; typical of Handel's wit is the use of the sopranino recorder, the smallest instrument in the orchestra, to accompany the giant's blustering attempt at seduction, "0 ruddier than the cherry”.