In Autumn 1748 King George II began planning a grandiose public celebration the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle which had brought to an end an exhausting 8-year war with France. The centrepiece was to be a huge firework display the following spring in Green Park, opposite Buckingham Palace, interspersed with music from an enormous military band which would itself be competing for attention with the firing of 100 cannons.

A distinguished set designer from the Paris Opera, Giovanni Servandoni, was hired to build an elaborate wooden pavilion, ‘The Temple of Peace’, in Palladian style with a central arch and colonnades, which would house an enormous ‘Fireworks Machine’. There was by common consent only one composer in London of sufficient stature (and self-confidence) to deliver music equal to the occasion, and this was, of course, Mr. Handel. At first Handel resisted the King’s insistence on a military band (which specifically excluded violins), but eventually he had to concede – so the music for the great fireworks day was scored for brass, woodwind and percussion instruments only. However, Handel clearly had in mind from the outset a revision of the orchestration, for only two weeks later the music was played again, at one of his famous fundraising events for the Foundling Hospital, in the orchestration (including strings) with which we are now familiar.

Preparations for the Royal Fireworks had galvanised London for a good 6 months ahead of the event. The ‘machine’ was constructed with props and scenery of unprecedented opulence. Public rehearsals were mobbed, including a famous traffic jam a week beforehand when 12,000 people attempted to cross London Bridge to watch the music rehearsal in Vauxhall Gardens, causing over 3 hours of gridlock amid scenes of 18^th Century road rage. Fortunately, the rehearsal was a success, but a week later the event itself, back in Green Park, was chaotic, bordering on catastrophic. The April weather was unkind, with driving rain and a stiff wind, and the much-heralded fireworks machine malfunctioned, making the display disappointingly underwhelming. Worse, it set fire to one side of Servandoni’s grand pavilion which was virtually destroyed (Servandoni becoming so infuriated that he was arrested). Newspaper accounts of the debacle noted with some surprise that “only two persons were killed” in the ensuing melée, but the royal party appeared unmoved, walking through the pavilion (or what was left of it) at the conclusion of the main celebration, causing the music to be played a second time (perhaps recalling a similar royal event on the Thames, years before, when Handel’s ‘Water Music’ was played three times over). The music is indeed wonderful – the largest and grandest of it being in the extensive Overture, full of fanfares and martial dotted rhythms, rushing ahead with interchanges between trumpets, horns, woodwinds (and the later-added strings). The overture was followed by the firing of cannons, with the music resuming as a series of dance movements including two, the gentle triple-time ‘La Paix’ and noble ‘La Réjouissance’, whose titles reference the Aix-la-Chapelle treaty. The whole bizarre occasion may have proved something of a damp squib but Handel’s music still burns as brightly as ever.

© 2025, Felix Warnock