Samson again

Well, I've just found a rather useful article by Donald Burrows on the findarticles web site, originally published in the Musical Times Spring 2005 issue. It makes it perfectly clear why we needed a new edition, the existing Novello ones were based on corrupt/cut Victorian editions. He is also highly illuminating about the various versions of the score from Handel's long first one to the more compact one which surface later on in the work's life. What, of course, I don't know is what we heard at St. George's, but given that we had over 3 hours of music, I think its fairly safe to assume he had a pretty long version of the oratorio.