The history of "water music" cannot be clearly reconstructed. There is a complete autograph, no authorized first print and no clearly assignable date of origin. The extent to which Handel edited musical material for the royal water rides that had already been composed for other occasions remains unclear in detail. The original order of the individual movements as well as the original cast is also not according to the current state of the source research, however, three suites can be recognized, with respect to the occupation and the keys differ:
Suite I F major, HWV 348 Suite II D major, HWV 349 Suite III in G major, HWV 350
There are variants for some individual movements, which can be found in HWV 331, 341 and 464. 10 pieces were selected for the arrangement for saxophone duet: 1. the original trio movements 2. the dance sets The result is a similar sentence structure with a melody and bass voice as in Bach's "Notebook Anna Magdalena Bach". (See order numbers 2032, 2033 and 2034).
The pieces are primarily intended for saxophone lessons or for leaf reading. Dynamic names in brackets, tempo indications, respiratory breaks, some of the decorations and most of the articulation are to be understood as suggestions by the processor. The order of the 10 movements was chosen in such a way that – if you play all movements in a row, there is a change between quick and rather worn pieces. The original text of the Halle Handel Edition served as a template for the editing
