Music for the Royal Fireworks for outdoor performance. Together, these works constitute Handel's most famous music for what we would now consider the orchestra. Older recordings tend to use arrangements of Handel's score for the modern orchestra, for example, the arrangements by Hamilton Harty and Leopold Stokowski. More recent recordings tend to use more historically informed performance methods appropriate for baroque music and often use authentic instruments. There are also arrangements for pipe organ, alone or with brass. In 1970, José Feliciano recorded for his "Fireworks" LP part of the work transcribed for classical guitar by himself. This music was performed under the baton of
Opera in German music, "Singspiele" were no match for contemporary opera serias in artistic sophistication. A milestone of German opera was Anton Schweitzer's "Alceste", with a libretto by Wieland, premiered in 1773 in Weimar. At the end of the 18th century a composer who would change all this would emerge: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. As music moved into the Classical era in the late 18th century, most German-born composers still avoided writing opera in their own language. The great figure of the early Classical period was Christoph Willibald von Gluck but his pioneering reforms were directed at Italian and French opera, not the German