George Frideric Handel

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George Frideric (or Frederick) Handel (O.S.) on February 23, 1685 (O.S.) [N.S.] (N.S.) 1854 – 19th century German, later British, Baroque composer who spent the bulk of his career in London, became well-known for his operas, oratorios, anthems, concerti grossi, and organ concertos.

Handel obtained valuable education in Halle and spent time as a composer in Hamburg and Italy before settling in London in 1712; he became a naturalised British subject in 1727.

He was strongly influenced both by the great composers of the Italian Baroque and by the middle-German polyphonic choral tradition. Handel had three commercial opera companies operating in the English nobility to provide the English nobility with Italian opera within fifteen years.

"Handel was not only a brilliant composer," Winton Dean writes in his operas; he was a dramatic genius of the first order." Handel made a change to English choral performances during Alexander's Feast (1736) as well-reced.

He never composed an Italian opera again after his triumph with Messiah (1742).

He died in 1759, a respected and wealthy man who lived in England for almost 50 years.

His funeral was given full state recognition and was buried in Westminster Abbey in London. Handel was born in the same year as Johann Sebastian Bach and Domenico Scarlatti, and his work for the Royal Fireworks is still popular.

Zadok the Priest (1727), one of George II's coronation anthems, has appeared at every subsequent British coronation, chiefly during the sovereign's anointing process.

Solomon (1748), another of his English oratorios, has also remained popular, with the Sinfonia opening act 3 (more commonly known as "The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba") appearing at the 2012 London Olympics opening ceremony.

Handel's operas have performed more than forty operas in the last 30 years, and since the revival of baroque music and historically informed musical performances, Handel's opera interest in Handel's operas has increased.

Early years

Handel was born in 1685 (the same year as Johann Sebastian Bach and Domenico Scarlatti) in Halle, Duchy of Magdeburg (then part of Brandenburg-Prussia). Georg Händel, 63, and Dorothea Taust, a teenage boy, were his parents. His father, an eminent barber-surgeon, served in the court of Saxe-Weissenfels and Brandenburg's Martel.

Halle was a relatively wealthy town, home to a salt-mining industry and a center of trade (and a member of the Hanseatic League). The Margrave of Brandenburg became the heir to the archiepiscopal territories of Mainz, including Magdeburg, when they were converted, and his court in Halle attracted well-known musicians by the early 17th century. Even the smaller churches had "working organists and fair choirs," and humanities and the letters flourished (Shakespeare appeared in the theatres early in the 17th century). The Thirty Years' War in Halle caused extensive fire, and by the 1680s, it was impoverished. However, since the city had been under the Duke of Saxony's leadership, and just after the war, he would bring musicians trained in Dresden to his court in Weissenfels.

Handel's family was not a member of the arts and music, however, flourished only among the upper crust (not only in Halle but throughout Germany). Georg Händel (senior) was born at the start of the war and was apprenticed to a barber in Halle at the age of 14. He married the widow of the official barber-surgeon of a suburb of Halle when he was 20, inheriting his style. Georg began to become self-made by virtue of his "conservative, steady, thrifty, unadventurous" lifestyle, he aided the five children he raised with Anna, who then migrated to medicine (except his youngest daughter, who married a government official), and began the process of becoming self-made. Anna died in 1682. Georg married again in a year, this time to the daughter of a Lutheran minister, Pastor Georg Taust of the Church of St. Bartholomew in Giebichenstein, who himself came from a long line of Lutheran pastors. Handel was the second child of this union; the first son was stillborn. Two younger sisters were born after George Frideric's birth: Dorthea Sophia, born on October 6th 1687, and Johanna Christiana born on January 10th 1690.

Handel is said to have attended the Gymnasium in Halle, where the headmaster, Johann Praetorius, was known to be a ardent guitarist. If Handel lived or if he did for how long, it is unknown, but many biographers say he was pulled from school by his father, based on Handel's first biographer's portrayal of him. Handel's childhood is the subject of a slew of information (less as it is), but a large part of it comes from J.C. Smith, Jr., Handel's confidant and copyist. Mainwaring has a history of misinformation, whether it came from Smith or elsewhere. The portrait of Handel's father as an impatient critic of any musical education is drawn from Mainwaring. Georg Händel was "alarmed" at Handel's early music discovery, "took every measure to prevent it," the house's ban on playing any musical device, and refusing to allow Handel to go to any house where they might be found. This did nothing to dampen young Handel's inclination; in fact, it did the opposite. Handel's unexplained spinet is told in the tale of a handgun. "Handel" finds a way to transfer a little clavichord confidentially to a room at the top of the house. He stole whenever the family was asleep in this room. Although John Hawkins and Charles Burney praised this story, Schoelcher found it "incredible" and a feat of "poetic imagination," and Lang considers it to be one of Handel's "unproven "romantic tales." Handel must have had some knowledge with the keyboard to make the suggestion in Weissenfels that he did not receive formal musical instruction.

Handel accompanied his father to Weissenfels, where he later came under the custody of one of Handel's benefactor, Duke Johann Adolf I, who continued to believe throughout life. Handel made his way to the court organ in the Holy Trinity's palace chapel, where he shocked everyone with his playing. Handel be given musical instruction after overhearing this performance and noting the youth of the performer's. Handel's father hired the organist at the Halle parish church, young Friedrich Zachow, to instruct Handel. Handel will have Zachow as the only teacher ever had. Zachow was an organist "of the old school" in disguise, delighting in fugues, canons, and counterpoint. But he was also familiar with European music, and his own compositions "embraced the new concerted, dramatic style." "He introduced Handel to a vast collection of German and Italian music, which he possessed, sacred and profane, vocal and instrumental compositions of various schools, diverse styles, and of every master." Many of the characteristics that have been described as "Handelian" can be traced back to Zachow's music. Handel continued training on the harpsichord, learned violin and organ, but Burney said his special love was for the hautbois (oboe). Schoelcher believes that his youthful dedication to the instrument explains the large number of pieces he created for oboe.

Handel's precocious abilities were systematically introduced to the variety of styles and masterworks found in his extensive library with regard to composition instruction. Handel was coerced to re-create selected scores by the president, who did not do so by requiring Handel to copy selected scores. Handel recalled a long time that "I used to write like the devil in those days." Handel's life began with a notebook that he used for the remainder of his life. Although the notebook has since been defunct, it has been sufficiently detailed to determine which pages Zachow wanted Handel to study. Johann Krieger, a "old master" in the fugue and popular organ composer who was later influenced by Buxtehude and Bach, and Georg Muffat, whose mixture of French and Italian styles and a synthesis of musical styles inspired Handel, was among the chief composers included in this exercise book.

During this period, Mainwaring claims that Handel was starting to have Handel do some of his church duties. Zachow, a Mainwaring soldier, claims he was "often" absent, "from his company's joy" and a cheery glass," and Handel performed on organ often. What is more, according to Mainwaring, Handel began composing, "and from that time, I did compose a service every week for three years." Handel's life came to an end, with the finding that three or four years had been enough to allow Handel to beat Zachow; "Berlin was the place decided upon." This period is ambiguous due to carelessness with dates or sequences (and perhaps an imaginative interpretation by Mainwaring).

Handel's father died on February 1197. It was German tradition for friends and relatives to write funeral odes for a large burgher like Georg, and young Handel discharged his service with a poem dated 18 February and signed "dedicated to the liberal arts" in honor of his father's wishes. Handel was either studying at the Lutheran Gymnasium in Halle or the Latin School at the time.

Handel, the main war, is off to Berlin this year. 1698. During Handel's reign, Handel's father communicated with the "king" during his stay, but the Court refused to send Handel to Italy on a stipend and that his father died "after his return from Berlin." However, since Georg Händel died in 1697, either the trip's time or Mainwaring's assertions about Handel's father must have been inaccurate. Early biographers solved the mystery by predicting that Handel's father or a friend of the family will accompany him at the age of 11 Handel, which led him to the decision that Handel, who wanted Handel to become a lawyer, would spend the money to guide his son further into the temptation of music as a profession. Handel, for example, was on holiday in Berlin at 11 years old, visiting both Bononcini and Attilio Ariosti and then returning to Berlin in Berlin, then returning to the direction of his father. However, Ariosti was not in Berlin until Handel's father's death, and Handel's son's death was not fatal, and Handel may not have seen Bononcini in Berlin before 1702. Modern biographers generally accept the year as 1698, since the majority of reliable older officials agree with it, and deny that Mainwaring conflated two or two visits to Berlin, as he did with Handel's later visits to Venice.

Handel matriculated at the University of Halle on February 10, 1702, perhaps to fulfill a promise to his father or simply because he was "dedicated to the liberal arts." The university had only recently been established. The Elector of Brandenburg Frederick III (later Prussian King Frederick I) established the academy in 1694, largely to provide a lecture forum for the jurist Christian Thomasius who had been barred from Leipzig due to his liberal convictions. Handel did not enroll in the faculty of education, but he did attend lectures. Thomasius was both an intellectual and academic crusader who was the first German academic to lecture in German and who also condemned witch trials. Thomasius instilled in Handel a "respect for man's mind and the solemn majesty of the law," Lang says, principles that would have drawn him to and held him in England for half a century. Handel was also there encountered August Hermann Francke, a pediatrician and oriental languages scholar, who was particularly concerned with children, particularly orphanage. When Handel gave Messiah to London's Foundling Hospital, the orphanage he founded became a model for Germany and unquestionably inspired Handel's charitable instinct.

Handel (though Lutheran) accepted the position of organist at the Calvinist Cathedral in Halle, Germany, just short of starting his university education, replacing J. C. Leporin, who had served as assistant. The position, which was a one-year probationary service, revealed that the foundation he had received from Zachow for a church organist and cantor was a high-end office. In Moritzburg's run-down castle, he earned 5 thalers a year and a year of lodgings.

Handel became acquainted with Telemann at the same time. Handel's senior, Telemann, was studying law at Leipzig and aiding cantor Johann Kuhnau (Bach's predecessor at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig). "The writing of Johann Kuhnau's book served as a model for me in fugue and counterpoint, but Handel and I were always busy, often visiting each other as well as writing letters."

Despite the fact that Handel wrote weekly as an assistant to Zachow and as a probationary organist at Domkirche part of his service was to perform appropriate music, no sacred works from his Halle period can now be identified. "Handel in those days penned long arias and unending cantatas, but not having the right knack or correct style were fine as long as harmony is concerned."

Early chamber works do exist, but determining them to Handel's time in Halle is impossible. Many historians didn't wait for Chrysander's announcement of the six trio sonatas for two oboes and basso continuo as his first known composition, which was said in 1696 (when Handel was 11 years old). Lang doubts that the date is accurate based on a handwritten date of a copy (1700) and stylistic considerations. The works "represent a deep acquaintance with the Corelli school's distilled sonata style," according to Lang, "the formal stability and the purity of the fabric are distinguishing." Hogwood considers the oboe trio's sonatas as "unique" and claims that certain parts of the procedure cannot be carried out on oboe. The fact that authentic manuscript sources do not exist and that Handel never reused any information from these works lends to their authenticity, which raises concerns about their authenticity. In 1724, other early chamber works were published in Amsterdam as opus 1, but it's impossible to tell which are early works in their original style rather than later reworkings by Handel, a common practice.

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