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George Frederich Handel

The son of a barber-surgeon, George Friederich Handel was playing the violin, harpsichord, oboe and organ by the age of eleven. At first he practised music clandestinely, but his father was encouraged to allow him to study and he became a pupil of Zachow, the principal organist in Halle.
When he was 17, Handel was appointed organist of the Calvinist Cathedral but a year later he left for Hamburg. There he played the violin and harpsichord in the opera house where his Almira was given at the beginning of 1705, soon followed by his Nero.

The next year he accepted an invitation to Italy where he spent more than three years in Florence, Rome, Naples and Venice. Upon his return to Germany, Handel became Kapellmeister to the Elector Georg of Hanover. Unhappy with his duties there, Handel made a trip , later in 1710, to London where Italian opera was becoming popular. He produced an opera to great acclaim in London and, having tasted success, reluctantly returned to Germany.

Obtaining permission to return to England in 1712, Handel once again composed several operas and some ceremonial music for Queen Anne. The Queen gave the young composer an annual stipend of £200 in to keep him in London as court composer. Handel never did return to Hanover. He remained in England for the rest of his life, becoming a naturalized citizen in 1726.

A potentially embarrassing situation arose for the composer when Queen Anne died in 1714 and was succeeded by King George I -- the very George of Hanover to whose court Handel had never returned! But relations between the two remained amicable. Handel's royal stipend was doubled before too long and he was also granted a stipend from the Princess of Wales.

Throughout his career, Handel composed wonderful instrumental music including fine organ concertos, a good amount of keyboard music, and celebratory music such as the suite of airs and dances known as the Water Music in 1717. There is also the Musick for the Royal Fireworks, composed in 1749 to celebrate the peace of Aix-la-Chappelle which had been declared the previous year. Following the model of Corelli, Handel also completed two sets of concerti grossi, an example of which is the Concerto Grosso, Op. 6 no. 5. He was obliged to compose much choral music for the court, and this included the anthems written for the Duke of Chandos, various odes, and the four majestic Coronation anthems from 1727.

But the main reason Handel moved to London was to compose and produce Italian opera for a fashionable and eager audience. Beginning with Rinaldo, Handel composed over forty operas and many of these, namely Giulio Cesare (1724), Alcina (1735), and Serse (1738) met with great success and brought Handel fame and money. Today, these works fail to stand up dramatically, mostly because of the stilted librettos to which they are set. Even then, it was recognized that changes had to be made, and Christoph von Gluck implemented these within the next 30 years. Although Handel's operas were immensely popular when they were written, the public interest in opera faded and Handel ended up losing money by attempting in vein to find further success in the genre.

Unsure of his commercial future artistically, and eager to find a new audience, Handel turned to the composition of oratorio: dramatic, non-staged works for the concert hall, usually with wonderful choral music and often with a Biblical subject, the text in English. The success of his first composition Esther (1732) meant that by 1740 Handel had already composed two of his greatest works in the genre, Saul, and Israel in Egypt.

Handel infused these stories with the melody, majesty, and drama he had previously lavished on his operas, and the precociously mentioned works and others like Solomon, Jephtha, Samson, Joshua, and Judas Maccabeus brought him ever more fame and recognition.

After a journey to Dublin in 1741-2, where Messiah premiered, he put opera behind him and for the remainder of his life gave oratorio performances, mostly at the new Covent Garden theatre. Handel's genius is nowhere more evident than in the sublime music he provided for his most famous oratorio, Messiah. Its success was immediate and resounding, and the work has remained in the repertory since.

In 1751, Handel began having trouble with his eyes, enduring three operations at the hands of the same surgeon who had operated on J.S. Bach, resulting similarly in complete blindness. Handel kept performing though, and died a week after suffering a collapse following a performance of Messiah in 1759. He was buried in state in Westminster Abbey His tomb reads: "I Know That My Redeemer Liveth."

Haydn had a resource and originality of invention which is seen in his extraordinary variety of music. In the op.6 concertos, for example, melodic beauty, boldness and humour place him and J.S. Bach as the supreme masters of the Baroque era in music.

A biography of Handel was written the year after his death by the Reverend John Mainwaring -- the very first biography to be written of a composer.

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