Handel, George Frideric (1685–1759)

HANDEL, GEORGE FRIDERIC (1685–1759)

HANDEL, GEORGE FRIDERIC (1685–1759), German-born musician eventually hailed as "England's national composer." He was the first great composer who broke free of church and court patronage and earned a living directly from the public; England was perhaps the only country that could provide such support in his time.

Born Georg Friedrich Händel at Halle, Lower Saxony, on 23 February 1685, he was the son of a sixty-three-year-old barber-surgeon. His early talents persuaded his father to let him study music as well as law, and he took lessons from the local organist, Friedrich Wilhelm Zachau (1663–1712). After a year as organist of the Calvinist Domkirche (cathedral), he traveled to Hamburg, where he gained his first experience of opera, playing violin and harpsichord under the distinguished composer Reinhardt Keiser (1673–1739) and later composing operas and concertos. He then traveled to the fountainhead of music, Italy, where he stayed for nearly four years (1706–1710), dividing his time between Florence, Rome, Venice, and Naples. There he composed and performed music in many forms, developing the extroverted, cosmopolitan manner that so clearly distinguishes him from his contemporary Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750).

In January 1710 he took up an appointment as Kapellmeister (director of music) at the court of George, elector of Hanover (soon to become George I of England). In that year he paid his first visit to London, where he was commissioned to write an opera, Rinaldo, for the Queen's Theatre in the Haymarket.

In the spring of 1712 Handel left Hanover for England, which was to be his home for the rest of his life, despite frequent visits to the Continent. He rapidly became the most sought-after composer in London. Rinaldo had been an astonishing success, and was decisive in the establishment of Italian opera as the chief entertainment of the British aristocracy. His Te Deum, performed on 7 July 1713, to celebrate the Peace of Utrecht, at once displaced Henry Purcell's as the standard piece for royal and national celebrations. After a period as private musician to the earl of Carnarvon, later duke of Chandos (1717–1718), at Cannons, his recently built mansion at Edgware, Handel was engaged as the chief composer in a series of London opera schemes. The most brilliant was the Royal Academy of Music (1719–1727), which sponsored several of his greatest operas, including Giulio Cesare (1724) and Rodelinda (1725). He enjoyed the strong support of King George II and Queen Caroline, but became a political pawn in the running feud between the king's Whig administration and the rival faction surrounding Frederick, Prince of Wales. He continued to produce operas until 1741, composing forty-two in all, but with fitful success.

Looking for a more stable source of support, Handel chanced on the oratorio. A pirated version of his Esther, written for Cannons in 1718, was mounted at a London tavern in 1733. Always a keen businessman, Handel competed, putting on a rival performance at the opera house with additional music. The bishop of London would not allow acting or costumes to represent a sacred subject, but Esther was still conceived as a drama, and was sung on stage against a scenic backdrop. It allowed plenty of scope for Handel's dramatic genius, as expressed in the operatic forms of recitative and aria. The public liked the use of the English language, the biblical stories familiar to all, and the choruses in the English ceremonial style they knew and loved.

Handel developed this formula in such masterpieces as Saul (1739), Samson (1744), Solomon (1748), and Jephtha (1751). He varied it by choosing mythological subjects in Semele (1744) and Hercules (1745), and, on the other hand, by using librettos compiled directly from the Bible in Israel in Egypt (1738) and Messiah (1742). In his later performances of Messiah at the Foundling Hospital chapel he took the first step that moved his oratorios away from the theater toward the church. The gigantic Handel Commemorations at Westminster Abbey (1784–1791) presented his works as monuments of the religious sublime, playing down the subtle interplay of human character that had always been an important inspiration of his greatest dramatic music.

Handel's ceremonial music epitomizes the grandeur and brilliance of the baroque. The Royal Fireworks Music and Water Music have proved to be the most durable occasional music ever written. He also contributed fine orchestral concertos, chamber works, keyboard music, and organ voluntaries, and was responsible for a new form, the organ concerto, originally played between the acts of his oratorios.

See also Music ; Opera .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dean, Winton. Handel's Dramatic Masques and Oratorios. London, 1959.

Lang, Paul Henry. George Frideric Handel. New York, 1966.

Smith, Ruth. Handel's Oratorios and Eighteenth-Century Thought. Cambridge, U.K., 1995.

Nicholas Temperley