Handel, George Frideric

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George Frideric Handel

1685–1759

Composer
Organist

From Halle to Italy.

One of England's greatest composers, George Frideric Handel was German by birth and upbringing. Born in Halle in the German territory of Saxony, he studied law as well as music. After a year as an organist at the Calvinist cathedral church, Handel left Halle for Hamburg with its opera house and greater possibilities. In Hamburg he played in the orchestra and wrote his first opera, Almira, in 1705. Here Handel already showed the mix of national styles he would continue to use in his later writings. The next year he traveled to Italy. Throughout the eighteenth century and into the next, northern European composers felt the need to spend time in Italy to study current Italian musical trends and to establish their reputations. Handel was no exception, and his efforts proved successful. He spent time in a number of cities, including Florence, Rome, Naples, and Venice. In Rome, a center especially of religious choral music, he wrote a number of motets, cantatas, and an oratorio. In Venice, his opera Agrippina was a great success. Handel met and befriended many of the Italian composers of his generation.

English Career.

When he returned north, he worked for a while as chapel master to the elector of Hanover, who was next in line to succeed to the English throne. The court granted him leaves of absence so that he could accept invitations to London. There he produced another opera, Rinaldo, again to great acclaim, and eventually Queen Anne awarded him an annual stipend. Upon her death in 1714 the crown passed to the elector of Hanover, who was crowned as George I. Except for a few visits to continental Europe, Handel spent the rest of his career in England. In 1727 he became a British citizen. Handel's long English career highlights many of the trends in the country's musical scene during those years. At times he worked directly for the king; he wrote the suites known as the Water Music, for example, for a royal procession by barge along the Thames River in the summer of 1717, a procession intended to give the new and foreign king greater visibility among his subjects. By 1719 he was working for a new private company called the Royal Academy of Music, formed to produce Italian-style opera in London, and he wrote a number of operas for them. The company survived ten years before having financial trouble, at which time Handel himself went into partnership with a colleague to carry on the project. A rival house competed with him, sometimes producing Handel's own operas. These professional rivalries, plus the problems of attracting the London public to performances of Italian operas when they could not understand the language of the libretto, limited the possibilities for Italian opera in England. Nonetheless, Handel continued to write successful operas even after his production ventures failed.

Oratorios.

One solution to Handel's problems in popularizing Italian opera in England came in the form of the oratorio, a musical genre that Handel made distinctly his own. Handel, who had studied and written oratorios in Rome, revised an earlier composition into the oratorio Esther in 1732. With his oratorio Saul, Handel overcame the language problems of Italian-style opera by using an English text, and found a solid audience that he could continue to develop. Handel helped build up a tradition of performing oratorios, with their Biblical subjects, during the penitential season of Lent. He also played organ concertos at these performances. Saul was followed by Israel in Egypt. In answer to a request for a new work for a charity performance in Dublin for Easter in 1742, Handel wrote his oratorio Messiah, a work that was a resounding success from its first performances. Its Dublin debut was soon followed by London performances the following year, in which the work excited universal acclaim. Handel followed this commercial success with more oratorios, as well as his famous Music for the Royal Fireworks, written in 1748.

A Mix of Styles.

Although English was only an adopted language to Handel, his vocal compositions captured English words and cadences so naturally that they can be seen to embody the Baroque era's preoccupation with textual expression as one of music's greatest goals. His writing for chorus is especially memorable, often alternating between homophonic sections and polyphony, and takes advantage of the natural ranges and strengths of vocal parts. Yet his instrumental music is also impressive. The Italian style dominates in most of his writings, but he made use of other regional and national styles as well. The French overture form, first developed by Jean-Baptiste Lully, and the precision and restraint of French court music generally figured prominently in many of Handel's works. Like many of his contemporaries, Handel was known for his ability to compose music quickly. The listening public wanted new works for major occasions, and Handel obliged, even if it meant borrowing heavily from earlier works. He was known for incorporating musical ideas from the works of others, reworking them into parts of his own compositions. Contemporaries viewed this practice more the way film directors do now, as a sort of "homage" to the other composer, rather than as a type of plagiarism.

Later Life and Reputation.

Late in life, Handel's health began to fail. He had already suffered several strokes, but was able to recover and return to work. By the 1750s, however, his eyesight also began to fail. He continued to compose via dictation and to perform extemporaneously and from memory. By the time of his death, he had become a great English institution, and was buried in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey with an imposing funeral. In 1784 Handel was honored with a commemorative festival by the Concert of Antient Music, an event that was attended by the royal family. This festival helped to solidify his important role in England's musical life, and inspired a fashion for works from earlier periods. Handel's posthumous reputation and its celebration in England were key features in the development of the notion of a European classical tradition of great music that deserved to be performed long after it was written.