Background
George Frideric Handel was born Georg Friederich Händel (he later anglicised his name) on February 23, 1685, at Halle, Saxony, Germany.
George Frideric Handel was born Georg Friederich Händel (he later anglicised his name) on February 23, 1685, at Halle, Saxony, Germany.
Handel's father, an elderly barber-surgeon, was at first opposed to his son's education as a musician, but when the boy was eight he allowed him to study for three years with the local organist, Zachau.
In January 1702, after his father's death, Handel entered Halle University as a law student, but barely a month later was appointed organist of the Domkirche at Halle.
In 1703 he settled in center Hamburg, where he became first a violinist, then a harpsichordist at the Hamburg opera, at that time the only opera house in Germany. At Hamburg he wrote a St. John Passion and, in 1705, his first opera, Almira, was performed. Almira, was quickly followed by Nero, Florindo, and Dafne.
From 1705 to 1738 he lavished much of his music on works which, owing to drastic changes in taste and conditions, can be performed today only as historic curiosities. During the winter of 1706-1707 he traveled to Italy, where he stayed until the spring of 1710, dividing his time between Florence, Rome, Naples, and Venice and composing Italian cantatas and oratorios, Latin church-music, and the operas Rodrigo and Agrippina. In Italy he met Arcangelo Corelli, Alessandro and Domenico Scarlatti, and other leading Italian composers.
On his return to London in 1717 Handel entered the service of the Duke of Chandos, directing the music at the duke's palace at Cannons, near London, where he composed a set of Anglican anthems, the pastoralAcis and Galatea and the masque Haman and Mordecai (the original form of Esther).
From 1720 until 1728 the operas at the King’s Theatre in London were staged by the Royal Academy of Music, and Handel composed the music for most of them. Among those of the 1720s were Floridante (1721), Ottone (1723), Giulio Cesare (1724), Rodelinda (1725), and Scipione (1726). From 1728, after the sensation caused by John Gay’s Beggar’s Opera (which satirized serious opera), the future of opera in the Italian style became increasingly uncertain in England. It went into decline for a variety of reasons, one of them being the impatience of the English with a form of entertainment in an unintelligible language sung by artists of whose morals they disapproved. But despite the vagaries of public taste, Handel went on composing operas until 1741, by which time he had written more than 40 such works. As the popularity of opera declined in England, oratorio became increasingly popular. The revivals in 1732 of Handel’s masques Acis and Galatea and Haman and Mordecai (renamed Esther) led to the establishment of the English oratorio - a large musical composition for solo voices, chorus, and orchestra, without acting or scenery, and usually dramatizing a story from the Bible in English-language lyrics. Handel first capitalized on this genre in 1733 with Deborah and Athalia.
Handel also continued to comanage an Italian opera company in London despite many difficulties. Throughout his London career he had suffered competition not only from rival composers but also from rival opera houses in a London that could barely support even one Italian opera in addition to its English theatres. Finally, in 1737, his company went bankrupt and he himself suffered what appears to have been a mild stroke. After a course of treatment at Aachen (Germany), he was restored to health and went on to compose the Funeral Anthem for Queen Caroline (1737) and two of his most celebrated oratorios, Saul and Israel in Egypt, both of which were performed in 1739. He also wrote the Twelve Grand Concertos, Op. 6, and helped establish the Fund for the Support of Decayed Musicians (now the Royal Society of Musicians).
Handel was by this time at the height of his powers, and the year 1741 saw the composition of his greatest oratorio, Messiah, and its inspired successor, Samson. Messiah was given its first performance in Dublin on April 13, 1742, and created a deep impression. Handel’s works of the next three years included the oratorios Joseph and His Brethren (first performed 1744) and Belshazzar (1745), the secular oratorios Semele (1744) and Hercules (1745), and the Dettingen Te Deum (1743), celebrating the English victory over the French at the Battle of Dettingen. Handel had by this time made oratorio and large-scale choral works the most popular musical forms in England. He had created for himself a new public among the rising middle classes, who would have turned away in moral indignation from the Italian opera but who were quite ready to be edified by a moral tale from the Bible, set to suitably dignified and, by now, rather old-fashioned music. Even during his lifetime Handel’s music was recognized as a reflection of the English national character, and his capacity for realizing the common mood was nowhere better shown than in the Music for the Royal Fireworks (1749), with which he celebrated the peace of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle. Handel now began to experience trouble with his sight. He managed with great difficulty to finish the last of his oratorios, Jephtha, which was performed at Covent Garden Theatre, London, in 1752. He kept his interest in musical activities alive until the end. After his death on April 14, 1759, he was buried in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey.