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GEORGE FREDERICK HANDEL (1685–1759)

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Originally appearing in Volume V12, Page 915 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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GEORGE See also:FREDERICK See also:HANDEL (1685–1759)  , See also:English musical composer, See also:German by origin, was See also:born at See also:Halle in See also:Lower L Ue . See also:Saxony, on the 23rd of See also:February 1685 . His name was See also:Handel, but, like most 18th-See also:century musicians who travelled, he compromised with its See also:pronunciation by foreigners, and when in See also:Italy spelt it Hendel, and in See also:England (where he became naturalized) accepted the version Handel, which is therefore correct for English writers, while Handel remains the correct version in See also:Germany . His See also:father was a See also:barber-surgeon, who disapproved of See also:music, and wished See also:George See also:Frederick to become a lawyer . A friend smuggled a See also:clavichord into the See also:attic, and on this See also:instrument, which is inaudible behind a closed See also:door, the little boy practised secretly . Before he was eight his father went to visit a son by a former See also:marriage who was a See also:valet-de-chambre to the See also:duke of See also:Saxe-See also:Weissenfels . The little boy begged in vain to go also, and at last ran after the See also:carriage on See also:foot so far that he had to be taken . He made acquaintance with the See also:court musicians and contrived to practise on the See also:organ when he could be overheard by the duke, who, immediately recognizing his See also:talent, spoke seriously to the father, who had to yield to his arguments . On returning to Halle Handel became a See also:pupil of Zachau, the See also:cathedral organist, who gave him a thorough training as a composer and as a performer on keyed See also:instruments, the See also:oboe and the See also:violin . Six very See also:good trios for two oboes and See also:bass, which Handel wrote at the See also:age of ten, are extant; and when he himself was shown them by an English admirer who had discovered them, he was much amusedand remarked, " I wrote like the See also:devil in those days, and chiefly for the oboe, which was my favourite instrument." His See also:master also of course made him write an enormous amount of vocal music, and he had to produce a See also:motet every See also:week . By the See also:time he was twelve Zachau thought he could See also:teach him no more, and accordingly the boy was sent to See also:Berlin, where he made a See also:great impression at the court . His father, however, thought See also:fit to decline the proposal of the elector of See also:Brandenburg, afterwards See also:King Frederick I. of See also:Prussia, to send the boy to Italy in See also:order afterwards to attach him to the court at Berlin ..

German court musicians, as See also:

late as the time of See also:Mozart, had hardly enough freedom to satisfy a See also:man of See also:independent See also:character, and the See also:elder Handel had not yet given up See also:hope of his son's becoming a lawyer . See also:Young Handel, therefore, returned to Halle and resumed his See also:work with Zachau . In 1697 his father died, but the boy showed great filial piety in See also:finishing the See also:ordinary course of his See also:education, both See also:general and musical, and even entering the university of Halle in 1702 as a See also:law student . But in that See also:year he succeeded to the See also:post of organist at the cathedral, and after his " See also:probation " year in that capacity he departed to See also:Hamburg, where the only German See also:opera worthy of the name was flourishing under the direction of its founder, See also:Reinhold Keiser . Here he became See also:friends with See also:Matheson, a prolific composer and writer on music . On one occasion they set out together to go to See also:Lubeck, where a successor was to be appointed to the post See also:left vacant by the great organist Buxtehude, who was retiring on See also:account of his extreme age . Handel and Matheson made much music on this occasion, but did not compete, because they found that the successful See also:candidate was required to accept the See also:hand of the elderly daughter of the retiring organist . Another See also:adventure might have had still more serious See also:con-sequences . At a performance of Matheson's opera See also:Cleopatra at Hamburg, Handel refused to give up the conductor's seat to the composer when the latter returned to his usual post at the See also:harpsichord after singing the See also:part of Antony on the See also:stage . The dispute led to a See also:duel outside the See also:theatre, and, but for a large See also:button on Handel's coat which intercepted Matheson's See also:sword, there would have been no See also:Messiah or See also:Israel in See also:Egypt . But the young men remained friends, and Matheson's writings are full of the most valuable facts for Handel's See also:biography . He relates in his Ehrenpforle that his friend at that time used to compose " interminable cantatas " of no great merit; but of these no traces now remain, unless we assume that a See also:Passion according to St See also:John, the See also:manuscript of which is in the royal library at Berlin, is among the See also:works alluded to .

But its authenticity, while strongly upheld by Chrysander, has recently been as strongly assailed on See also:

internal See also:evidence . On the 8th of See also:January 1705, Handel's first opera, Almira, was performed at Hamburg with great success, and was followed a few See also:weeks later by another work, entitled See also:Nero . Nero is lost, but Almira, with its mixture of See also:Italian and German See also:language and See also:form, remains as a valuable example of the tendencies of the time and of Handel's eclectic methods . It contains many themes used by Handel in well-known later works; but the current statement that the famous See also:aria in Rinaldo, " Lascia ch'io pianga," comes from a See also:saraband in Almira, is based upon nothing more definite than the inevitable resemblance between the simplest possible forms of saraband-See also:rhythm . In 1706 Handel left Hamburg for Italy, where he remained for three years, rapidly acquiring the smooth Italian vocal See also:style which hereafter always characterized his work . He had before this refused offers from See also:noble patrons to send him there, but had now saved enough See also:money, not only to support his See also:mother at See also:home, but to travel as his own master . He divided his time in Italy between See also:Florence, See also:Rome, See also:Naples and See also:Venice; and many anecdotes are preserved. of his meetings with See also:Corelli, See also:Lotti, Alessandro See also:Scarlatti and Domenico Scarlatti, whose wonderful harpsichord technique still has a See also:direct bearing on some of the most See also:modern features of See also:pianoforte style . Handel soon became famous as Il Sassone (" the Saxon "), and it is said that Domenico on first See also:hearing him See also:play incognito exclaimed, " It is either the devil or the Saxon ! " Then there is a See also:story of Corelli's coming to grief over a passage in Handel's See also:overture to Il Trionfo del tempo, in which the violins went up to A in altissimo . Handel impatiently snatched the violin to show Corelli how the passage ought to be played, and Corelli, who had never written or played beyond the third position in his See also:life (this passage being in the seventh), said gently, " My dear Saxon, this music is in the See also:French style, which I do not under-stand." In Italy Handel produced two operas, Rodrigo and See also:Agrippina, the latter a very important work, of which the splendid overture was remodelled See also:forty-four years afterwards as that of his last See also:original See also:oratorio, Jephtha . He also produced two oratorios, La Resurrezione, and Il Trionfo del tempo . This, forty-six years afterwards, formed the basis of his last work .

The See also:

Triumph of Time and Truth, which contains no original See also:matter . All Handel's See also:early works contain material that he used often with very little alteration later on, and, though the famous " Lascia ch'io pianga " does not occur in Almira, it occurs See also:note for note in Agrippina and the two Italian oratorios . On the other hand the See also:cantata Aci, Galattea e Polifemo has nothing in See also:common with See also:Acis and Galatea . Besides these larger works there are several choral and See also:solo cantatas of which the earliest, such as the great Dixit See also:Dominus, show in their extravagant vocal difficulty how See also:radical was the See also:change which Handel's Italian experience so rapidly effected in his methods . Handel's success in Italy established his fame and led to his receiving at Venice in 1709 the offer of the post of Kapellmeister to the elector of See also:Hanover, transmitted to him by See also:Baron Kielmansegge, his See also:patron and staunch friend of later years . Handel at the time contemplated a visit to England, and he accepted this offer on See also:condition of leave of See also:absence being granted to him for that purpose . To England accordingly Handel journeyed after a See also:short stay at Hanover, arriving in See also:London towards the See also:close of 1710 . He came as a composer of Italian opera, and earned his first success at the Haymarket with Rinaldo, composed, to the consternation of the hurried librettist, in a fortnight, and first performed on the 24th of February 1711 . In this opera the aria " Lascia ch'io pianga" found its final home . The work was produced with the utmost magnificence, and See also:Addison's delightful reviews of it in the Spectator poked fun at it from an unmusical point of view in a way that sometimes curiously foreshadows the criticisms that See also:Gluck might have made on such things at a later See also:period . The success was so great, especially for \\ alsh the publisher, that Handel proposed that See also:Walsh should compose the next opera, and that he should publish it . He returned to Hanover at the close of the opera See also:season, and composed a good See also:deal of vocal chamber music for the princess See also:Caroline, the step-daughter of the elector, besides the instrumental works known to us as the oboe concertos .

In 1712 Handel returned to London and spent a year with See also:

Andrews, a See also:rich musical See also:amateur, in See also:Barn Elms, See also:Surrey . Three more years were spent in See also:Burlington, in the neighbourhood of London . He evidently was but little inclined to return to Hanover, in spite of his duties to the court there . Two Italian operas and the See also:Utrecht Te Deum written by the command of See also:Queen See also:Anne are the See also:principal works of this period . It was somewhat awkward for the composer when his deserted master came to London in 1714 as George I. of England . For some time Handel did not venture to appear at court, and it was only at the intercession of Baron Kielmansegge that his See also:pardon was obtained . By his See also:advice Handel wrote the See also:Water Music which was performed at a royal water party on the See also:Thames, and it so pleased the king that he at once received the composer into his good See also:graces and granted him a See also:salary of £400 a year . Later Handel became music master to the little princesses and was given an additional £200 by the princess Caroline . In 1716 he followed the king to Germany, where he wrote a second German Passion to the popular poem of See also:Brockes, a See also:text which, divested of its worst features, forms the basis of several of the arias in See also:Bach's Passion according to St John . This was Handel's last work to a German text . On his return to England he entered the service of the duke9 I I of See also:Chandos as conductor of his concerts, receiving a thousand pounds for his first oratorio See also:Esther . The music which Handel wrote for performance at " Cannons," the duke of Chandos's See also:residence at Edgware, is comprised in the first version of Esther, Acis and Galatea, and the twelve Chandos Anthems, which are compositions approximately in the same form as Bach's See also:church cantatas but without any systematic use of See also:chorale tunes .

The fashionable Londoner would travel 9 See also:

miles in those days to the little See also:chapel of See also:Whitchurch to hear Handel's music, and all that now remains of the magnificent See also:scene of these visits is the church, which is the See also:parish church of Edgware . In 1720 Handel appeared again in a public capacity as impresario of the Italian opera at the Haymarket theatre, which he managed for the institution called the Royal See also:Academy of Music . Senesino, a famous See also:singer, to engage whom Handel especially journeyed to See also:Dresden, was the mainstay of the enterprise, which opened with a highly successful performance of Handel's opera Radamisto . To this time belongs the famous rivalry between Handel and Buononcini, a melodious Italian composer whom many thought to be the greater of the two . The controversy has been perpetuated in John See also:Byrom's lines: " Some say, compared to Buononcini That Mynheer Handel's but a ninny; Others aver that he to Handel Is scarcely fit to hold a See also:candle . See also:Strange all this difference should be Twixt tweedle-dum and tweedle-See also:dee." It must be remembered that at this time Handel had not yet asserted his greatness as a choral writer; the fashionable ideas of music and musicianship were based entirely upon success in Italian opera, and the contest between the See also:rival composers was waged on the basis of works which have fallen into almost as See also:complete an oblivion in Handel's See also:case as in Buononcini's . None of Handel's forty-See also:odd Italian operas can be said to survive, except in some two or three detached arias out of each opera; arias which reveal their essential qualities far better in See also:isolation than when performed in See also:groups of between twenty and See also:thirty on the stage, as interruptions to the See also:action of a classical See also:drama to which nobody paid the slightest See also:attention . But even within these limits Handel's See also:artistic resources were too great to leave the issue in doubt; and when Handel wrote the third See also:act of an opera Muzio Scevola, of which Buononcini and Ariosti wrote the other two, his triumph was decisive, especially as Buononcini soon got into discredit by failing to defend himself against the See also:charge of producing as a See also:prize-See also:madrigal of his own a See also:composition which proved to be by Lotti . At all events Buononcini left London, and Handel for the next ten years was without a rival in his ventures as an operatic composer . He was not, however, without a rival as an impresario; and the hostile competition of a rival See also:company which obtained the services of the great See also:Farinelli and also induced Senesino to See also:desert him, led to his See also:bankruptcy in 1737, and to an attack of See also:paralysis caused by anxiety and overwork . The rival company also had to be dissolved from want of support, so that Handel's misfortunes must not be attributed to any failure to maintain his position in the musical See also:world . Handel's artistic See also:conscience was that of the most easy-going opportunist, or he would never have continued till 1741 to work in a See also:field that gave so little See also:scope for his See also:genius .

But the public seemed to want operas, and, if opera had no scope for his genius, at all events he could See also:

supply better operas with greater rapidity and ease than any three other living composers working together . And this he naturally continued to do so See also:long as it seemed to be the best way to keep up his reputation . But with all this artistic opportunism he was not a man of tact, and there are numerous stories of the type of his holding the great prima donna Cuzzoni at See also:arm's-length out of a window and threatening to drop her unless she consented to sing a See also:song which she had declared unsuitable to her style . Already before his last opera, Deidamia, produced in 1741, Handel had been making a growing impression with his oratorios . 1 Chrysander says Mattei instead of Ariosti . In these, freed from the restrictions of the stage, he was able to give scope to his genius for choral See also:writing, and so to develop, or rather revive, that See also:art of See also:chorus singing which is the normal outlet for English musical talent . In 1726 Handel had become a naturalized Englishman, and in 1733 he began his public career as a composer of English texts by producing the second and larger version of Esther at the King's theatre . This was followed early in the same year by See also:Deborah, in which the See also:share of the chorus is much greater . In See also:July he produced Athalia at See also:Oxford, the first work in which his characteristic See also:double choruses appear . The share of the chorus increases in See also:Saul (1738); and Israel in Egypt (also 1738) is practically entirely a choral work, the solo movements, in spite of their fame, being as perfunctory in character as they are few in number . It was not unnatural that the public, who still considered Italian opera the highest, because the most modern form of musical art, obliged Handel at subsequent performances of this gigantic work to insert more solos . The Messiah was produced at See also:Dublin on the 13th of See also:April 1942 .

See also:

Samson (which Handel preferred to the Messiah) appeared at Covent See also:Garden on the 2nd of See also:March 1744; Belshazzar at the King's theatre, 27th of March 1745; the Occasional Oratorio (chiefly a compilation of the earlier oratorios, but with a few important new See also:numbers), on the 14th of February 1746 at Covent Garden, where all his later oratorios were produced; Judas Maccabaeus on the 1st of April 1747; See also:Joshua on the 9th of March 1748; See also:Alexander Balus on the 23rd of March 1748; See also:Solomon on the , 7th of March 1749; Susanna, See also:spring of 1749; See also:Theodora, a great favourite of Handel's, who was much disappointed by its See also:cold reception, on the 16th of March 1750; Jephtha (strictly speaking, his last work) on the 26th of February 1752, and The Triumph of Time and Truth (transcribed from Il Trionfo del tempo with the addition of many later favourite numbers), 1757 . .Other important works, indistinguishable in artistic form from oratorios, but on See also:secular subjects, are Alexander's Feast, 1736; See also:Ode for St See also:Cecilia's See also:Day (words by See also:Dryden); L' See also:Allegro, it pensieroso ed it moderato (the words of the third part by Jennens), 1740; See also:Semele, 1744; See also:Hercules, 1745; and The Choice of Hercules, 1751 . By degrees the enmity against Handel died away, though he had many troubles . In 1745 he had again become bankrupt; for, although he had no rival as a composer of choral music it was possible for his enemies to give balls and banquets on the nights of his oratorio performances . As with his first bankruptcy, so in his later years, he showed scrupulous sense of See also:honour in discharging his debts, and he continued to work hard to the end of his life . He had not only completely recovered his See also:financial position by the year 1750, but he must have made a good deal of money, for he then presented an organ to the Foundling See also:Hospital, and opened it with a performance of the Messiah on the 15th of May . In 1751 his sight began to trouble him; and the autograph of Jephtha, published in facsimile by the Hanndelgesellschaft, shows pathetic traces of this in his See also:handwriting,' and so affords a most valuable evidence of his methods of composition, all the accompaniments, recitatives, and less essential portions of the work being evidently filled in long after the See also:rest . He underwent unsuccessful operations, one of them by the same surgeon who had operated on Bach's eyes . There is evidence that he was able to see at intervals during his last years, but his sight practically never returned after May 1752 . He continued superintending performances of his works and writing new arias for them, or inserting revised old ones, and he attended a performance of the Messiah a week before his See also:death, which took See also:place, according to the Public Advertiser of the 16th of April, not on Good See also:Friday, the 13th of April, according to his own pious wish and according to common See also:report, but on the 14th of April 1759 . He was buried in Westmin ster See also:Abbey; and his See also:monument is by L . F .

Roubilliac, ' By a dramatic coincidence Handel's See also:

blindness interrupted him during the writing of the chorus, " How dark, oh See also:Lord, are Thy decrees, . . . all our joys to sorrow turning . . . as the See also:night succeeds the day."the same sculptor who modelled the See also:marble statue erected in 1739 in See also:Vauxhall Gardens, where his works had been frequently performed . Handel was a man of high character and intelligence, and his See also:interest was not confined to his own art exclusively . He liked the society of politicians and See also:literary men, and he was also a See also:collector of pictures and articles of vertu . His See also:power of work was enormous, and the Handelgesellschaft's edition of his complete works fills one See also:hundred volumes, forming a See also:total bulk almost equal to the works of Bach and See also:Beethoven together . (F . H.; D . F . T.) No one has more successfully popularized the greatest artistic ideals than Handel; no artist is more disconcerting to critics who imagine that a great man's See also:mental development is easy to follow . Not even See also:Wagner effected a greater composer. r . transformation in the possibilities of dramatic music than Handel effected in oratorio, yet we have seen that Handel was the very opposite of a reformer .

He was not even conservative, and he hardly took the pains to ascertain what an art-form was, so long as something externally like it would convey his See also:

idea . But he never failed to convey his idea, and, if the hybrid forms in which he conveyed it had no historic See also:influence and no typical character, they were none the less accurate in each individual case . The same aptness and the same absence of method are conspicuous in his style . The popular idea that Handel's style is easily recognizable comes from the fact that he overshadows all his predecessors and contemporaries, except Bach, and so makes us regard typical 18th-century Italian and English style as Handelian, instead of regarding Handel's style as typical Italian 18th-century . Nothing in music requires more See also:minute See also:expert knowledge than the sifting of the real peculiarities of Handel's style from the See also:mass of contemporary formulae which in his inspired pages he absorbed, and which in his uninspired pages absorbed him . His easy mastery was acquired, like Mozart's, in childhood . The later sonatas for two oboes and bass which he wrote in his See also:eleventh year are, except in their diffuseness and an occasional slip in See also:grammar, indistinguishable from his later works, and they show a boyish inventiveness worthy of Mozart's work at the same age . Such early choral works, as the Dixit Dominus (1707), show the See also:ill-regulated power of his choral writing before he assimilated Italian influences . Its See also:practical difficulties are at least as extravagant as Bach's, while they are not accounted for by any corresponding originality and See also:necessity of idea; but the grandeur of the See also:scheme and See also:nobility of thought is already that for which Handel so often in later years found the simplest and easiest adequate means of expression that music has ever attained . His eminently practical genius soon formed his vocal style, and long before the period of his great oratorios, such works as The Birthday Ode for Queen Anne (1713) and the Utrecht Te Deum show not a trace of German extravagance . The only See also:drawback to his practical genius was that it led him to See also:bury perhaps See also:half of his finest melodies, and nearly all the secular features of interest in his treatment of instruments and of the aria forms, in that deplorable limbo of vanity, the 18th-century Italian opera . It is not true, as has been alleged against him, that his operas are in no way See also:superior to those of his contemporaries; but neither is it true that he stirred a See also:finger to improve the condition of dramatic musical art .

Phoenix-squares

He was no slave to singers, as is amply testified by many anecdotes . Nor was he See also:

bound by the operatic conventions of the time . In Teseo the not only wrote an opera in five acts when See also:custom prescribed three, but also See also:broke a much more plausible See also:rule in arranging that each character should have two arias in See also:succession . He also showed a feeling for expression and style which led him to write arias of types which singers might not expect . But he never made any innovation which had the slightest bearing upon the stage-See also:craft of opera, for he never concerned himself with any artistic question beyond the matter in hand; and the matter in hand was not to make dramatic music, or to make the story interesting or intelligible, but simply to provide a See also:concert of between some twenty and thirty Italian arias and duets, wherein singers could display their abilities and spectators find See also:distraction from the monotony of so large a dose of the aria form (which 12 was then the only possibility for solo vocal music) in the gorgeousness of the dresses and scenery . When the question arose how a musical entertainment of this See also:kind could be managed in See also:Lent without protests from the See also:bishop of London, Handelian oratorio came into being as a matter of course . But though Handel was an opportunist he was not shallow . His artistic sense seized upon the natural possibilities which arose as soon as the music was transferred from the stage to the concert See also:platform; and his first English oratorio, Esther (1720), beautifully shows the transition . The subject is as nearly secular as any that can be extracted from the See also:Bible, and the treatment was based on See also:Racine's Esther, which was much discussed at the time . Handel's oratorio was reproduced in an enlarged version in 1732 at the King's theatre: the princess royal wished for scenery and action, but the bishop of London protested . And the choruses, of which in the first version there are already no less than ten, are on the one hand operatic and unecclesiastical in expression, until the last, where polyphonic work on a large See also:scale first appears; but on the other hand they are all much too long to be sung by See also: