George Frideric Handel (born Georg Friederich Händel), an English composer of German birth, was born in Halle on 23 February 1685 and died in London on 14 April 1759. Halle, Hamburg, and Italy
The son of a 63-year-old barber-surgeon and his much younger wife (the daughter of a pastor), Handel was found to have musical talent at an early age. He studied with a local organist, F. W. Zachow, who taught him keyboard and composition. Visiting Berlin, where he met his future colleagues Attilio Ariosti and Giovanni Bononcini, he made such an impression that the elector offered to send him to study in Italy, an offer not taken up by his family. It was intended that Handel would enter the legal profession. He studied at the grammar school and university in Halle, but was appointed organist at the cathedral in 1702; the following year he decided to seek his fortune in Hamburg.
Hamburg's main attraction was the opera, directed by Reinhard Keiser. Handel played second violin in the orchestra before becoming maestro al cembalo. He became friendly with the singer, composer, and (later) critic Johann Mattheson, with whom he fought a duel in 1704 as the result of a quarrel over the continuo part in one of Mattheson's operas. He also had the opportunity to write his first operas, of which Almira, though a strange mixture of German and Italian, was evidently successful at its performance in 1705. Nero, performed soon after, was a failure, however, and by the time the huge score (now mostly lost) of Handel's third opera was ready he had decided to learn his craft in Italy.
Although the details of Handel's stay in Italy are unclear, it is likely that he first visited Florence. He was however in Rome by January 1707, when he played the organ at St John Lateran. There he enjoyed the patronage of several distinguished and art-loving cardinals and became acquainted with Corelli, Alessandro and Domenico Scarlatti, and probably Pasquini too. He composed many secular cantatas and some fine church music: the psalm setting Dixit Dominus (1707), displaying a formidable array of choral textures and an impressive handling of the concerted style, suggests the high standards of the singers at his disposal. He also wrote his first oratorio, Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno (1707). Notable among his compositions from the next couple of years are two splendid quasi-dramatic cantatas, Aci, Galatea e Polifemo (1708) and Apollo e Dafne (1709–10). He visited Florence again, as well as Naples and Venice, where he met Cardinal Grimani (who provided the libretto for the opera Agrippina) and the composers Vivaldi and Albinoni. The production of Agrippina in Venice in the winter of 1709–10 was a great success, and the work itself contains many of the components of Handel's mature operatic style. In Venice Handel also met Prince Ernst August of Hanover, whose brother the elector was looking for a new Kapellmeister. Handel travelled to Hanover and accepted the post on condition that he be allowed first to visit England.
Hanover and early London years
Handel arrived in London in autumn 1710 and discovered a city ripe for Italian opera, in spite of the objections of London's literati to such entertainments. He was employed at the Queen's Theatre in the Haymarket and wrote Rinaldo, which was produced in February 1711. Though some of the music had originated in earlier compositions—it was Handel's common practice throughout his career to recycle music, and not just his own—its fine arias and especially its elaborate staging (involving a flock of sparrows, waterfalls, thunder effects, and fireworks) caused a sensation, and the publisher John Walsh senior printed the popular arias. Handel duly returned to Hanover in summer 1711 and there spent a year or so writing chamber and orchestral music, but he was in London again by mid-October 1712.
For three years Handel lived in Piccadilly at the home of Lord Burlington. For the 1712–13 season he wrote Il pastor fido, which was a failure; but Teseo, based on the plot of Lully's Thésée, was more successful. At the same time Handel cultivated connections outside the opera house: his grand Te Deum and Jubilate, composed to celebrate the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, as well as his Ode for Queen Anne's Birthday, helped to establish a favourable relationship with the English court and with the queen, who awarded him a pension of £200.
When Queen Anne died in 1714 Handel's employer, George of Hanover, succeeded as king. There seems to be no truth in the legend that Handel, having exceeded his leave from Hanover, provided the Water Music to make his peace with him (it was performed during a royal serenade on the Thames in July 1717). In fact George doubled his pension, and a further amount was added later when Handel became music master to the royal children. In the 1714–15 season Rinaldo was revived and Amadigi composed. Handel may have visited Germany briefly in 1716, but at any rate was presumably back in London in January 1717 for revivals of Rinaldo and Amadigi. That he prospered in his first years in London is suggested by the fact that he was able to invest £500 in the South Sea Company.
There followed a gap in Handel's operatic career. He composed nothing fresh in the genre until 1720, and during this time stayed at Cannons, near Edgware, as resident composer to the Earl of Carnarvon (from 1719 Duke of Chandos). There Handel composed the Chandos anthems, revealing a flair for creating splendid sonorities with small resources, and two English masques, Acis and Galatea (1718) and the first version of Esther (?1718).
Opera
In 1718–19, in an effort to create a more secure footing for Italian opera in London, members of the nobility, with the backing of the king, formed an opera syndicate on strictly commercial lines, known as the Royal Academy of Music. Handel was appointed musical director, and he immediately went to Düsseldorf and Dresden to recruit singers. The academy opened on 2 April 1720 and ran for nine seasons, mixing new works with revivals. There was some rivalry between the resident composers—who included Bononcini and Ariosti—and Bononcini was particularly successful between 1720 and 1722, but the Academy was to stimulate Handel to a series of masterpieces. His first work there, Radamisto (1720), though not his finest, had the ticket touts charging astronomical prices, and later works such as Giulio Cesare, Tamerlano (both 1724), and Rodelinda (1725) were written for a stunning cast—including the celebrated castrato Senesino, Giuseppe Boschi, and Francesca Cuzzoni.
Modern research has established Handel as a master of dramatic technique within the constraints of stylized Italian opera seria. Although his operas are conventionally based on a series of recitatives and arias, with few ensembles or orchestral movements, his subtle manipulation of musical form underpins dramatic progress, and the breadth of his characterization, aided by an intensity of emotional expression, tonal control, and variety of scoring, transcends the limitations of the genre. The range of music, from simple songs on dance rhythms to brilliant concerto-like movements, is astonishing.
Paradoxically, the presence of star singers, one of the trump cards of the Royal Academy, became one of the reasons for its decline and subsequent collapse, as their inflated fees contributed to financial difficulties, and internal squabbling undermined the whole enterprise. Hardly any more helpful was the success of Gay's The Beggar's Opera (1728). In the 1727–8 season Handel presented a patriotic opera that happily coincided with the accession of the new king, Riccardo primo (1727), and two other new works, but at the end of that season the doors were closed and the company disbanded. Handel himself was not financially embarrassed, nor did his reputation suffer. He was still favoured at court and had in 1723 become a composer to the Chapel Royal: his four anthems for the coronation of George II are among his best-known contributions to English ceremonial. In 1727 he became a naturalized English citizen.
Handel set up a new company at the King's Theatre in 1729 with Johann Heidegger, the erstwhile manager of the Royal Academy, and both travelled abroad to recruit singers. Handel's first operas for the new venture, Lotario and Partenope, were not successful. Revivals of such old favourites as Giulio Cesare and Scipione were interspersed with new operas, including Poro (1731), Ezio, and Sosarme (both 1732), which had mixed receptions, and Orlando (1733), which was a triumph. But at the end of the 1732–3 season the Opera of the Nobility was set up, a rival company supported by the Prince of Wales. This company poached some of Handel's best singers and engaged the famous composer Nicola Porpora. In spite of their rivalry, by the end of the next season both companies were playing to empty houses, and the existence of other companies, including one giving opera in English, contributed to their difficulties. In July 1734 Heidegger dissolved the partnership and handed over the lease of the King's Theatre to the Opera of the Nobility.
Undeterred, Handel moved to the theatre at Covent Garden and produced several operas, including two masterpieces, Ariodante and Alcina (both 1735). But the strain of giving operas was beginning to tell, and, in spite of a hit with Atalanta (1736), declining fortunes led to both theatres closing—the Opera of the Nobility for good. In April 1737 Handel suffered a stroke, and he retired to take the waters at Aix-la-Chapelle in September. After his return to London in October or November, apparently recovered, he was employed by Heidegger, at the King's Theatre, and produced the operas Faramondo, Alessandro Severo (a pasticcio), and Serse.
Oratorio
Although Handel doggedly persisted with opera, the public reception of which was unpredictable at best, his dramatic interests found further outlet in oratorio, a genre new to England that was created almost by accident. Handel's masque Esther had been given private performances by Bernard Gates in London in 1732. Such was its success that it was presented in public at the King's Theatre in May that year, though, on the orders of the Bishop of London, who objected to the staging of a sacred drama in a secular space, it was given without staged action. Thus performed it was the first oratorio to be heard in London, and it inevitably encouraged the production of others, among the first of which were Deborah (1733) and Athalia. Athalia was first performed in Oxford, at the Sheldonian Theatre, during summer 1733, when Handel visited the city and, according to reports, turned down an honorary doctorate.
Unbound by operatic convention and the egotistical whims of top Italian singers, Handel was able to develop in his oratorios a potent and flexible dramatic style that was adequate compensation for the lack of visual drama. Although he drew substantially on techniques honed in opera, his formal freedom was much greater and his characterization benefited considerably from extensive use of the chorus. An incidental attraction at oratorios was the interval entertainment, for which Handel played his organ concertos; Walsh junior published six of them as op. 4 in 1738 (a further set of six followed in 1761). Also used were the 12 concerti grossi op. 6, an outstanding collection of works which ranks as one of the highpoints of the genre in the late Baroque period.
In 1738 Handel wrote Saul, a remarkably dramatic piece with a massive orchestra (including huge kettledrums borrowed from the Tower of London). This was followed by Israel in Egypt, which did not find initial popularity: it is an untypical oratorio dominated by choruses and with a text derived directly from the Bible. In the winter of 1739–40 Handel presented a complete series of oratorio concerts at the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields; it included L'Allegro, il Penseroso, ed il Moderato and revivals of Esther, Saul, and Israel. But in spite of the attractions of oratorio, the public reaction to Handel's works still varied, and Handel himself was not yet ready to abandon opera. He returned to it for the last time in 1740 with Imeneo and Deidamia, but they were both met with indifference.
By summer 1741 there were rumours that Handel intended to return to Germany, but an invitation from the lord-lieutenant of Ireland to give a series of concerts in Dublin seems to have fired his enthusiasm. He composed Messiah before leaving London in November, and in Dublin he gave a successful series of concerts, including the premiere of Messiah, which made large sums of money for local charities. Messiah is uncharacteristic of Handel's oratorios in part because of its largely undramatic, more contemplative, nature and its text, which is compiled from passages in the Bible. In London it flopped; it was not appreciated there until the Foundling Hospital performances in the 1750s, since when it has remained by far his best-known, if unrepresentative, oratorio.
Handel returned to London with his confidence restored, and finished a new oratorio, Samson, which takes its text from Milton rather than from the Old Testament. Although it was popular with the public, Handel was still not out of the woods. In the 1743–4 and 1744–5 seasons he presented a mixed bag: the secular oratorio Semele, the uneven Joseph and his Brethren, and two splendid dramatic works, Hercules and Belshazzar, the latter one of his finest oratorios. By summer 1745 he was again ill. However, the events of the Jacobite rising inspired a series of militaristic oratorios, beginning in 1746 with the patriotic Occasional Oratorio, hastily compiled from existing works, followed by Judas Maccabaeus (1747), and continuing in 1748 with a sequel to Judas, Alexander Balus, and Joshua.
In 1749 Handel composed the Music for the Royal Fireworks for the celebrations of the Peace Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle. He also gave two new oratorios, Susanna and Solomon, and composed another, Theodora. In 1751 he embarked on Jephtha, his final masterpiece with superb dramatic arias and recitatives. But in the middle of its composition he began to suffer from eye trouble and, although he evidently still managed to play his organ concertos—they had in any case always relied heavily on extemporization—he was totally blind by January 1753. Jephtha effectively marks the end of his creative career.
Handel's reputation
Handel died a national figure and was buried at Westminster Abbey in the presence of about 3000 people. Though his operas were soon all but forgotten, he was remembered in the years after his death through some of his instrumental music, such as the concertos, and some of the ceremonial church music, but particularly as an oratorio composer. His oratorio seasons were maintained from 1760 by J. C. Smith and John Stanley. Handel's music, always the dominant model for his English contemporaries, remained a strong inXuence not only on English musicians (both in London and in the provinces) but also on such composers as Mozart and Haydn. In England a collected edition of his works was proposed in 1786 but not completed. However, 18th-century reverence for him is seen most clearly in the massive Handel Commemoration events mounted in 1784 at Westminster Abbey, which in turn helped to establish a fashion for the large-scale performance of just a handful of choral works—notably Messiah—that persisted, and shaped Handel's reputation, until the mid-20th century.
Peter Lynan
