Click to listen to• Water Music Suite No.2 in D by Handel.
"George Frederic Handel (1685-1759), a master of Italian opera and English oratorio, was born one month before J. S. Bach, in Halle, Germany. He was not from a musical family--his father wanted him to study law--but by the time he was nine, his musical talent was so outstanding that he was allowed to study with a local organist and composer. By eleven, he himself was able to compose and give organ lessons. At eighteen, he set out for Hamburg, where he was drawn to renowned opera house, and became a violinist and harpsichordist in the orchestra. When he was twenty, one of his operas was successfully produced.
"At twenty-one, Handel went to Italy; there he wrote widely acclaimed operas and mingled with princes, cardinals, and famous musicians. Returning to Germany in 1710, he took a well-paid position as music director for Elector George Ludwig of Hanover; but after a month he asked for a leave to go to London, where his opera Rinaldo was being produced. It was a triumph, and a year later Handel asked for another English leave--which was granted for a 'reasonable time' that turned out to be the next half-century (1712-1759).
"Handle became England's most important composer and favorite of Queen Anne. He was the director of the Royal Academy of Music (a commercial opera company) and composed a number of brilliant operas for outstanding sopranos and castrati. When the Royal Academy folded, he formed his own company to produce his works (for years, he had a triple career as impresario, composer, and performer). It eventually went bankrupt and Handel suffered a breakdown; but he recovered and managed to continue producing operas on his own. To these he added his oratorios, opening a glowing new chapter in music history.
"Late in life, Handle was still conducting and giving organ concerts, though he was almost blind. When he died in 1795, 3,000 mourners attended his funeral in Westminster Abbey. He was stubborn, wealthy, generous, and cultivated. But above all, he was a master composer whose dramatic sense has rarely been equaled.
Handel's Music
"Handel shares Bach's stature among composers of the late baroque. Although he wrote a great deal of instrumental music--suites, organ concertos, concerti grossi---the core of his huge output consists of English oratorios and Italian operas.
"His oratorios are usually based on stories form the Old Testament and have titles like Israel in Egypt and Joshua; but they are not church music--they were for paying audiences in public theaters. Most have plots and characters, though they were performed without acting, scenery, or costumes. (Messiah, which with a New Testament subject and has no plot, is an exception.) The chorus is the focus of a Handelian oratorio and is combined flexibly and imaginatively with the orchestra. Handel's music has more changes in texture than Bach's. He liked to combine two different melodic ideas polyphonically, and he achieved sharp changes of mood by shifting between minor and major keys.
"Handel's thirty-nine operas are less well known today that his oratorios; but after two centuries of neglect, they are being revived successfully by modern opera companies. Their arias--often written to display the virtuosity of singers--show his outstanding ability to evoke a mood or emotion.
Messiah (1741)
"Messiah lasts about 2 1/2 hours and was composed in just twenty-four days. Handel wrote it before going to Ireland to attend performances of his own works that were being given to dedicate a concert hall. About five months after his arrive in Dublin (in 1742), Handel gave the first performance of Messiah; the occasion was a benefit for people in debtor's prisons. The rehearsals attracted wide attention: one newspaper commented that Messiah was thought 'by the greatest Judges to be the finest Composition of Musick that was ever heard'. Normally, the concert hall held 600 people; but to increase the capacity, women were asked not to wear hoopskirts, and men were asked to leave their swords at home.
"Although the premiere was a success, the first London performance (1743) was poorly received, mainly because of the religious opposition to the use of a Christian text in a theater. It took Messiah almost a decade to find popularity in London. Not until it was performed yearly at a benefit for a London orphanage did it achieve its unique status. A contemporary wrote that Messiah 'fed the hungry, clothed the naked, fostered the orphan.'
'Messiah is in three parts. Part I starts with the prophecy of the Messiah's coming and makes celestial announcements of Christ's birth and the redemption of humanity through his appearance. Part II has been aptly described by one Handel scholar as 'the accomplishment of redemption by the sacrifice of Jesus, mankind's rejection God's offer and mankind's utter defeat when trying to oppose the power of the Almighty.' Part III expresses faith in the certainty of eternal life through Christ as redeemer.
"Unlike most of Handel's oratorios, Messiah is meditative rather than dramatic; it lacks plot action and specific characters. Messiah is Handel's only English oratorio that uses the New Testament as well as the Old. Charles Jennings, a millionaire and amateur literary man, complied the text by taking widely separated passages form the Bible--Isaiah, Psalms, and Job form the Old Testament; Luke, I Corinthians, and the Book of Revelations from the New.
"Over the years, Handle rewrote some movements in Messiah for different performers and performances. In Handel's own time, it was performed with a smaller orchestra and chorus than we are used to. Handel's own chorus included twenty singers, all male, and his small orchestra had only strings and continuo, with trumpets and timpani used in some sections. Today we sometimes hear arranged versions; Mozart made one, and still later versions are often played by orchestras of one hundred and choruses of several hundred.
"Messiah has over fifty movements, and Handel ensures variety by skillfully contrasting and grouping them."
The above is from Music an Appreciation by Roger Kamien, Brief Edition, McGraw Hill Companies, Inc. Pages 106-109.
Handel
George Friederich Handel
