Tabloid Tuesday: George Frederic Handel

Handel had many things in common with his contemporary composer Bach. Not only were they both born in Germany, but they were also born in the same year. However, whereas Bach came from a family which supported the musical arts and was actually chalk full of musicians, Handel came from a family that didn’t believe in music (yes, I agree, this does sound like a bad children’s book – but bear with me.)

At a young age, it was immediately clear that Handel had a propensity for music. His father, who was a barber/surgeon (Shave and a transplant, two bits?) had high hopes for his son to practice civil law, and so forbade him from contact with any musical instrument. The insubordinate young Handel managed to sneak a small clavichord into an upstairs room, where he would practice in the dead of the night while the rest of the family slept.

Eventually, Handel managed to break into the music business by playing the organ for some shocked noblemen. He was invited to work in opera in Florence by the Medici family, who wanted to make Florence the musical capital of the world. This sparked an interest in Italian opera which Handle would take with him to London when he eventually moved there in 1710.

Over the first twenty-seven years he lived in England, Handel had a blooming career writing and procuring performers for operas. Towards the end of this time he began to move away from Italian opera and towards English Oratorio. This was due in part to a failing interest in the art form. But through this time he opened three different opera companies and worked with various troupes.

In the year 1737 he suffered what appears to have been a stroke. This was a turning point for Handel. He entirely ceased working with Italian music and operas and was solely devoted to English compositions. He went to a spa where he took hot baths and rested which led to a surprisingly speedy recovery, after which he was more sure of himself as a composer than ever before. This is when he wrote some of his greatest masterpieces.

It was in this period that he wrote his most well-known piece of all: Messiah, composed in 1741. A performance of this piece is the last concert the composer heard before he died.

Even though Messiah was originally not met with massive public acclaim, it has since become one of the most popular and most often performed pieces of choral music in the Western Tradition.

There is a rumor that, since this massive oratorio was written in full in only 24 days, that the composer wrote it in a fit of divine inspiration.  When he wrote the Halleluiah Chorus, it is said that “he saw all heaven before him.”

But of course, this speed of composition for regular for Handel. He wrote many of his works of comparable length in roughly the same amount of time. So I suppose we will never know the nature of his state while composing this, the greatest of all Handel has left us with.