Georg Friedrich Haendel

Georg Friedrich Händel was born in Halle, Saxony, on 23 February 1685, less than a month before Johann Sebastian Bach, born less than a hundred and fifty kilometres away. His father, a barber-surgeon over sixty, wanted him to become a lawyer and frowned on his passion for music. According to one anecdote, the boy hid a small clavichord in the attic to practise at night. The Duke of Saxe-Weissenfels, having heard him play the organ, persuaded his father to let him take lessons with Friedrich Wilhelm Zachow, organist in Halle.

In 1702 he enrolled at the University of Halle to study law while becoming organist of the cathedral. But in 1703 he left for Hamburg, the great city of German opera, where he played violin and harpsichord in the orchestra. There he befriended the composer Johann Mattheson, with whom he once fought a duel after a quarrel: a button on his coat stopped Mattheson’s blade, and the two men made up. In 1705 he staged his first opera, Almira.

In 1706 he left for Italy, where he stayed almost four years: Florence, Rome, Naples and Venice. In Rome, where opera was then banned by the pope, he composed cantatas, oratorios and the psalm Dixit Dominus. He met Corelli and Alessandro and Domenico Scarlatti, with whom he is said to have held a friendly contest: Scarlatti won on the harpsichord, Handel on the organ. In 1709 his opera Agrippina triumphed in Venice; the audience shouted “Viva il caro Sassone!” — “Long live the dear Saxon!”

In 1710 he became Kapellmeister to the Elector of Hanover but almost immediately left for London, where in 1711 he premiered Rinaldo, the first Italian opera written specially for the English stage, with the famous aria Lascia ch’io pianga. He settled in London for good in 1712. When the Elector of Hanover became King George I of Great Britain in 1714, the situation might have been awkward, but Handel regained his favour. In 1717 he composed the Water Music, played on a barge following the king’s boat on the Thames.

For twenty years Handel was the master of Italian opera in London. He ran the Royal Academy of Music, engaged the greatest singers in Europe, including the famous castrati, and composed some forty operas, such as Giulio Cesare (1724), Rodelinda, Alcina and Serse, which opens with the aria Ombra mai fu. Naturalised British in 1727 as George Frideric Handel, that same year he composed four anthems for the coronation of George II, including Zadok the Priest, sung at every British coronation since.

In the 1730s the fashion for Italian opera declined in London and Handel came close to bankruptcy. He turned to oratorio in English, unstaged, on biblical subjects: Saul, Israel in Egypt, Samson, Judas Maccabaeus. In 1741 he composed Messiah in about twenty-four days. It was first performed in Dublin on 13 April 1742 for charity. Its Hallelujah has become one of the most famous choruses in the world. In 1749 he wrote the Music for the Royal Fireworks to celebrate the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle.

From 1751 his sight gradually failed and he became almost blind despite several operations by a surgeon who also operated on Bach. Yet he continued to conduct his oratorios and play the organ. He died in London on 14 April 1759, rich and famous. He was buried in Westminster Abbey before thousands of people. Beethoven considered him “the greatest composer who ever lived”.