George Friederich Handel: Classical Music for the Soul
Dinner Topics for Thursday
From Wikipedia
Handel’s music was well-known to composers including Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven.
To Beethoven he was “the master of us all… the greatest composer that ever lived. I would uncover my head and kneel before his tomb”.[61] Beethoven emphasized above all the simplicity and popular appeal of Handel’s music when he said, “Go to him to learn how to achieve great effects, by such simple means”.
George Frideric Handel (German: Georg Friedrich Händel; pronounced [ˈhɛndəl]) (23 February 1685 – 14 April 1759) was a German-British Baroque composer, famous for his operas, oratorios, and concertos. Handel was born in Germany in the same year as Johann Sebastian Bach and Domenico Scarlatti. He received critical musical training in Italy before settling in London and becoming a naturalised British subject.[1] His works include Messiah, Water Music, and Music for the Royal Fireworks. He was strongly influenced by the great composers of the Italian Baroque and the middle-German polyphonic choral tradition. Handel’s music was well-known to composers including Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven.
Early Years
Handel was born in Halle to Georg and Dorothea (née Taust) Händel in 1685,[2]. His father, Georg Händel, 63 when his son was born, was an eminent barber-surgeon who served as surgeon to the court of Saxe-Weissenfels and the Margraviate of Brandenburg.[3] According to Handel’s first biographer, John Mainwaring, he “had discovered such a strong propensity to Music, that his father who always intended him for the study of the Civil Law, had reason to be alarmed. He strictly forbade him to meddle with any musical instrument but Handel found means to get a little clavichord privately convey’d to a room at the top of the house. To this room he constantly stole when the family was asleep“.[4] At an early age Handel became a skillful performer on the harpsichord and pipe organ.[5]Handel and his father traveled to Weissenfels to visit either Handel’s half-brother, Carl, or nephew, Georg Christian,[6] who was serving as valet to Duke Johann Adolf I.[7] According to legend, the young Handel’s playing on the church organ attracted the Duke’s attention. Handel convinced his father to allow lessons in musical composition and keyboard technique from Friedrich Wilhelm Zachow, the organist of the Lutheran Marienkirche. Handel learned about harmony and contemporary styles, analysed sheet music scores, learned to work fugue subjects, and to copy music. Sometimes he replaced his teacher as organist.[8] In 1698 Handel played for Frederick I of Prussia and met Giovanni Battista Bononcini in Berlin. In 1701 Georg Philipp Telemann went to Halle to listen to the important young man.
Legacy
After his death, Handel’s Italian operas fell into obscurity, except for selections such as the aria from Serse, “Ombra mai fù“. Throughout the 19th century and first half of the 20th century, particularly in the Anglophone countries, his reputation rested primarily on his English oratorios, which were customarily performed by enormous choruses of amateur singers on solemn occasions.
Since the 1960s, with the revival of interest in baroque music, original instrument playing styles, and the prevalence of countertenors who could more accurately replicate castrato roles, interest has revived in Handel’s Italian operas, and many have been recorded and performed. Since the Early Music Revival the fifty operas he wrote have been performed in opera houses and concert halls.
Recent decades have revived his secular cantatas and what one might call ‘secular oratorios’ or ‘concert operas’. Of the former, Ode for St. Cecilia’s Day (1739) (set to texts by John Dryden) and Ode for the Birthday of Queen Anne (1713) are noteworthy. For his secular oratorios, Handel turned to classical mythology for subjects, producing such works as Acis and Galatea (1719), Hercules (1745) and Semele (1744). These works have a close kinship with the sacred oratorios, particularly in the vocal writing for the English-language texts. They also share the lyrical and dramatic qualities of Handel’s Italian operas. As such, they are sometimes performed onstage by small chamber ensembles. With the rediscovery of his theatrical works, Handel, in addition to his renown as instrumentalist, orchestral writer, and melodist, is now perceived as being one of opera’s great musical dramatists.
Handel’s works were edited by Samuel Arnold (40 vols., London, 1787–1797), and by Friedrich Chrysander, for the German Händel-Gesellschaft (100 vols., Leipzig, 1858–1902).
Handel adopted the spelling “George Frideric Handel” on his naturalisation as a British subject, and this spelling is generally used in English-speaking countries. The original form of his name, Georg Friedrich Händel, is generally used in Germany and elsewhere, but he is known as “Haendel” in France. Another composer with a similar name, Handl, was a Slovene and is more commonly known as Jacobus Gallus.
Musician’s musician
No comments:
Post a Comment