George Frideric Handel

The Baroque EraBy: Brittany Horsley

George

Frideric

Handel was

born on

February 23,

1685, in

Germany.

• As a child, he showed a great deal of musical talent and planned to pursue music as a career.

• His local music teachers taught him as much as they could and encouraged his parents to further George’s musical studies.

• Following his fathers wishes, in 1702, he entered the University of Halle, in Germany, to study law for only a year.

His father died during George’s first year at the university, George left school and joined an opera orchestra in Hamburg, Germany as a violinist, and began composing his first opera.

At age 22, he moved to Italy to study opera. In 1710, (age 25), he returned to Germany but soon left for England; where he continued to write operas and sacred choral music. Opera is just an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score.

After a brief return to Germany in 1712, he moved back to England where he live. After a brief return to Germany in 1712, he moved back to England where he lived for the rest of his life.

In 1720, (age 35), he was named artistic director of a new opera company called the Royal Academy of Music. The next seven years, he wrote 14 operas for this group. He also conducted the performances of his own operas.

• Now at the age of 53, he virtually gave up writing operas and turned his attention to oratorios. He wrote his famous oratorio, called Messiah in 1742, and it was immediately a success.

• An oratorio is a large musical composition including an orchestra, a choir, and soloists based on a sacred subject. However, operas are secular, meaning not religious.• The main difference between an oratorio and an opera is that an oratorio has no staging or costumes. • Both operas and oratorios are vocal, instrumental and usually dramatic.

He was a blunt and outspoken conductor of his music. He wrote his first vocal music in German, his first opera in Italian, and his most famous oratorios in English.

George Frederic Handel's - MESSIAH

Source pagehttp://www.morning-glow.com/holidays/xmas/messiah.html

http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Lib/Handel.htm

Accent on composers by Jay Althouse and Judith O’Reillly, copy right 2001.