GEORGE FREDERIC HANDEL (1685-1759)
GEORGE FREDRIC HANDEL
Born in Halle, Germany
Father was a wealthy barber/surgeon that believed that Handel should never enter the music field.
Handel never married.
EARLY YEARS
L
earned opera style through playing the violin.
F
irst opera was at age 20.
W
as known as a success early in life.
A
ge 25 appointed as the conductor for the Elector of Hanover.
GREATEST EUROPEAN COMPOSERS DURING THE BAROQUE PERIOD
G. F. HANDEL
Best Known
As: Composer
of Messiah
HE WAS RENOWNED AS VIRTUALLY THE
GREATEST ORGANIST AND HARPSICHORDI
ST IN THE WORLD
Hander
G.F. HANDEL
1
720 Founded the Royal Academy of Music
• Purpose: presentation of Italian Opera• Italian opera, sung in Italian,
serious themes, serious plots, high aristocratic form of entertainment.• wrote about 45 operas
ACCOMPLISHMENTS
Giulio Cesare (1723), Orlando (1733), and Alcina
(1735).
His oratorios include Israel in Egypt (1739), Saul (1739),
and Jephtha (1752). His church music includes the
Chandos Anthems (1718) and Coronation Anthems (1727).
Composed a number of great orchestral works, such as
the famous Water Music (1717) and Royal Fireworks
Music (1749).
NEW OPERATIC FORMS COMPOUND HANDEL’S PROBLEM
S
uccess of John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera.
B
allad or Dialogue Opera: opera with spoken text,
light, humorous, sung in the vernacular language.
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ORATORIO
E
ventually stripped of staging and costumes etc.
A
t the end of the Baroque it was simply a “non-staged event.”
M
iddle and late oratorio used no acting, staging, costumes. -- Concert
version.
B
ased upon a biblical story
ORATORIO
S
udden change in fashion in London; oratorios replace operas as
favored entertainment
O
ratorio – unstaged narrative work for voices, chorus & orchestra,
usually on religious themes
M
ore generally, a move to new, Classical, style in opera puts Handel
on the operatic shelf for 200 years
LATER YEARS
M
iddle class identified with the Old Testament
stories found in Handel’s oratorio’s. (Freeing of
the Hebrews…. Promised Messiah)
C
oncerts given in benefit to the poor, hospitals,
orphanages.
MESSIAH
C
hristmas: prophecy and coming of Christ.
E
aster: The passion of Christ
R
edemption: detailing how to live through faith.
HANDEL’S LAST YEARS
H
e lost his eyesight during the last
years of his life due to cataracts.
HANDELBURIED IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY
N
ote the wrong date on the grave marker.
H
andel is the greatest composer who ever
lived. I would bare my head and kneel at
his grave.
- Ludwig Van Beethoven
WORKS CITED
A
braham, Gerald (1954), Handel: a symposium, Oxford University Press
Burrows, Donald (1994), Handel, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-816470-X
Burrows, Donald (1997), The Cambridge Companion to Handel, Cambridge University Press,
ISBN 0-521-45613-4
Chrissochoidis, Ilias. "Early Reception of Handel's Oratorios, 1732–1784: Narrative – Studies –
Documents" (Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University, 2004), available through UMI.
Chrissochoidis, Ilias. "Handel at a Crossroads: His 1737–1738 and 1738–1739 Seasons Re-
Examined", Music & Letters 90/4 (November 2009), 599–635.
CONTINUED
Chrissochoidis, Ilias. "Handel, Hogarth, Goupy: Artistic intersections in Handelian
biography", Early Music 37/4 (November 2009), 577–596.
Chrissochoidis, Ilias. "'hee-haw ... llelujah': Handel among the Vauxhall Asses (1732)",
Eighteenth-Century Music 7/2 (September 2010), 221–262.
Dean, Winton; Knapp, John Merrill (1987). Handel's Operas, 1704–1726. Oxford:
Clarendon Press. ISBN 0-19-816441-6.
Dean, Winton (2006). Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741. The Boydell Press.
http://www.boydell.co.uk/43832682.HTM.
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