Phone
Tablet - Portrait
Tablet - Landscape
Desktop
Toggle navigation
Performers
Steinway Performers
Albright, Charlie
Anderson, Greg
Arishima, Miyako
Benoit, David
Biegel, Jeffrey
Birnbaum, Adam
Braid, David
Brown, Deondra
Brown, Desirae
Brown, Gregory
Brown, Melody
Brown, Ryan
Caine, Uri
Chen, Sean
Chulochnikova, Tatiana
Deveau, David
Farkas, Gabor
Feinberg, Alan
Fung, David
Gagne, Chantale
Golan, Jeanne
Goodyear, Stewart
Graybil, Matthew
Gryaznov, Vyacheslav
Gugnin, Andrey
Han, Anna
Han, Yoonie
Iturrioz, Antonio
Khristenko, Stanislav
Kim, Daniel
Li, Zhenni
Lin, Jenny
Lo Bianco, Moira
Lu, Shen
Mahan, Katie
Mao, Weihui
Melemed, Mackenzie
Min, Klara
Mndoyants, Nikita
Moutouzkine, Alexandre
Mulligan, Simon
Myer, Spencer
O'Conor, John
O'Riley, Christopher
Osterkamp, Leann
Paremski, Natasha
Perez, Vanessa
Petersen, Drew
Polk, Joanne
Pompa-Baldi, Antonio
Rangell, Andrew
Roe, Elizabeth Joy
Rose, Earl
Russo, Sandro
Schepkin, Sergei
Scherbakov, Konstantin
Shin, ChangYong
Tak, Young-Ah
Ziegler, Pablo
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram
Back 1 step
George Frideric Handel
George Frideric Handel
Popular
Works
Biography
Browse Works Refine By: Popular
Refine by: Popular
Most Popular
Arias and Choruses from Operas
Arias and Choruses from Oratorios
Arias from Operas
Arias from Oratorios
Cantatas
Chamber Music
Choral Works
Concerti Grossi
Concertos
Duets for Voice
Keyboard Works
Operas
Oratorios
Orchestral Works
Overtures
Songs
For unto us a child is born (1)
Biography
Most music lovers have encountered George Frederick Handel through holiday-time renditions of the Messiah's "Hallelujah" chorus. And many of them know and love that oratorio of Christ's life and death, as well as a few other greatest hits like the orchestral Water Music and Royal Fireworks Music, and perhaps Judas Maccabeus or one of the other English oratorios. Yet his operas, for which he was widely known in his own time, are the province mainly of specialists in Baroque music, and the events of his life, even though they reflected some of the most important musical issues of the day, have never become as familiar as the careers of Bach or Mozart. Perhaps the single word that best describes his life and music is "cosmopolitan": he was a German composer, trained in Italy, who spent most of his life in England.
Handel was born in the German city of Halle on February 23, 1685. His father noted but did not nurture his musical talent, and he had to sneak a small keyboard instrument into his attic to practice. As a child he studied music with Friedrich Wilhelm Zachow, organist at the Liebfrauenkirche, and for a time he seemed destined for a career as a church organist himself. After studying law briefly at the University of Halle, Handel began serving as organist on March 13, 1702, at the Domkirche there. Dissatisfied, he took a post as violinist in the Hamburg opera orchestra in 1703, and his frustration with musically provincial northern Germany was perhaps shown when he fought a duel the following year with the composer Matheson over the accompaniment to one of Matheson's operas. In 1706 Handel took off for Italy, then the font of operatic innovation, and mastered contemporary trends in Italian serious opera. He returned to Germany to become court composer in Hannover, whose rulers were linked by family ties with the British throne; his patron there, the Elector of Hannover, became King George I of England. English audiences took to his 1711 opera Rinaldo, and several years later Handel jumped at the chance to move to England permanently. He impressed King George early on with the Water Music of 1716, written as entertainment for a royal boat outing.
Through the 1720s Handel composed Italian operatic masterpieces for London stages: Ottone, Serse (Xerxes), and other works often based on classical stories. His popularity was dented, though, by new English-language works of a less formal character, and in the 1730s and 1740s Handel turned to the oratorio, a grand form that attracted England's new middle-class audiences. Not only Messiah but also Israel in Egypt, Samson, Saul, and many other works established him as a venerated elder of English music. The oratorios displayed to maximum effect Handel's melodic gift and the sense of timing he brought to big choral numbers. Among the most popular of all the oratorios was Judas Maccabeus, composed in 32 days in 1746. Handel presented the oratorio six times during its first season and about 40 times before his death 12 years later, conducting it 30 times himself. In 1737, Handel suffered a stroke, which caused both temporary paralysis in his right arm and some loss of his mental faculties, but he recovered sufficiently to carry on most normal activity. He was urged to write an autobiography, but never did. Blind in old age, he continued to compose. He died in London on April 14, 1759. Beethoven thought Handel the greatest of all his predecessors; he once said, "I would bare my head and kneel at his grave."
×
Add To Playlist
Success
This selection has been added.
Playlist
Create
Cancel
Confirm
Cancel
B8345FC5E3891756014FE97EC525AD07