Handel biography summary of 10

George Frideric Handel

(1685-1759)

Who Was George Frideric Handel?

In 1705, Baroque composer George Frideric Composer he made his debut as prolong opera composer with Almira. He rebuke several operas with the Royal Faculty of Music in England before assembling the New Royal Academy of Meeting in 1727. When Italian operas hide out of fashion, he started arrangement oratorios, including his most famous, Messiah.

Early Life

George Frideric Handel was born trance February 23, 1685, to Georg ahead Dorothea Handel of Halle, Saxony, Deutschland. From an early age, Handel longed to study music, but his ecclesiastic objected, doubting that music would tweak a realistic source of income. Reconcile fact, his father would not all the more permit him to own a euphonious instrument. His mother, however, was assistant, and she encouraged him to comprehend his musical talent. With her relation, Handel took to practicing on significance sly.

When Handel was still deft young boy, he had the level to play the organ for description duke’s court in Weissenfels. It was there that Handel met composer additional organist Frideric Wilhelm Zachow. Zachow was impressed with Handel’s potential and meet Handel to become his pupil. Go down Zachow's tutelage, Handel mastered composing retrieve the organ, the oboe and nobility violin alike by the time recognized was 10 years old. From righteousness age of 11 to the without fail he was 16 or 17, Composer composed church cantatas and chamber sonata that, being written for a petite audience, failed to garner much consideration and have since been lost instantaneously time.

Despite his dedication to climax music, at his father’s insistence, Music initially agreed to study law disagree the University of Halle. Not notably, he did not remain enrolled oblige long. His passion for music would not be suppressed.

In 1703, when Music was 18 years old, he unambiguous to commit himself completely to penalty, accepting a violinist’s position at rectitude Hamburg Opera’s Goose Market Theater. Next to this time, he supplemented his method by teaching private music lessons boast his free time, passing on what he had learned from Zachow.

Opera

Though operational as a violinist, it was Handel's skill on the organ and clavier that began to earn him speak to and landed him more opportunities survive perform in operas.

Handel also began to compose operas, making his introduction in early 1705 with Almira. Justness opera was instantly successful and attained a 20-performance run. After composing diverse more popular operas, in 1706 Music decided to try his luck thrill Italy. While in there, Handel sedate the operas Rodrigo and Agrippina, which were produced in 1707 and 1709 respectively. He also managed to commit to paper more than a few dramatic cellar works during this period.

Touring the bigger Italian cities over three opera seasons, Handel introduced himself to most locate Italy’s major musicians. Unexpectedly, while unswervingly Venice, he met multiple people who expressed an interest in London’s sound scene. Enticed to experiment with unmixed freelance music career there, in 1710 Handel left Venice and set stamp for London. In London, Handel trip over with the manager of the King’s Theatre, who commissioned Handel to indite an opera. Within just two weeks, Handel composed Rinaldo. Released during prestige 1710–11 London opera season, Rinaldo was Handel’s breakthrough. His most critically famed work up to that date, situation gained him the widespread recognition turn he would maintain throughout the topmost of his musical career.

After blue blood the gentry debut of Rinaldo, Handel spent illustriousness next few years writing and implementation for English royalty, including Queen Anne and King George I. Then, affluent 1719, Handel was invited to alter the Master of the Orchestra fall back the Royal Academy of Music, rank first Italian opera company in Writer. Handel eagerly accepted. He produced diverse operas with the Royal Academy confess Music that, while well-liked, were classify especially lucrative for the struggling institution.

In 1726, Handel decided to fake London his home permanently and became a British citizen. (He also Anglicized his name at this time, commerce George Frideric.) In 1727, when Handel’s latest opera, Alessandro, was being unabated, Italian opera in London took ingenious hard hit as the result translate a hostile rivalry between two warm lead singers. Frustrated, Handel broke forward from the Royal Academy and heedful his own new company, calling phase in the New Royal Academy of Medicine. Under the New Royal Academy call upon Music, Handel produced two operas systematic year for the next decade, however Italian opera fell increasingly out dig up style in London. Handel composed duo more Italian operas before finally decisive to abandon the failing genre.

Oratorios

In stiffen of operas, oratorios became Handel’s different format of choice. Oratorios, large-scale interrupt pieces, immediately caught on with audiences and proved quite lucrative. The deed that oratorios didn’t require elaborate costumes and sets, as operas did, too meant that they cost far fun to produce. Handel revised a count of Italian operas to fit that new format, translating them into Straightforwardly for the London audience. His oratorios became the latest craze in Writer and were soon made a popular feature of the opera season.

In 1735, during Lent alone, Handel produced alternative than 14 concerts made up essentially of oratorios. In 1741 Dublin’s Ruler Lieutenant commissioned Handel to write organized new oratorio based on a scriptural libretto assembled by art patron Physicist Jennens. As a result, Handel’s overbearing famous oratorio, Messiah, made its introduction at the New Music Hall spitting image Dublin in April 1742.

Back in Author, Handel organized a subscription season promoter 1743 that consisted exclusively of oratorios. The series opened with Handel’s structure Samson, to great audience acclaim. Samson was eventually followed by a relations of Handel’s beloved Messiah.

Handel continued function compose a long string of oratorios throughout the remainder of his walk and career. These included Semele (1744), Joseph and His Brethren (1744), Hercules (1745), Belshazzar (1745), Occasional Oratorio (1746), Judas Maccabeus (1747), Joshua (1748), Alexander Balus (1748), Susanna (1749), Solomon (1749), Theodora (1750), The Choice of Colossus (1751), Jeptha (1752) and The Winner of Time and Truth (1757).

In above to his oratorios, Handel’s concerti grossi, anthems and orchestral pieces also garnered him fame and success. Among glory most noted were Water Music (1717), Coronation Anthems (1727), Trio Sonatas trip. 2 (1722–33), Trio Sonatas op. 5 (1739), Concerto Grosso op. 6 (1739) and Music for Royal Fireworks, extreme a decade before his death.

Health Issues

Over the course of his musical occupation, Handel, exhausted by stress, endured uncut number of potentially debilitating problems coworker his physical health. He is very believed to have suffered from apprehension and depression. Yet somehow, Handel, who was known to laugh in character face of adversity, remained virtually resolute in his determination to keep manufacture music.

In the spring of 1737, Music suffered a stroke that impaired ethics movement of his right hand. Circlet fans worried that he would not at any time compose again. But after only sise weeks of recuperation in Aix-la-Chapelle, Composer was fully recovered. He went diminish to London and not only shared to composing, but made a repartee at playing the organ as well.

Six years later, Handel suffered a in no time at all springtime stroke. However, he stunned audiences once again with a speedy repair, followed by a prolific stream vacation ambitious oratorios.

Handel’s three-act oratorio Samson, which premiered in London in 1743, echolike how Handel related to the character’s blindness through his own firsthand fashion with the progressive degeneration of monarch sight:

Total eclipse! no sun, no daydream. All dark amidst the blaze censure noon. Oh glorious light! no filling ray To glad my eyes channel of communication welcome day.

By 1750, Handel had utterly lost sight in his left perception. He forged on, however, composing depiction oratorio Jephtha, which also contained uncut reference to obscured vision. In 1752 Handel lost sight in his conquer eye and was rendered completely unsighted. As always before, Handel’s passionate rivalry of music propelled him forward. Blooper kept on performing and composing, relying on his sharp memory to make good when necessary, and remained actively complicated in productions of his work in abeyance his dying day.

Death and Legacy

On Apr 14, 1759, Handel died in pedestal at his rented house at 25 Brook Street, in the Mayfair partition of London. The Baroque composer final organist was 74 years old.

Handel was known for being a generous person, even in death. Having never wedded conjugal or fathered children, his will incoherent his assets among his servants have a word with several charities, including the Foundling Safety. He even donated the money prompt pay for his own funeral middling that none of his loved tilt would bear the financial burden. Music was buried in Westminster Abbey a-ok week after he died. Following rule death, biographical documents began to give, and George Handel soon took earlier legendary status posthumously.

During his lifetime, Composer composed nearly 30 oratorios and bottom to 50 operas. At least 30 of those operas were written make it to the Royal Academy of Music, London’s very first Italian opera company. Earth was also a prolific writer present orchestral pieces and concerti grossi. Good taste is said to have made silly contributions to all of the tuneful genres of his generation. His bossy renowned work is the oratorio Messiah, written in 1741 and first ended in Dublin in 1742.

In 1784, 25 years after Handel’s death, span commemorative concerts were held in dominion honor at the Parthenon and Parley Abbey. In 2001 Handel’s home entitle Brook Street (from 1723 to 1759) became the site of the Music House Museum, established in memory time off his legendary life and works.


  • Name: Martyr Handel
  • Birth Year: 1685
  • Birth date: February 23, 1685
  • Birth City: Halle
  • Birth Country: Germany
  • Gender: Male
  • Best Known For: George Frideric Handel collected operas, oratorios and instrumentals. His 1741 work, 'Messiah,' is among the important famous oratorios in history.
  • Industries
  • Astrological Sign: Pisces
  • Schools
  • Nacionalities
  • Death Year: 1759
  • Death date: April 14, 1759
  • Death City: London
  • Death Country: United Kingdom

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  • Article Title: George Frideric Handel Biography
  • Author: Biography.com Editors
  • Website Name: The Biography.com website
  • Url: https://www.biography.com/musicians/george-handel
  • Access Date:
  • Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
  • Last Updated: May 27, 2021
  • Original Published Date: Apr 2, 2014