| Handel Mp3, Handel Music Lyrics
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Handel biography, Handel discography
Introduction
(born Halle (Germany), 23 February 1685; died London, 14 April 1759).Zachow, the principal organist in Halle.Calvinist Cathedral, but a year later he left for Hamburg.In Rome he also composed some Latin church music.Rinaldo was produced early in 1711.Europe, notably the castrato Senesino and the soprano Cuzzoni.Theodora), with little public success.English oratorio, where it is applied to the fates of nations as well as individuals.Halle on the Saale river in Thuringia, Germany on February 23rd.Though his father had intended him for the law, Handel's own musical inclinations seem always to have been clear to him.In the new year Handel's first two operas were produced, Almira and Nero.Whilst in Hamburg, Handel made the acquaintance of Prince Ferdinando de' Medici, son and heir of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, who invited Handel to visit Italy where he spent more than three years, in Florence, Rome, Naples and Venice.By 1706 he had reached Rome, where Marquis (later Prince) Francesco Ruspoli employed him as a household musician and where most of Handel's major Italian works were composed.Italy and particularly to Corelli, with whom Handel had studied.Grand European Tour which naturally included the main Italian cultural centers.Thus on his travels around Italy Handel also made a number of useful contacts including the Duke of Manchester, the English Ambassador, and most significantly Prince Ernst August of Hanover, brother of the Elector (later King George I of England) who pressed him to visit Hanover.The Prince may also have intimated the possibility of a post at the Hanoverian court, for when Handel left Italy early in 1710 it was for Hanover, where he was in fact appointed Capellmeister to the Elector, George Louis, who immediately packed him off on a twelve months' leave of absence to visit England.Thus the Elector George Louis would have been anxious to have Handel spy out the land and report back to him on the London musical, social and political scene.During this first London visit, lasting eight months, Handel was favorably received at Queen Anne's court, though his eyes were largely set on Vanburgh's new opera house, the Queen's Theatre in the Haymarket.Rinaldo, the first Italian opera specially composed for London, was performed there in 1711 and was a sensational success.Returning only briefly to Hanover in 1711, Handel was back in London by 1712 when he was invited to produce an English Court Ode for Queen Anne's birthday.The Queen normally took little interest in her composers, being (according to the Duke of Manchester) ''too busy or too careless to listen to her own band, and had no thought of hearing and paying new players however great their genius or vast their skill''.Thus it was that George Louis, Elector of Hanover and already naturalized by Act of Parliament in 1705, became King George I of England, initiating the Royal House of Hanover.Handel's position with the new ruler appears to have been secured.Handel became music master to the princesses, for whom he may well have composed the keyboard suites subsequently published in 1720.In the summer of 1717 the king requested a concert on the River Thames and Handel was commissioned to write 'Water Music', for wind and strings.With members of the court and musicians accommodated in barges, the evening's entertainment went on until the early hours of the morning.Handel's great love of opera, its flamboyant singers and the challenge of inciting and maintaining the interest of a fickle public audience began to draw him away from the fairly constricted circle of the court and its music.Handel took an appointment as resident composer with the Earl of Carnarvon (from 1717 the Duke of Chandos) who maintained a complement of singers and instrumentalists for use in his two houses, one in central London, the other in the (then!Handel would have been pleasantly surprised, as would any composer, at the quality of the Duke's musical establishment.The Duke wrote to his friend and court physician Dr Arbuthnot, that "Mr Handel has made me two new Anthems, very noble ones...".Acis and Galatea and Esther.The Royal Academy of Music' with Handel as its music director.Recognizing the vital importance of employing only the very best singers and instrumentalists, especially in the lead vocal parts dominated by a handful of international "stars", Handel engaged the best English singers and instrumentalists, then went to Dresden in search of Italian stars of whom he always managed to claim a fair share.The Royal Academy's first season opened on 2 April 1720 with Giovanni Porta's Numitore, followed soon after by Handel's Radamisto.During the next eight years, almost half the performances were given over to Handel operas.In 1727, shortly before the death of George I, Handel became a British subject, adopting his "new" names of George Frideric.The music which Handel provided for the occasion (the most famous, Zadok the priest, has been sung at every coronation since) was no less magnificent, and its reputation remained vivid for many years afterwards.Five years later, in 1732 the reputation of the coronation music was such that Handel advertised his first English oratorio performance in a London theatre with the explanation "The Music to be disposed after the Manner of the Coronation Service'.Over 60 performances were given that year, eclipsing the final season of the Royal Academy.Handel refused to forsake Italian operas however, and managed despite several dramatic failures, to continue writing and producing them.Many of Handel's friends and supporters tried their best to convert him to English opera, but to no avail.In 1733 some of his friends, colleagues, and former patrons decided to repay his arrogance by defecting from the Royal Academy to form what has come to be called the 'Opera of the Nobility', with the Prince of Wales at its head.At the end of the 1734 opera season, Handel suffered the indignity of having the King's Theatre let to the momentarily prosperous Opera of the Nobility.Though it may reasonably be said that Handel "invented" the Oratorio, it was in fact at the instigation of the Bishop of London, who intervened at that point, banning any form of theatrical action on stage of a biblical subject.Handel then produced Deborah and Athalia, which Basil Lam has called "the first great English Oratorio".In April 1737 Handel suffered a stroke or an injury which seriously affected his right hand.He was exhausted from the stresses of the last five years and his friends and patrons wondered whether he would ever play or compose again.Handel turned to a form which he had gradually been developing over ten years: English oratorios, in many ways musically operatic, though far more reliant upon the chorus.Alexander's Feast was followed by Il trionfo del Tempo e della Verita, then Saul, and the biblical epic Israel in Egypt (1739).At last Handel had recognized the public's preference for and taste in English choral works, thus giving himself a new creative lease of life.During the late 1730s Handel also produced more orchestral music.Written primarily as interludes in his Oratorios, Handel's Organ Concertos became increasingly popular in their own right.Sir John Hawkins wrote of Handel: "When he gave a concerto, his method in general was to introduce it with a voluntary movement on the diapasons, which stole on the ear in a slow and solemn progression; the harmony close wrought, and as full as could possibly be expressed; the passages concatenated with stupendous art, the whole at the same time being perfectly intelligible, and carrying the appearance of great simplicity.This kind of prelude was succeeded by the concerto itself which he executed with a degree of spirit and firmness that no one has ever pretended to equal."Messiah had them for performances in Dublin and London.The Concerti Grossi Op 6 were composed during the autumn of 1739, and published in April 1740, by which time Handel's music was finding increasing favor at the Vauxhall Gardens, where patrons would stroll along the pathways, saunter among ornamental shrubs and flowers, and partake of refreshments, whilst enjoying extensive performances of instrumental and vocal music by leading composers and musicians.Francois Roubiliac, commissioned by Jonathan Tyers, owner of the pleasure gardens.During the summer of 1741 Handel received an invitation from the Lord Lieutenant in Dublin to compose a new sacred oratorio which would crown a series of performances of Alexanders Feast, Acis and Galatea, the Ode for St Cecilia's Day and L'Allegro, to be given at the New Music Hall, Fishamble Street, Dublin, in 1742.Handel suffered another stroke in April.Chapelle (a preview at Vauxhall Gardens was heavily attended).He remained involved in the arrangements for performances of his works up to his death on April 14th, 1759.Almost immediately Handel became a legend.He was buried in Westminster Abbey, his burial site marked by a monument, again by Roubiliac.Indeed it is perhaps most of all through this great and enduring work that Handel is best known today.Handel at Adlington Hall: A Unique Personal Insight
Documenting Handel's friendship with the Legh family and visits to the family home at Adlington Hall, Cheshire.Adlington Hall is home to a fine Bernard Smith organ of 1670, still in original condition, on which Handel would have performed.Handel's life, recounted by the late Charles Legh quoting several supporting documents still at Adlington.Along the way he created one of baroque London's most palatial mansions, and was responsible for bequeathing to posterity the inestimable gift of Handel's Chandos Anthems.The
BAROQUE MUSIC HOME PAGE
www.Welcome to Handel House, 25 Brook Street, LondonThe Handel House Museum was home to the baroque composer George Frideric Handel from 1723 until his death in 1759.It was here that he composed some of the greatest music in history, including Messiah, Zadok the Priest and Music for the Royal Fireworks.The Museum celebrates Handel's life and works, displaying portraits of Handel and his contemporaries in finely restored Georgian interiors and bringing live music back to his house.Recitals take place every Thursday evening and regularly at the weekends.Born in Halle (50 miles from Eisenach, Bach's birthplace) in the same year as Bach, Handel studied with Zachau, and became a friend of Mattheson.Handel sojourned in Italy in 1706 where he met Corelli, and both Scarlattis (Alessandro and Domenico).His return to Hanover, four years later, was to assume the post of Kapellmeister to the Elector (soon to become king George I of England).In 1717 Handel succeeded Pepusch as chapel master to the Duke of Chandos.Handel's London years were occupied primarily with the writing of Italian operas.After suffering a stroke and the failure of his operas (largely because of the success of the Beggar's Opera), Handel wrote oratorios, including "Messiah" (1741).Handel's eyesight failed him in later years and he eventually became completely blind.In addition to operas and oratorios, Handel wrote Psalms, motets, anthems, passions, cantatas, instrumental chamber works, and works for keyboard (primarily harpsichord).In 1719 Handel returned to his birthplace, Halle, for eight days.Bach's admiration for Handel is evident from his having copied, with the help of his wife, a passion and other works by Handel.Knowing that Bach wanted to meet Handel, Prince Leopold lent Johann Sebastian a horse.For reasons that remain a mystery, the meeting never took place.Spitta indicates that Bach's admiration for Handel was not reciprocated.By today's standards, this surgery was extremely crude, and any improvement to the visual impairment would have been minimal at best.As this surgery was done without anesthesia, the courage and physical constitution of both men must have been amazing!Bach owned a copy of Handel's Brockes Passion, "Armida abbandonata" and the Concerto grosso in F minor.Thematic similarities in some of Bach's cantatas suggest that he may have been familiar with Handel's opera, "Almira".Handel is mentioned in a letter (1775) from Carl Philip Emanuel to Forkel as one whose works his father had especially valued in later years.
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