G.F. Handel George Frideric Handel

G.F. Handel

George Frideric Handel

It is difficult to find anyone familiar with Western culture who does not know of Handel's Messiah. Even if they do not know it by name, all one need do is hum a few bars of the "Hallelujah Chorus" and they will start humming with you. It is embedded in the fabric of our society as the standard anthem of praise and celebration. Yet the composer behind this phenomenal piece of music is not nearly as familiar to the public as other iconic composers like Bach, Beethoven, or Mozart. Though he was regarded as one of Europe's greatest composers during his own lifetime, not even one hundred years after his death biographer Anna Eliza Bray bemoaned the fact that "few appear to know anything more of him than that he was the composer of the Messiah and some other celebrated oratorios" (Bray 1).

Why, after such widespread fame and acclaim when he was alive, has Handel fallen into relative anonymity except for a very few famous pieces? Some suggest that he has been pigeon-holed by the popularity of the Messiah, and therefore the rest of his vast and varied repertoire has been underappreciated (Buelow 476). Others claim that the religious nature of his music has given him a false reputation as a dignified and pious man -- and thus, a little bit of a bore (Dean 113). In reality, Handel was a prolific and adventurous composer, and anything but a staid, dogmatic character. His music expressed with clarity and generosity the best aspects of a nation and an era, and the highest achievement of a musical style.

The composer was born Georg Friedrich Handel on February 23, 1685 in Halle, Germany. While the circumstances of his introduction to music remain a mystery, it is certain that he was an accomplished keyboardist already by the age of nine, when he was accepted as a student by the organist of his family's parish church. This teacher, a talented and worldly composer and musician named Friedrich Wilhelm Zachow, instilled in Handel not only a deep range of technical skill and professional discipline, but also a profound familiarity with and appreciation for the German musical heritage as well as the stylistic achievements of French and Italian composers. (Lang 11)

Handel's father was a conservative, severe, and unemotional man. While he tolerated his son's musical training, he had no interest in seeing Handel become a professional musician; instead, he insisted that Handel pursue a career as a lawyer. Even after his father's death, Handel carried out these wishes by studying law at the University of Halle. The university was overseen by the great Protestant jurist and philosopher Christian Thomasius, whose liberal ideology concerning human dignity, freedom of thought, and respect for the law made Halle the center of German enlightenment. Handel absorbed this ideology, and emerged from the university at the age of 18 with "an independent, well-stocked, clear, tough brain and a spirit touched with something of prophetic fire" (Lang 21).

Handel could not ignore his musical inclinations for long, however, and in 1703 he moved to Hamburg to pursue his fortunes as a composer and musician. It was in Hamburg that Handel began writing operas, a musical form that would create and cement his reputation as a composer. His earliest opera Almira, though compositionally inconsistent, shows the great breadth of his education, both musical and intellectual. It contains arias in both German and Italian, as well as French dance sequences (Buelow 477). Soon, however, he settled on Italian opera as his preferred form, and moved to Rome to cultivate his talent.

Handel's period in Rome was formative for him in many ways. In addition to providing him with ample opportunity to compose, Rome exposed Handel to the great Italian masters like Scarlatti and Corelli. He enjoyed the patronage of both the de Medici and Ruspoli families, and was able to absorb the great musical traditions of the Catholic Church (Ibid). By the time Handel left Rome for England in 1709, he had mastered the art of Italian opera and had become skilled at the genre that would become his hallmark in his later career: the oratorio.

It was not until Handel established himself in London in 1710 that he fully matured as a composer. He spent the great majority of his first decades in England focusing on Italian opera, and his output was prodigious; between 1720 and 1728 alone, he produced no fewer than twelve full-length operas (Buelow 482). His opera Rinaldo enjoyed immense popularity in London, being staged over a dozen times when it first opened. This success established Handel as one of the premier operatic composers of the day.

Handel also benefited from a bit of circumstantial luck when the Elector of Hanover became King George I of England. Handel had held a court position in Hanover (one that he abandoned when he went to London, but that seems to have been forgiven), and his German heritage and facility with the German language served him well in the new English court. Handel's famous work for wind and strings, Water Music, was a commission from George I as part of a royal celebration. (Sadie 287)

Eventually, the English interest in Italian opera began to wane, and the public began demanding works written in English for English vocalists. Instead of writing English operas, Handel developed a new form altogether: the English oratorio (Sadie 290).

The oratorio originated in Italy during the Italian Baroque period (1600-1750) -- the same time in which Handel was studying and composing in Rome. The Italian oratorio was rooted in the sacred musical tradition. It served the same purpose in a liturgical setting as opera did in a secular setting -- to transform a text into a large-scale and dramatic vocal setting. The musical structure of oratorios and operas were quite similar; each used alternations of recitatives and arias to dramatize the text. The oratorio, however, did not benefit from the elaborate staging that characterized operas -- instead, the drama and character development must be entirely achieved through the music itself (Hoffman 162-163). During his time in Rome, Handel tried his hand at the Italian oratorio twice, with almost uniform success.

By the 1730s, however, Handel sensed that the new English interest in music that reflected the nation's identity would not easily accept yet another Italian form in its music halls (Sadie 290). He therefore transformed the Italian oratorio tradition into a new and uniquely English musical style. Though the overall form of the oratorio remained the same in Handel's English oratorios, Handel used only English as the language, and set the religious texts in ways that were both spiritually and aesthetically Protestant (Ibid).

Handel's most famous English oratorio, the Messiah, is not only his signature work but also the work that best exemplifies Handel's talent for transforming the Italian oratorio tradition into a quintessentially English and Protestant form. The text is not lifted directly from the Bible. Rather, it is a stringing together of several biblical texts that were assembled in English by Charles Jennens and given to Handel as a complete libretto (Sittler para.14). The text centers around the identity of Christ as the Messiah, first in Old Testament prophecy, then in New Testament reality, and finally in his triumphant resurrected form. The focus on Christ instead of Mary, God the Father, or the Apostles is a distinctly Protestant trait, and speaks to the religious sentiments of both the librettist and the composer.

The music itself is also indicative of both Protestantism and English aesthetic sensibilities. Protestantism in general and especially 18th century English Protestantism favored simplicity over the more ornate and ritual-laden Catholic traditions, and Handel mirrored this preference in his musical setting of the Messiah. In his nostalgic essay about the role of the Messiah in the modern British Christmas celebration, Joseph Sittler enunciated the traits that made Handel's treatment of this oratorio so thoroughly English: "Simplicity and purity of line…[the music] is rich without being cloying, sweet without superfluity, moving without loss of majesty, heavy with legitimate sentiment but always stopping a safe distance this side of sentimentality" (para.15).

Because of his ability to capture both the English religious approach and the English sense of style in his new version of the oratorio, Handel soon became the most celebrated composer in England despite his German heritage and Italian training. Handel welcomed this role, and embraced his English identity wholeheartedly, becoming a naturalized Englishman after the death of George I and changing his name to the English form of his German moniker -- from Georg Friedrich Handel to George Frideric Handel (Hoffman 164).