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

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earned opera style through playing the violin.

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irst opera was at age 20.

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as known as a success early in life.

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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

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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

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uccess of John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera.

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allad or Dialogue Opera: opera with spoken text,

light, humorous, sung in the vernacular language.

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ORATORIO

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ventually stripped of staging and costumes etc.

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t the end of the Baroque it was simply a “non-staged event.”

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iddle and late oratorio used no acting, staging, costumes. -- Concert

version.

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ased upon a biblical story

ORATORIO

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udden change in fashion in London; oratorios replace operas as

favored entertainment

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ratorio – unstaged narrative work for voices, chorus & orchestra,

usually on religious themes

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ore generally, a move to new, Classical, style in opera puts Handel

on the operatic shelf for 200 years

LATER YEARS

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iddle class identified with the Old Testament

stories found in Handel’s oratorio’s. (Freeing of

the Hebrews…. Promised Messiah)

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oncerts given in benefit to the poor, hospitals,

orphanages.

MESSIAH

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hristmas: prophecy and coming of Christ.

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aster: The passion of Christ

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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

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ote the wrong date on the grave marker.

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andel is the greatest composer who ever

lived. I would bare my head and kneel at

his grave.

- Ludwig Van Beethoven

WORKS CITED

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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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