George Frideric Handel

George Frideric Handel (also spelled Frederick; baptised Georg Friedrich Händel, 1685–1759) was a German-born composer who later became a British subject. He is best remembered for his operas, oratorios, anthems, concerti grossi, and organ concerti, and is widely regarded as one of the greatest composers of the Baroque era.

Handel was born in Halle, then part of Brandenburg–Prussia. After early periods in Hamburg and Italy, he moved to London in 1712, where he spent most of his career. He became a naturalised British citizen in 1727. His music blended the middle-German polyphonic choral tradition with the Italian Baroque style, and he helped bring Italian opera to its peak. He also created the English oratorio and organ concerto as distinct genres, and introduced a new approach to English church music.

To supply the English nobility with Italian opera, Handel launched three commercial opera companies. In 1737, after a physical breakdown, he shifted his creative focus toward the middle class and began writing English choral works. Following the success of *Messiah* in 1742, he never composed another Italian opera. His orchestral pieces *Water Music* and *Music for the Royal Fireworks* remain enduringly popular. One of his four coronation anthems, *Zadok the Priest*, has been performed at every British coronation since 1727. Handel died in 1759 at age 74, wealthy and respected, and received a state funeral at Westminster Abbey.

Interest in his work revived in the mid-20th century. Musicologist Winton Dean called him “not only a great composer; he was a dramatic genius of the first order.” Later Classical-era composers such as Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven admired his music.

**Early years**

Handel was born in 1685—the same year as Johann Sebastian Bach and Domenico Scarlatti—in Halle, in the Duchy of Magdeburg. His father, Georg Händel, was a prominent barber-surgeon who served the court of Saxe-Weissenfels and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. His mother, Dorothea Taust, was the daughter of a Lutheran pastor. Georg Händel, then 63, had been widowed and remarried; George Frideric was the second child of this marriage (the first son was stillborn). Two younger sisters followed: Dorothea Sophia in 1687 and Johanna Christiana in 1690.

Halle was a prosperous salt-mining and trading centre, a member of the Hanseatic League. The Margrave of Brandenburg had held court there, attracting notable musicians. Even smaller churches had skilled organists and choirs, and the arts thrived—Shakespeare was performed in local theatres early in the 17th century. However, the Thirty Years’ War devastated Halle, and by the 1680s the city was impoverished. After the war, the Duke of Saxony brought musicians trained in Dresden to his court in Weissenfels.

The arts and music flourished mainly among the upper classes, to which Handel’s family did not belong. His father, born at the start of the war, became a barber-surgeon through hard work and thrift. He guided his children from his first marriage into medicine, except for his youngest daughter, who married a government official. After his first wife died in 1682, he married Dorothea Taust.

**Early education**

Handel is said to have attended the gymnasium in Halle, whose headmaster, Johann Praetorius, was known as an ardent musician. How long he stayed there is unclear. Many biographers, relying on Handel’s first biographer John Mainwaring, suggest his father withdrew him from school. Mainwaring, whose information came largely from Handel’s confidant and copyist J. C. Smith Jr., often includes unreliable details. He portrays Handel’s father as fiercely opposed to any musical training, forbidding instruments in the house and preventing the boy from visiting homes where music was played. According to Mainwaring, young Handel secretly obtained a small clavichord, hid it in the attic, and played it at night while the family slept. Later writers like John Hawkins and Charles Burney accepted this story, but others—such as Schoelcher and Lang—dismissed it as romantic invention. Still, Handel must have gained enough keyboard skill to impress the court at Weissenfels, which led to his early musical opportunities.