The Life and Career of George Frederick Handel

The Life and Career of George Frederick Handel
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Among the vast number of musicians and composers during the Baroque era (1660-1760), George Frederic Handel is considered as one of the most successful and popular. His immense musical influence and genius has been immortalized even until today. Quotes from Messiah, Water Music, Music for the Royal Fireworks, Acis and Galatea, and other popular compositions still abound in movies and other literature. Many of Handel’s works still remain as canonical and standard pieces in the repertoire of classical musicians.
Still, this musical prodigy emerged from a practical family who has no penchant for music. The first and probably the most important of Handel’s biographers, John Mainwaring, tell Handel’s early life in Halle, Prussia:
From his very childhood Handel has discovered such as strong propensity to Music, that his father, who always intended him for the study of Civil Law, had reason to be alarmed. Perceiving that this inclination still increased, he took every method to oppose it. He strictly forbad him to meddle with any musical instrument; nothing of that kind was suffered to remain in the house, nor was he ever permitted to go any other, where such kind of furniture was in use. All this caution and art, instead of restraining, did but augment his passion. He had found means to get a little clavichord privately conveyed to a room at the top of the house. To this room he constantly stole when the family was sleep. He had made some progress before Music had been prohibited, and by his assiduous practice at hours of rest, had made such farther advances, as, tho’ not attended to at that time, were no slight prognostication of his future greatness.
On July 2, 1703, Handel encountered Johann Mattheson in Hamburg, a multi-talented artist known today for his literary achievements. Edward Dent attributes this acquaintance as one of Handel’s most important. Mattheson introduced Handel to Hamburg’s music scene, bringing him to numerous performances of Italian opera. Dent notes, however, that like those of Venice, Hamburg’s opera is relatively independent of noble patronage. It was also the time when German operas are starting to gain steam through the opera-houses in Hamburg as public entertainment. Dent further notes, that when “Handel arrived in Hamburg in the summer of 1703 the biblical operas had long come to an end, and the theatre was under the management of Reinhold Keiser.” This ‘rebellious’ and free-wheeling attitude of the German art scene molded Handel’s predilection to creating music apart from his contemporaries who are clamoring for royal patronage and support from the Church. 
Handel left Hamburg and went to Italy, probably arriving on January 14, 1707 as chronicled by a Roman journalist. It is in Italy where he met Ferdinand de Medici, a very powerful and influential aristocrat who immediately became fond of Handel’s musical talent. Despite having developed a lot of useful acquaintances, he left for London in 1710. Dent narrates that “in the reign of Queen Anne the musical life of London was developing in a new fashion as compared with what it was in the last twenty years of the previous century. The type of English opera which Purcell and Dryden had created came to an end with Purcell's death in 1695.” Handel arrives just in the nick of time to introduce Italian opera into the English music scene and bring in fresh blood. The work that encapsulated this freshness was Rinaldo. It was first presented on stage on February 24, 1711 with a relatively meager budget. The freshness of the Handel’s work attracted enormous attention, and it saved Aaron Hill, the manager of the opera-house in London, and launched Handel into an almost overnight success. Most importantly, Rinaldo is said to have marked the complete victory of the Italian opera over its English counterparts. Having established his reputation in London, he decided to go back to Germany for a brief period, "on condition that he engaged to return [to London] within a reasonable time." It was no disappointment, and Handel returned to London in 1712 and embarked on a lifetime of creating masterpieces and establishing his name as a true creative musical genius.
Handel’s first years in London
The London that greeted Handel is bustling in terms of economy. However, upon his arrival, the music scene seems to have lax a bit. Owen MacSwiney is now the manager of the opera-house on which Handel used to present his works. MacSwiney, however, is not a very enthusiastic manager, and the operas presented under his management are somewhat flat on the line. Handel has in his hand a manuscript of Il Fido Pastor, which eventually was presented. The opera was not much of a success, so Handel made another entitled Teseo, which utilized the same tricks as of the successful Rinaldo. In Teseo, however, Handel complicated his ornamentation and was backed with more extravagant scenic effects so as to dazzle the audience back into the opera-house. It was a success, trumpeting Handel’s London arrival with another exclamation.
However, Handel’s success only remains an echo of his previous of success with Rinaldo. Meanwhile in London, the opera form seems to be losing favor the pleasure-loving patrons of the genre. Handel found it hard to rally his works into fruition, and as expected from the common audiences, the taste for Italian has dissipated. Handel decided to abandon his more pedestrian operatic leanings and eventually transfer to the House of Lord Burlington in Piccadilly. Piccadilly was a young music enthusiast, and under his patronage Handel crafted Silla (1714) and Amadigi (1715).
Handel’s involvement with Lord Burlington led to many other aristocrat-sponsored works. It seems as if Handel was sincerely pleased with the patronage system he was currently swimming in. This led to Handel’s one of the most important tipping points in his career as a musician. For instance the St. Paul Cathedral, one of the main artistic and musical centers in London, was eyed by the very optimistic Handel. Dent narrates Handel’s eventual participation in patronage system of musicianship:
This friendly association with St. Paul's was no doubt of great value to Handel in his next musical undertakings--Birthday Ode for Queen Anne, and the Te Deum which celebrated the Peace of Utrecht in 1713. The Queen's patronage may very likely have been obtained for him by Lady Burlington, as she was one of the Ladies of the Bedchamber. These two works are important landmarks in Handel's career, as they were his first compositions to English words, and his first compositions for English ceremonial occasions. They marked him out as the natural successor to Purcell, and it is evident that in each case he took Purcell's similar composition as his model. Up till now he had been a foreigner engaged to provide Italian opera for the amusement of fashionable society; with the Birthday Ode he became a court musician to the Queen of England, and with the Te Deum his music entered St. Paul's. The practical result of the Ode was a pension of £200 a year conferred on him by Queen Anne. It is clear that he now regarded England as his permanent home, regardless of the fact that he was officially the servant
of the Elector of Hanover and had undertaken to return thither "within a reasonable time."
The Italian versus English controversy
Up until the Queen’s patronage, Handel’s base audience is basically the upper crops of the English fashionable society. Indeed, this is somewhat peculiar, and it seems as if Handel was lucky to be in the right at the right time. While native (English) opera was the popular trend before Handel’s introduction of the Italian style, the upper class English people still regard Italian opera as superior in style. Italian singers and soloists solicit supreme respect internationally, and Handel’s arrival in London also marked the arrival of an Italian musical invasion, much to the disapproval and even disgust of local English critics and musicians. Quite simply, Handel merely ‘caught the wave’, so to speak.
Many factors are attributed the pre-Handelian Italian popularity with various factors. Musical clubs for artisans, primarily among the middle-class and working class, proliferated and grew in number, most of which in complete awe of the internationally popular Italian music abroad. While British nationalism has been a sturdy ideal since the Renaissance, the cultural might of Italy is a force inevitable to reckon; Latin is an important mark of social status, and Italian architecture and rhetoric are highly respected throughout Europe. As the taste for novelty is a necessary skill for any business, English publishers rode the popularity of Italian musical works by publishing musical scores for the consumption of the public, and hence intensifying the popularity even more.
On the other hand, English composers such as Barton Booth, Colley Cibber, John Hughes, among others, expressed their opposition of the Italian opera by creating English operas and masques. In Cibber’s preface for Myrtillo, he sarcastically introduces his work:
The following entertainment is an attempt to give the town a little good music in a
language they understand…It is…hoped, that this undertaking…may in time reconcile
music to the English tongue.
Indeed, as Handel’s popularity is to some extent dependent on these social phenomena, it is expected that another trend-setting episode will pull him out of favor. On August 1, 1714, death descended upon the Queen, and consequently, disfavor fell upon Handel. George I was proclaimed King of England, and Mainwaring tells us that Handel is not in good terms with the new monarch. (A separate document, however, by someone named Newman Flower, disproves this account and claims that there is no disagreement between Handel and the new king; nonetheless, another account by John Hawkins claims otherwise; Mainwaring and Hawkins’ accounts are historically considered as the more reliable).
Baron Kielmansegge, in-charge of the King’s water parties at the River Thames, devised a plan to bring back the King’s favor to Handel. The Baron assigned Handel to compose a score for wind instruments to ent...