George Frederick Handel was born in Halle, Saxony, on February 23, 1685.
After studying the organ in his native city he settled in Hamburg where
he wrote, and in 1705 had produced, his first operas, _Almira_ and
_Nero_. A period of travel and study in Italy followed, during which he
was influenced by the Italian instrumental music of that period. In 1710
he was appointed Kapellmeister in Hanover. In 1712 he settled
permanently in England where in 1727 he became a British subject and
Anglicized his name. He became one of England’s giant figures in music,
first as a composer of operas in the Italian style, and after that (when
the vogue for such operas died out) as a creator of oratorios. For
several years he was the court composer for Queen Anne and royal music
master for George I. In 1720 he was appointed artistic director of the
then newly organized Royal Academy of Music. In the last years of his
life he suffered total blindness, notwithstanding which fact he
continued giving public performances at the organ, conducting his
oratorios, and writing music. He died in London on April 14, 1759 and
was buried in Westminster Abbey.
Handel was a prolific composer of operas, oratorios, orchestral music,
concertos for solo instruments and orchestra, sonatas, compositions for
harpsichord, and chamber works. He was greatest in his religious music,
in the deservedly world-famous oratorio _Messiah_, and in such somewhat
less familiar but no less distinguished works as _Judas Maccabaeus_,
_Samson_, _Solomon_, and _Israel in Egypt_. His greatest music is on
such a consistently high spiritual plane, is filled with such grandeur
of expression, and reveals such extraordinary contrapuntal skill that it
does not easily lend itself to popular consumption. But one passage from
the _Messiah_ is particularly famous, and especially popular with people
the world over; it is probably the most celebrated single piece of music
he ever wrote, and while originally for chorus and orchestra, is
familiar in innumerable transcriptions for orchestra or for band. It is
the sublime “Hallelujah Chorus,” about which the composer himself said
when he finished writing it: “I did think I did see all Heaven before
me, and the great God himself.” This grandiose choral passage, a miracle
of contrapuntal technique, is undoubtedly the climactic point of the
entire oratorio. When the _Messiah_ was first heard in London on March
23, 1743 (a little less than a year after its world première which took
place in Dublin, Ireland, on April 13, 1742) the awesome immensity of
this music made such an impression on King George II, in the audience,
that he rose spontaneously in his seat and remained standing throughout
the piece. The audience followed their king in listening to the music in
a standing position. Since then it has been a custom in performances of
_Messiah_ for the audience to rise during the singing of the “Hallelujah
Chorus.”
The _Harmonious Blacksmith_ is Handel’s best known composition for the
harpsichord. This is the fourth movement of a harpsichord suite, No. 5
in E major, which the composer wrote in 1720; but most frequently it is
played apart from the rest of the movements as a self-sufficient
composition. The title _Harmonious Blacksmith_ was created not by the
composer but by a publisher in Bath, England, when in 1822 he issued the
fourth movement of the suite as a separate piece of music. There
happened to be in Bath a blacksmith who often sang this Handel tune and
who came to be known in that town as the “harmonious blacksmith.” The
Bath publisher recognized the popular appeal of a title like “Harmonious
Blacksmith” and decided to use it for this music. The story that Handel
conceived this tune while waiting in a blacksmith’s shop during a storm
is, however, apocryphal. The _Harmonious Blacksmith_ begins with a
simple two-part melody which then undergoes five equally elementary
variations.
The _Largo_, so familiar as an instrumental composition in various
transcriptions, is really an aria from one of Handel’s operas. It was a
tenor aria (“_Ombrai mai fu_”) from _Serse_ (1738) in which is described
the beauty of the cool shade of a palm tree. In slower tempo it has
become, in its instrumental dress, a broad, stately melody of religious
character with the simple tempo marking of _Largo_ as its title.
The _Water Music_ (1717) is a suite for orchestra made up of charming
little dances, airs and fanfares written for a royal water pageant held
on the Thames River in London on July 19, 1717. A special barge held the
orchestra that performed this composition while the musicians sailed
slowly up and down the river. The king was so impressed by Handel’s
music that he asked it be repeated three times. In its original form,
this suite is made up of twenty pieces, but the version most often heard
today is an adaptation by Sir Hamilton Harty in which only six movements
appear: Overture, Air, Bourrée, Hornpipe, Air, and Fanfare.