Who Was Georg Friedrich Handel?

Georg Friedrich Handel (1685-1759), a German-born composer, became an English subject in 1726. His early works, operas in the Italian style, earned him a good reputation. Handel travelled to England in 1712 at the request of King George I.

On arrival, he received an annual salary of £200 (about $42,000 today). Recognizing the opportunities available in England, he settled there. He became a British citizen in 1727 – something which required an entire Act of Parliament (Handel’s Naturalisation Act) for it to take place.

He was a favorite of the English, writing ceremonial music for many state occasions such as Zadok the Priest, which was recently heard again in a Royal setting when musicians played it at the Coronation of King Charles III. Indeed, audiences have heard it at every coronation of a British monarch since 1727.

He also directed an academy devoted to Italian opera. However, this was a declining fashion, and Handel turned to writing the oratorios, which are his best-known works. The most famous, the Messiah, first premiered in Dublin in 1742.

Handel took up residence at 25 Brook Street, London, in 1723, and stayed there until his death in 1759. He did not know, of course, that he would have a very different but also musical neighbor in due course – Jimi Hendrix moved into the adjoining 23 Brook Street in 1968. Today, the building houses the Handel and Hendrix House museum.

He gathered some inventive and not entirely flattering nicknames. One was “The Great Bear,” thanks to his size and nature. That’s not so bad, but perhaps composer Hector Berlioz’s description of him as a “barrel of pork and beer” was less flattering… It’s easy to be rude after his death, we know, but even his contemporary, composer and organist Charles Burney, described him as “somewhat corpulent and unwieldy in motion.”

It seems that Handel had two sides to his personality. On one hand, he was gentle, kind, and compassionate – we’ll come onto his charitable work. On the other, his temper was renowned. He once threatened to throw a soprano out of the window if she didn’t sing his arias correctly!

Handel was not the stereotype of the penniless artist, working for his art. On the contrary, he had a keen commercial instinct and knew his audience.

When composer Gluck asked him for advice, he said, “You have taken too much trouble over your opera. Here in England that is a mere waste of time. What the English like is something they can beat time to, something that hits them straight on the drum of the ear.”

As a result of his commercial instinct, Handel wasn’t badly off and became one of the first celebrity philanthropists. Perhaps most famously, he was a benefactor of the Foundling Hospital, Britain’s first home for abandoned babies and children whose parents were not married.

He gave a benefit concert for the hospital in 1749, and due to its success, he repeated it every year for the rest of his life. The Foundling charity survives today as Coram, which still works to improve the lives of children.

Handel’s enjoyment of food and drink ultimately likely played a part in his downfall. By his early 40s, he suffered from acute gout, digestive issues, rheumatic pain, and palsy (muscle weakness). This likely also resulted from lead poisoning. Lead was used to transport and store wine, and it was even added to wine as a preservative and flavor enhancer.

Not only this, but the powders used to keep the fashionable wigs of the day white and secure to the scalp also contained lead. By the end, he was going rapidly blind too, even writing in his score for Jeptha, his last Oratorio: “Reached here on 13 February 1751, unable to go on owing to weakening of the sight of my left eye.”

Handel died in 1759. His funeral became a grand state affair, with over 3000 people attending. He earned the admiration not just of his public but also of many composers who came after him, including Beethoven, who stated not only that he was his favorite composer but also gave him the accolade of declaring that “Handel is the greatest and ablest composer.”

Content for this question contributed by Joan DeCarlo, resident of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA