Airs |
George Frederic Handel was born
at Halle, in Saxony, in 1685, and
died in London in 1759 at the age
of 74. Born in the same year as
Bach and living nine years longer,
Handel sprang from similar North
German middle-class stock and
was reared in the same North
German Protestant environment,
representing, like Bach, the climax
of the later contrapuntal school.
However, Handel's life and art
nevertheless followed a very
different couse. In both domains
Bach may be called intensive, and
Handel
extensive.
After a childhood in which music
steadily asserted its claims in the
teeth of parental displeasure,
Handel became a violinist in the
opera orchestra of Hamburg, and
then, at twenty-one, went to Italy,
a century earlier the birthplace (as
it was still the favored home) of
opera. Here he acquired a high
reputation as a performer on the
harpsichord and organ, and
underwent the process of
Italianization whlch affected all his
later
composition.
On his return he accepted the
position of director of music to the
Elector of Hanover, but soon left
for England, of which a few years
later his Elector, as it happened,
became King. London operatic
enterprises, first successful and
then (through the excessive cost of
performance and production,
which is always the dangerous
burden borne by this branch of art)
a failure, were followed by the
period of oratorio composition
which produced what was for the
next century and a half to prove
that part of Handel's legacy
capable of maintaining in splendor
his golden reputation in the minds
of crowds of music lovers in Britain
and other
countries.
During the earlier years of the
twentieth century considerable
revival of the operas was seen,
chiefly in German theatres; the
oratorios had previously fallen
away in popularity, with the
exception of the two or three, of
which the greatest and most
imperishable is
Messiah.
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