The Young Handel
George Frideric Handel was born in Halle, in the southern part of the German state of Saxony-Anhalt, on February 23rd 1685. His father, an eminent barber and surgeon, denied the young Handel access to a musical instrument, and in fact did everything he could to oppose an interest in music, despite his son’s early passion for it, wishing for a more pecuniary rewarding career in law or commerce. There are various romantic stories about Handel managing to conceal a harpsichord in the attic of the family home, to which he went to practise in the dead of night, but these are by no means definitive. However, somehow he managed to acquire some skill at the keyboard because, on a family visit to the Court of Saxe- Weißenfels, where his father was employed as Court Surgeon and where his brother was Valet de Chambre, Handel’s impromptu organ-playing in the court chapel attracted the Duke’s attention, and Handel’s father was persuaded by his employer, presumably largely due to the Duke’s status and gravitas, to allow the boy organ lessons. Lessons on the violin, oboe and harpsichord soon followed and rapid progress was apparently made. Handel took lessons in harmony, counterpoint and composition and copied existing German and Italian manuscripts extensively. In 1702, Handel matriculated at the recently- founded University of Halle, studying both law (to appease his father) and music. Later that year, although a devout Lutheran, he was appointed as organist of the Calvinist cathedral. A year later, and without waiting to graduate, Handel left Halle for Hamburg where he held appointments as a first violinist and occasional harpsichordist at the opera house. In 1703, Handel made a visit to Lübeck with a view to succeeding the great German organist and composer Dietrich Buxtehude (1637-1707) as organist of the Marienkirche. However, since one of the rather unconventional conditions of the appointment was that the successful candidate should be obliged to marry Buxtehude’s only daughter, who was by no means in the first flush of youth, Handel, like J.S. Bach two years later, declined. The period in Hamburg was not a prolific one in terms of composition. Apart from one early opera, Almina (which, bizarrely, is set partly in Italian and partly in German) and some rudimentary instrumental sonatas, there is nothing else from this period which survives.
Off to Italy
A visit to Florence in 1706, where his first truly Italian opera, Rodrigo, was produced, brought Handel some valuable recognition and a significant amount of money, as well as the romantic favours of the local prima donna, Vittoria Tarquini, with whom he was later to have a further and somewhat scandalous liaison in Venice. By 1707, Handel was in Rome, playing the organ of the church of St John Lateran, and employed as a household musician in the Court of Marquis Ruspoli. Here he supplied sacred cantatas for the chapel, secular cantatas for parties, weddings and civic events, and a couple of early oratorios which were conducted at their premieres by Corelli (1653-1713). The motets Dixit Dominus and Laudate Pueri also date from this time. Between 1707 and 1711 there are records of Handel conducting his music in other Italian cities, including Siena, Venice and Naples. These formative years in Italy were decisive in Handel’s career; Italy was the European home of opera, oratorio, the secular cantata, and the instrumental forms of the sonata and concerto. During this time Handel also had professional collaborations and friendships with Corelli, Caldara (1670-1736), Pasquini (1637-1710), Alessandro Scarlatti (1660-1725), Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757), Lotti (1667-1740), Albinoni (1671-1751) and Gasparini (1661-1727). During this Italian period he composed over one hundred cantatas (most of which are now lost), two oratorios (Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno and Oratorio per la Resurrezione di Nostro Signor) and a formidable body of miscellaneous instrumental music. The musicologist Winton Dean, writing in Grove, says: [Handel] arrived in Italy as a young man learning his trade, his music sometimes fumbling and with a certain crudeness and lack of form, and he left it a polished and fully equipped artist with a mastery of form under his belt. The fact that he composed only two Italian operas (Nero and Agrippina) whilst in Rome can be attributed largely to a papal decree which was in force at this time and which forbade the performance of opera.
