The Cheeky Mr Handel

Not being really attracted to the 18th century, there are a number of exceptions that I find rather pleasing -the wonderful Georgian country houses and landscape gardens and the founding of the Biritsh Museum just to mention three. This afternoon however I will say a few things about shrewd Mr George Frideric Handel.

His father, apart from being a barber-surgeon, was valet to the Prince of Saxe-Magdeburg himself. As a child he was once taken to Saxe-Weissenfels, where he was allowed to play with the keys of the court chapel organ. And the rest is history.

After a successful trip to Italy in 1706 he was named Kapellmeister to the Elector of Hannover. Later that year he visited England to produce his opera Rinaldo at the Queen’s Theatre in London, and after a brief return to Hannover he made the wise decision to go back to London, to stay. For when Queen Anne died (1714), his employer the Elector of Hannover became King George I of England. And their relationship would naturally mean lots of advantages for the composer. Quite simply, near the King of England, Handel was king of the hill.

Now here is an interesting fact. His rival Giovanni Bononcini (1670-1747) presented Handel with an easy victory when he was charged with plagiarism by the London Academy of Music, of which the latter had been made Master of Music not long before in 1719. Bononcini left the country in disgrace and spent the rest of his life in the darkness, eventually dying in Vienna. The funny thing is, Handel was as naughty as his rival! The following entry from the 1880 Encyclopaedia Britannica puts it quite plainly:

“The system of wholesale plagiarism carried on by Handel is perhaps unprecedented in the history of music. He pilfered not only single melodies but frequently entire movements from the works of other masters, with few or no alterations, and without a word of aknowledgment.”

Hehem….!

Still, he was exceptional. I love his music, and it would be particularly wonderful to listen to the Royal Fireworks Music in a fireworks event. A final detail:

“Handel is the greatest composer who ever lived.
I would bare my head and kneel at his grave”

L.v. Beethoven (1824)