German composer handel biography

German composer handel biography: George Frideric Handel was.

In Handel returned to Germany to become court composer in Hannover. English audiences took to his opera Rinaldo, and several years later Handel moved to England permanently. He impressed King George early on with the Water Music ofwritten as entertainment for a royal boat outing. Through the s Handel composed Italian operatic masterpieces for London stages: Ottone, Serse Xerxesand other works often based on classical stories.

Inshortly before the death of George I, Handel became a British subject, adopting his "new" names of George Frideric. Retaining his position as composer to the Chapel Royal a post he had held sinceHandel composed four large-scale anthems for the coronation of George II and his consort Queen Caroline at Westminster Abbey on October 11th, which was, by contemporary reports, an occasion of great magnificence.

The music which Handel provided for the occasion the most famous, Zadok the priest, has been sung at every coronation since was no less magnificent, and its reputation remained vivid for many years afterwards. Five years later, in the reputation of the coronation music was such that Handel advertised his first English oratorio performance in a London theatre with the explanation "The Music to be disposed after the Manner of the Coronation Service'.

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It was not a true opera but a play with songs made up from popular tunes including some by Handeland treated London's low life in a way that parodied current political and cultural events - not excluding Italian opera. Over 60 performances were given that year, eclipsing the final season of the Royal Academy. This was significant in that it marked the beginning of a change in London musical taste and fashion, away from Italian opera in favor of something less highbrow, more home-grown, and more easily intelligible.

Handel refused to forsake Italian operas however, and managed despite several dramatic failures, to continue writing and producing them. Many of Handel's friends and supporters tried their best to convert him to English opera, but to no avail. In some of his friends, colleagues, and former patrons decided to repay his arrogance by defecting from the Royal Academy to form what has come to be called the 'Opera of the Nobility', with the Prince of Wales at its head.

At the end of the opera season, Handel suffered the indignity of having the King's Theatre let to the momentarily prosperous Opera of the Nobility. From Opera to Oratorio. The move from Opera to Oratorio was not of course an instantaneous one. Handel's Esther composed around for the Duke of Chandos was performed not in the Chapel at Cannons but in the "grand saloon" as a costume-stage production, already a "halfway house" between Opera and Oratorio.

In Handel revised this work and re-presented it at the Haymarket Theatre. Though it may reasonably be said that Handel "invented" the Oratorio, it was in fact at the instigation of the Bishop of London, who intervened at that point, banning any form of theatrical action on stage of a biblical subject. Through this puritanical censorship Handel was to discover that there was in fact an audience for unstaged biblical music-dramas.

In April Handel suffered a stroke or an injury which seriously affected his right hand. He was exhausted from the stresses of the last five years and his friends and patrons wondered whether he would ever play or compose again. Finally, with the miserable failure of Imeneo and Deidamiahe at last gave up and wrote no more new operas.

German composer handel biography: George Frideric Handel, a German-born English

The oratorios Handel's ultimate failure with operas was offset by ever-increasing success with his oratorios. These provided a new vehicle, the possibilities of which he had begun to explore and experiment with nearly a decade earlier. Indeed these established a new vogue fashionin which Handel fared better with London audiences than he ever had with Italian opera.

As if to test a possible market for dramatic compositions in English, Handel revived past operas with revisions to the oratorio style, meeting with much success. Producing oratorios was a profitable business. As a direct consequence, the oratorio became a regular feature of each season, with Handel leading the field, as he had done previously with Italian opera.

It was obvious that the new form was on its way to becoming an established feature of English concert life. During the Lenten the period of religious fasting for Christians season inHandel gave no less than fourteen concerts, consisting mainly of oratorios. Handel's personal health, however, continued to falter. In total blindness set in.

From that time on he was limited to revising earlier works with outside assistance, and to improvising on organ and harpsichord in public performances. Further Italian operas followed, as did a period in the service of James Brydges. Inhis former employer in Hanover became King of England. In a rapidly expanding city, Italian opera and French theatre thrived under the German monarch.

Handel enjoyed two notable operatic successes, Teseo and Amadigi, and one failure, Il pastor fido. But his meteoric rise in popularity began in earnest with the founding of the Royal Academy of Music in No relation to the conservatoire that now bears the name, the Academy was an aristocratic consortium for Italian opera in London. At first Handel was no more successful than Bononcini, but anti-Catholic suspicions were growing in London, making a German Protestant seem the more trustworthy choice.

With these he established his pre-eminence in characterisation, dramaturgy and orchestral colour. He scored successes with Orlando and Alcina Both works include innovative dramatic ideas, Orlando with its mad scene, and Alcina with the destruction of the island on which it is set.