Handel: Major Works & Oratorio

Games received as an Extra Copy can be traded to other users. With this, Georg determinedly began the process of becoming self-made; by dint of his "conservative, steady, thrifty, unadventurous" lifestyle, [16] he guided the five children he had with Anna who reached adulthood into the medical profession except his youngest daughter, who married a government official. Emma has taught college Music courses and holds a master's degree in Music History and Literature. What happens to scammers? Browse by Lessons Main Periods in Music:

EEX: Handel mit Wind-Power-Futures startet Anfang Oktober

It became popular in London several years later. Contemporary accounts claim that when King George II the son of Handel's original royal boss heard the famous Hallelujah chorus from Messiah , he was so inspired that he stood up to honor the music - and then the whole audience saw him and stood up, too. Today, nobody's sure if King George was honoring the music or if he just wanted to stretch or scratch his back or something.

Anyway, the custom remains: Handel went on to write more oratorios, like the dramatic Judas Maccabaeus and Jephtha He also produced regular benefit performances of Messiah at the Foundling Hospital, an orphanage in London.

Some say that he chose the orphanage as his favorite charity because he never had children of his own. When Handel died in after a botched eye operation, he was buried at Westminster Abbey and honored as one of England's cultural heroes.

His oratorios remain beloved by English-speaking music lovers the world over. George Frideric Handel was a German composer from music's Baroque period After studying music in Germany and Italy, he made a career writing and producing Italian operas, like Rinaldo , in London.

He also worked for English royalty, composing works, like Music for the Royal Fireworks. After Italian opera fell out of favor, he turned to oratorio , an unstaged choral genre for choir, soloists and orchestra. His most famous oratorio is Messiah , which includes the famous Hallelujah chorus. To unlock this lesson you must be a Study.



Explore over 4, video courses. Find a degree that fits your goals. This lesson explores how Handel's career brought him to England and how he captured the public's heart with his compositions called oratorios. Try it risk-free for 30 days. An error occurred trying to load this video. Try refreshing the page, or contact customer support. Register to view this lesson Are you a student or a teacher? I am a student I am a teacher. What teachers are saying about Study. Are you still watching?

Your next lesson will play in 10 seconds. Add to Add to Add to. Want to watch this again later? What is Baroque Music? Art, Music, and Architecture Around the World. Research Methods in Psychology. Though George Frideric Handel was born in Germany, he composed the world's most popular English choral piece. Handel's Oratorios In , Handel's status as a popular London composer was threatened by a new musical hit: Try it risk-free No obligation, cancel anytime.

Want to learn more? Select a subject to preview related courses: Handel's Messiah In , Handel wrote Messiah , his greatest commercial success and the most popular oratorio of all time. Rich was renowned for his spectacular productions.


In April , at age 52, Handel apparently suffered a stroke which disabled the use of four fingers on his right hand, preventing him from performing. Nobody expected that Handel would ever be able to perform again. But whether the affliction was rheumatism, a stroke or a nervous breakdown, he recovered remarkably quickly. During six weeks he took long hot baths, and ended up playing the organ for a surprised audience. Deidamia , his last opera, a co-production with the Earl of Holderness , [] was performed three times in Handel gave up the opera business, while he enjoyed more success with his English oratorios.

Il trionfo del tempo e del disinganno , an allegory , Handel's first oratorio [] was composed in Italy in , followed by La resurrezione in which uses material from the Bible. The circumstances of Esther and its first performance, possibly in , are obscure. Next came Deborah , strongly coloured by the coronation anthems [] and Athaliah , his first English Oratorio. It is evident how much he learned from Arcangelo Corelli about writing for instruments, and from Alessandro Scarlatti about writing for the solo voice; but there is no single composer who taught him how to write for chorus.

The most significant reason for this change was the dwindling financial returns from his operas. The performances were given without costumes and action; the singers appeared in their own clothes. In Handel produced Alexander's Feast. John Beard appeared for the first time as one of Handel's principal singers and became Handel's permanent tenor soloist for the rest of Handel's life.

In Saul , Handel was collaborating with Charles Jennens and experimenting with three trombones, a carillon and extra-large military kettledrums from the Tower of London , to be sure " In his next works Handel changed his course. In these works he laid greater stress on the effects of orchestra and soloists; the chorus retired into the background.

During the summer of , The 3rd Duke of Devonshire invited Handel to Dublin , capital of the Kingdom of Ireland , to give concerts for the benefit of local hospitals. In Handel wrote his oratorio Alexander Balus. He strikes the golden lyre , Handel wrote the accompaniment for mandolin , harp , violin , viola , and violoncello. The use of English soloists reached its height at the first performance of Samson. The work is highly theatrical. The role of the chorus became increasingly important in his later oratorios.

Jephtha was first performed on 26 February ; even though it was his last oratorio, it was no less a masterpiece than his earlier works. In Handel composed Music for the Royal Fireworks ; 12, people attended the first performance.

The performance was considered a great success and was followed by annual concerts that continued throughout his life. In recognition of his patronage, Handel was made a governor of the Hospital the day after his initial concert. He bequeathed a copy of Messiah to the institution upon his death. In addition to the Foundling Hospital, Handel also gave to a charity that assisted impoverished musicians and their families. In August , on a journey back from Germany to London, Handel was seriously injured in a carriage accident between The Hague and Haarlem in the Netherlands.

The cause was a cataract which was operated on by the great charlatan Chevalier Taylor. This did not improve his eyesight, but possibly made it worse. He died in at home in Brook Street, at age The last performance he attended was of Messiah. Handel was buried in Westminster Abbey. Handel never married, and kept his personal life private. His initial will bequeathed the bulk of his estate to his niece Johanna, however four codicils distributed much of his estate to other relations, servants, friends and charities.

Handel owned an art collection that was auctioned posthumously in Handel's compositions include 42 operas, 29 oratorios, more than cantatas, trios and duets, numerous arias, chamber music, a large number of ecumenical pieces, odes and serenatas, and 16 organ concerti. His most famous work, the oratorio Messiah with its "Hallelujah" chorus, is among the most popular works in choral music and has become the centrepiece of the Christmas season.

The Lobkowicz Palace in Prague holds Mozart's copy of Messiah , complete with handwritten annotations. Among the works with opus numbers published and popularised in his lifetime are the Organ Concertos Op. Also notable are his sixteen keyboard suites, especially The Harmonious Blacksmith.

Handel introduced previously uncommon musical instruments in his works: Cecilia's Day , three trombones Saul , clarinets or small high cornetts Tamerlano , theorbo , French horn Water Music , lyrichord, double bassoon , viola da gamba , carillon bell chimes , positive organ , and harp Giulio Cesare , Alexander's Feast.

The first published catalogue of Handel's works appeared as an appendix to Mainwaring's Memoirs. The volume Händel-Gesellschaft "Handel Society" edition was published between and — mainly due to the efforts of Friedrich Chrysander. For modern performance, the realisation of the basso continuo reflects 19th century practice. Vocal scores drawn from the edition were published by Novello in London, but some scores, such as the vocal score to Samson , are incomplete.

It did not start as a critical edition, but after heavy criticism of the first volumes, which were performing editions without a critical apparatus for example, the opera Serse was published with the title character recast as a tenor, reflecting pre-war German practice , it repositioned itself as a critical edition. Influenced in part by cold-war realities, editorial work was inconsistent: In a committee was formed to establish better standards for the edition. The unification of Germany in removed communication problems, and the volumes issued have since shown a significant improvement in standards.

The catalogue has achieved wide acceptance and is used as the modern numbering system, with each of Handel's works designated an "HWV" number, for example Messiah is catalogued as "HWV 56". Handel's works were collected and preserved by two men: Sir Samuel Hellier , a country squire whose musical acquisitions form the nucleus of the Shaw-Hellier Collection, [] and the abolitionist Granville Sharp.

Handel — The Conquering Hero. The oratorios continued to be performed but not long after Handel's death they were thought to need some modernisation, and Mozart orchestrated German versions of Messiah and other works. Throughout the 19th century and first half of the 20th century, particularly in the Anglophone countries, his reputation rested primarily on his English oratorios, which were customarily performed by choruses of amateur singers on solemn occasions. The centenary of his death, in , was celebrated by a performance of Messiah at The Crystal Palace , involving 2, singers and instrumentalists, who played for an audience of about 10, people.

Recent decades have revived his secular cantatas and what one might call 'secular oratorios' or 'concert operas'. Of the former, Ode for St. For his secular oratorios, Handel turned to classical mythology for subjects, producing such works as Acis and Galatea , Hercules and Semele These works have a close kinship with the sacred oratorios, particularly in the vocal writing for the English-language texts.



A different composer, Jacob Handl or Händl — is usually known by the Latin form Jacobus Gallus that appears in his publications. Handel has generally been accorded high esteem by fellow composers, both in his own time and since. When he chooses, he strikes like a thunder bolt.

I would uncover my head and kneel before his tomb. Since , when William Crotch raised the issue in his Substance of Several Lectures on Music, scholars have extensively studied Handel's "borrowing" of music from other composers.


In an essay published in , John H. Roberts demonstrated that Handel's borrowings were unusually frequent even for his own era, enough to have been criticised by contemporaries notably Johann Mattheson ; Roberts suggested several reasons for Handel's practice, including Handel's attempts to make certain works sound more up-to-date and more radically, his "basic lack of facility in inventing original ideas" — though Roberts took care to argue that this does not "diminish Handel's stature", which should be "judged not by his methods, still less by his motives in employing them, but solely by the effects he achieves.

After Handel's death, many composers wrote works based on or inspired by his music. The first movement from Louis Spohr 's Symphony No. Hijackers most commonly steal accounts to gain items or games, and sometimes commit fraud. Hijackers often use stolen accounts to commit more hijackings. In these cases, we lock the account until the rightful owner contacts us about the hijacking. If evidence exists that the Steam user is a scammer, Steam Support will ban the account from using the Steam Community, including Trading and using the Steam Market.

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