Handel was born in Halle in the northeast of Germany, in today's Saxony-Anhalt. His father was a barber and a surgeon. He started playing the harpsichord and the organ when he was very young. He was given a clavichord when he was seven and he used to practice it in the attic where his father could not hear him. At the age of nine he was already composing. He had a teacher called Friedrich Wilhelm Zachow who was the organist of the big church, the Marienkirche, in Halle. He learned the organ, harpsichord and violin as well as composition, harmony.