Music for the Royal Fireworks Music for the Royal Fireworks The Music for the Royal Fireworks (HWV 351) is a suite for wind instruments composed by George Frideric Handel in 1749 under contract of George II of Great Britain for the fireworks in London's Green Park on 27 April 1749. It was to celebrate the end of the War of the Austrian Succession and the signing of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (Aachen) in 1748. During the preparations Handel and the Duke of Montagu, the Master General of the Ordnance and the officer responsible for the Royal Fireworks, had an argument about adding violins. The duke
Johann Adolph Hasse Johann Adolph Hasse Johann Adolph Hasse (born in Bergedorf, near Hamburg, baptised 25 March 1699 – died in Venice 16 December 1783) was an 18th-century German composer, singer and teacher of music. Immensely popular in his time, Hasse was best known for his prolific operatic output, though he also composed a considerable quantity of sacred music. Married to soprano Faustina Bordoni and a great friend of librettist Pietro Metastasio, whose libretti he frequently set, Hasse was a pivotal figure in the development of "opera seria" and 18th-century music. Hasse's career began in singing, when he joined the Hamburg Opera (his