Music for the Royal Fireworks Andrew Davis for the Golden Jubilee of Elizabeth II on 1 June 2002, at the Buckingham Palace gardens, complete with 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
Early music of the British Isles laid some of the foundations of later national and international classical music. Musicians from the British Isles also developed some distinctive forms of music, including Celtic chant, the Contenance Angloise, the rota, polyphonic votive antiphons and the carol in the medieval era and English madrigals, lute ayres and masques in the Renaissance era, which would lead to the development of English language opera at the height of the Baroque in the 18th century. Surviving sources indicate that there was a rich and varied musical soundscape in medieval Britain. Historians usually distinguish between ecclesiastical music, designed for use in church, or