George Frideric Handel

Overview

Biography

George Frideric Handel (1685–1759) was a German-born composer who spent most of his career in England and became a naturalized British subject. Born in Halle the same year as Bach, he studied in Hamburg and Italy before settling permanently in London in 1712, where he became the dominant figure in English musical life for over four decades.

Handel began his English career as an opera composer, writing nearly 40 Italian-style operas for the London stage. When fashions changed and Italian opera fell out of favour, he reinvented himself as a composer of English oratorios — large-scale dramatic works for soloists, chorus, and orchestra, performed in concert rather than staged. His Messiah (1741), composed in just 24 days, is the most performed choral work in the Western tradition. Its "Hallelujah" chorus, according to enduring legend, prompted King George II to stand — beginning a tradition observed in concert halls worldwide to this day.

His orchestral works — the Water Music suites (1717), written for a royal river pageant on the Thames, and the Music for the Royal Fireworks (1749) — remain among the most joyful and inventive orchestral pieces of the Baroque era. Handel died wealthy and honoured, and was buried in Westminster Abbey, where a monument still stands to his memory.