George Frideric Handel (1685-1759) was a composer of classical music who lived in Germany and England during the Baroque period. His best-known compositions include "The Messiah," "Music for the Royal Fireworks" and the "Water Music." He was an exact contemporary of Johann Sebastian Bach and Domenico Scarlatti, both also born in 1685. In addition to Handel's well-known works, he produced numerous operas, oratorios and orchestral and chamber music compositions. His work influenced later composers, including Mozart and
George Frideric Handel is generally considered the second most important Baroque composer after Bach. Unlike Bach's nearly complete focus on church music in Germany, Handel more openly embraced the French, Italian, and English secular music. Also unlike Bach, Handel did not come from a long line of musicians. When he was born on February 23, 1685, Handel's family had no idea that he would rise to a legendary status in music. Handel's father began to see his son's desire to compose at an early age and violently objected. His mother was responsible for nurturing and continuing his musical education. At the age of seven, Handel was asked to give an organ recital for the Duke of Sachse-Weissenfels. The Duke was very impressed and awarded the family with a generous amount of money. This event persuaded his father to allow Handel to pursue his musical career. When his father died in1697, Handel was freed from his father's will. He studied with numerous organists and gained minor fame.
Handel and Bach are considered two of the greatest composers of all time. However, when comparing the output of these two musicians, the diversity manifest in music in the era when they wrote immediately becomes apparent. Handel, although he used religious subject matter, is usually characterized as fundamentally a 'secular' composer. He composed for the concert hall, not the church, and primarily as a result of royal commissions. His music is strident, powerful, and large in scope. It is designed to entertain, rather than to spur contemplation (The pure power of Handel's 'Hallelujah Chorus', NPR, 2008). Bach, in contrast, often created music designed to be performed in sacred spaces. His music is more fluid and nuanced in style and designed more to spur contemplation and devotion rather than excite people's interest as a piece of entertainment.
This piece is based upon the scriptural text from the King James Bible it was first performed in Dublin in 1742; Handel makes use of the renaissance technique of word painting and multi-part polyphony. It uses fascinating word painting and is repeated throughout the piece. This piece comes from the oratorio called Messiah; it is the third piece of Messiah. It is the combination of homophony and polyphony with the addition of two trumpets. There are also two oboes, two violins, a viola, and a basso continuo. The use of basso continuo (instrumental accompaniment) requires a chordal instrument and a thoroughbass.
Many musical scholars believe that J. S. Bach and G. F. Handel are the two most important, influential composers of the Baroque period. Both of these men were born in Germany in 1685, and since they came into existence around the same time, they share some similarities. As an introductory statement, Bach and Handel were born into two very different families. Handel did not come from a musical family; his father wanted him to study law. By age nine, his talent was too obvious for his father to ignore and Handel began to study with a local organist and composer. On the contrary, Bach came from a long line of musicians. Bach also had four sons which became gifted composers, in their own right. Bach, like Handel, also started as an organist
Henry Purcell is seen as one of the greatest composers of the Baroque period and one of the greatest of all English composers. His earliest surviving works date from 1680 and show a complete command of musical composition. They include some fantasias for viols, masterpieces of contrapuntal writing, and more contemporary sonatas for violins, which reveal some acquaintance with Italian models. Purcell, in his time, became increasingly in demand as a composer, and his theatre music in particular made his name familiar to many who knew nothing of his church music or the odes and welcome songs he wrote for the court of three different kings over twenty-five years.
Gustav Holst (1874-1934) was an English composer well known for his orchestral suite The Planets. Holst began his trip into the musical world as a young pianist. His father, Adolph Holst, was a skilled pianist who wanted Gustav to succeed at playing as he did. Gustav, however, was impaired by neuritis making it difficult to play for long hours. As Gustav aged he began trying to compose music instead. Gustav failed to gain scholarships to any colleges and his father, after hearing one of Gustav’s small town operettas, borrowed money to pay for his college. Gustav’s influences were pieces such as Wagner’s Götterdämmerung and Tristan and
This piece is composed by George Handel who was born on February 23, 1685, in Halle, Germany. His parents, Georg and Dorothea Handel had no relation to music. His father believed becoming a musician will result in a Handel becoming successful and didn’t even allow Handle to own an instrument. On the other hand, his mother supported him and believed he should pursue his talents and let Handel take music lessons without the knowledge of his father. Although his father told him to become a lawyer, he disagreed and accepted a violinist position at Hamburg Opera’s Goose Market in 1703 at the age of 18. During 1706 to 1710, he moved to Italy to expand his abilities and composed the operas Rodrigo and Agrippina. He later moved to London and composed Rinaldo which was his stepping stone to becoming a famous composer. After operas, Handel took on the challenge of writing oratorios and produced the well known opera, Messiah which was debuted on April 1742. Other famous works Handel composed was Hallelujah and The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba. After encountering a lot of stress, Handel had problems with his health. In 1737, Handel had a stroke that limited the use of his right hand.Fortunately, he recovered quickly. Likewise, Handel Faced another stoke recovered. After a while, he became blind in his left eye and slowly the right eye. However, his passion for music did not allow Handle to stop composing music. On April
Handel's libretti were drawn literally from the Bible, though the verses he used were not necessarily consecutive ones. His musical style in the oratorios is a reversion to the high Baroque idiom, and in oratorio he abandonned the fashionable new stile galant touches he used in in his last operas in hopes of saving them from financial failure. His choral style resonates with fugal writing, but this too is affected by older traditions. His fugues are not the monthematic ones that German organ composers wrote to fill the time before the worship service. Instead the subjects could change as the work unfolded or the imitative texture could be abandonned altogether. The music was controlled by the dramatic needs, not requirements of musical form, and, in this respect Handel's choral fugues show a direct and strong linkage to both Grand Concerto and madrigal! Another madrigal element is Handel's use of music to set mood or depict events. In madrigal, tone painting was a rather local and sometimes puerile device; in Handel, musical depiction occurs on a grand and alomost profound scale. Handel's oratorios also approach recitative differently than opera
In George Frideric Handel’s masterful 18th century opera, Giulio Cesare, one may find many examples of the classic operatic archetype of power, particularly in relation to love and fear in how they are both tools that are oftentimes used to gain power. In this specific opera, Handel heralds the greater power-seizing potency of love when compared to its counterpart-- terror. In this essay, I plan to examine how the Egyptian character Cleopatra utilizes the power of love in order to achieve her own political and personal gains. I shall use text examples from the libretto to show how she triumphs over the darker forces of her enemies, Ptolemy and his great general named Achillas.
Johann Sebastian Bach was born on March 21st 1685. He is the son of Johann Ambrosius. For many years, members of the Bach family had held positions such as organists, town instrumentalists, or Cantors.
In 1706, Handel travelled to Rome but at the time, the church had banned opera in some states so he wrote sacred music for the church. It was in 1707 and 1709 that Handel wrote his fifth opera Rodrigo and sixth opera Agrippina respectively. In 1710 on his way to London, after becoming Kapellmeister to Prince George, Handel wrote his 7th opera, Rinaldo which premiered in 1711 on the 24th of February (Schoelcher, 1857). Handel wrote Rinaldo within a fortnight with the directional aid of Aaron Hill who was the director of the Haymarket Theatre at the time. They performed the opera 15 nights in a row which back then, was a rare occurrence (Lang, 2012). These moments may have lead Handel to write the opera Rinaldo in 1711.
George Frederic Handel was born on February 23, 1685, in Halle, Brandenburg (which is now Germany), into a wealthy, religious family. He spent 4 years travelling in Italy 1706-10, from where he met many of the finest Italian musicians of that period, such as Alessandro Scarlatti and Arcangelo Corelli. He moved to London in 1710, where he remained until his death on April 14 1759.
George Frideric Handel was born in Halle, Germany on February 23, 1685. He expressed an interest in music at an early age. While his mother encouraged this love of music, his father, George Handel, was not supportive of him pursuing music as a career, and pushed him towards a career in law. However, when Handel was 9, a duke heard him playing the organ and persuaded his father to let Handel study under Friedrich Zachow (the organist at the Liebfrauenkirche at Halle) who instructed him in the organ as well as composing. Handels’ father died when he was 12, leaving him as the only son of that marriage. This put more responsibility on Handel to maintain his family, but it also relieved most of the objection of his music studies. In
Lang supports this by stating that out of the great works Handel produced only two of them, the Messiah and Theodora, are strictly from the Old Testament or the legends of antiquity. He states, “Yes, Bach ‘sang’ of Christ, all his life, but where did Handel?”. So, while they wrote many of the same styles of works their subject matter was often quite different. This difference in subject matter quite possibly was due to their lives. Bach was primarily a church musician, and so he approached music with this mindset. Handel wrote music more for entertainment than for the church as previously stated. So it only makes sense that their music would have differences because of their purposes in writing the music and their geographical locations.
Baroque Period, during which a few of the greatest composers on this planet were born, brought classical music onto a whole new level. The word “Baroque”, which came from the Portuguese for “the imperfect pearl”, implies strange, extravagant and overblown. Toccata, fugue, chorale, ortario, and the concerto Grosso, all of these special musical forms were created and represent this period. The six main characteristics: increased emotional expression, contrast, use of basso continuo, continued harmonic development, use of ornament, and the emphasis of improvisation, molded the unique style of music of the Baroque period.