Handel biography video on michael

Since celebrity culture has put sex at the heart of biography, Handel has lost out. As Jonathan Keates observes, there's no documentary bevis on that aspect of his private life, so all we can do is conjecture. But he was well-built, handsome and assured, and his operas suggest a profound understanding of heterosexual sensuality. Keates suggests his peripatetic professional life was a likelier bar to marriage than the oft-alleged closet gayness.

This expanded edition of a book Keates published 23 years ago takes in a wealth of new knowledge, and combines biographical and musicological analysis in a way that will appeal both to the general reader and the aficionado. Handel's early years come into high relief: his stubborn attachment to music (smuggling a clavichord into his room, despite his doctor-father's prohibition), his literary education in Protestant Halle, and his teenage appointment as a church organist, are seen to shape

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George Frideric Handel: six years in a life

1707

Never lacking savoir faire, the young Handel appears to have set out to become the supreme musical cosmopolitan. In autumn 1706, aged 21, having had a thorough grounding in the contrapuntal tradition of his native Saxony, he travelled from Hamburg to Italy ‘on his own bottom’ (that is, at his own expense) – as his first biographer, John Mainwaring, delightfully put it.

Journeying via Florence, he arrived in Rome towards the end of 1706, where he immediately dazzled cognoscenti with his keyboard prowess. Dubbed ‘Il caro Sassone’ (‘The beloved Saxon’), Handel was evidently an expert networker, attracting the patronage of the Marchese Francesco Ruspoli and the worldly, vastly wealthy cardinals Pamphili and Ottoboni. One contemporary curtly described Ottoboni as ‘without morals, without repute, debauched, decadent, a lover of arts and a fine musician’. According to Mainwaring, Ottoboni organised a trial of strength at his Palazzo

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George Frideric Handel

German-British Baroque composer (1685–1759)

"Handel" redirects here. For other uses, see Handel (disambiguation).

George Frideric (or Frederick) Handel (HAN-dəl;^[a] baptised Georg Fried[e]rich Händel,^[b]German:[ˈɡeːɔʁk ˈfʁiːdʁɪçˈhɛndl̩]^ⓘ; 23 February 1685 – 14 April 1759)^[c] was a German-British Baroque composer well-known for his operas, oratorios, anthems, concerti grossi, and organ concerti.

Born in Halle, Germany, Handel spent his early life in Hamburg and Italy before settling in London in 1712, where he spent the bulk of his career and became a naturalised British subject in 1727.^[5] He was strongly influenced both by the middle-German polyphonic choral tradition and by composers of the Italian Baroque. In turn, Handel's music forms one of the peaks of the "high baroque" style, bringing Italian opera to its highest development, creating the genres of English oratorio and organ co