George Fredric Handel: A Titan Of Baroque Music | Classical Destinations | Perspective

Paper was like gold in medieval times. I want tobacco, sugar. That everything we thought we knew about the world might turn out to be completely wrong. Come with us on a musical journey through some of the most magnificent places on earth. Great towns and cities of Europe, steeped in history and beauty and resounding with the stories and music of the world's greatest composers. Debussy, Rossini, Chopin, Elgar, Rachmaninoff. Just some of the greats in our classical destinations. We're in the city of London. In every way, except that of governance, the centre of Europe. Today, close to eight million people course through its streets and millions more come to visit or stay to try and make their fortune. As it is now, so it was 300 years ago when a young German musician arrived via a sojourn in Italy. His name, Georg Friedrich Handel. We'll also take a side trip to Dublin, the capital of Ireland, where Handel's Messiah was premiered in 1742. In classical destinations, we'll hear London through the imagination of Handel with some help from our resident musicians of the world-famous Australian Chamber Orchestra. The music composed by Handel, his water music, fireworks music, the great oratorio Messiah with its iconic Hallelujah Chorus, all seem to capture something about London that quite literally resounds so much more strongly than pictures or etchings or even living memory in some cases. Can it be that the spirit of this great city managed to seep into Handel's vivid musical imagination? Is it the same spirit we feel in Handel's music when we hear it? Something that can evoke even today's London? It may be too fanciful an association, but, you know, I really do think so. By the early 1720s, Handel's decision to move to England looked to have been astute. The 38-year-old composer was the most prominent musician in the country, applauded by opera-going audiences and patronised by the aristocracy. It was time to set. This then-fashionable Georgian terrace just near Hanover Square was built in 1723, and many extraordinary people have lived there since then, including Jimi Hendrix in the last couple of years of the 60s. But in 1723, when it was new, George Frederick Handel took a lease on it, and here he lived for the next 36 years of his life. Here he died, and here he wrote some of his greatest masterpieces, Israel in Egypt, The Coronation Anthems, The Organ Concertos and Messiah. Let's go in. The Handel House is today a museum, open to the public daily. These stairs lead directly on from the entrance hall, and it's interesting, it's a slightly wider staircase than you would normally find in the 18th century, so as Handel could transport his instruments upstairs. Now, this room is a very, very important one, because it was both Handel's dining room, where he ate and entertained, but also the music rehearsal room, and it's in here, sitting at the harpsichord that Handel taught the scores to the singers of his operas and oratorios. Among the singers, no doubt, would have been Senesino or Guadagni, the greatest castrati of the age, and the sopranos, the baritones, the basses. And here he sat and gave his instructions, and he made his views made very, very, very clear indeed, in several languages. He was famous for his colourful cursing, and I'm sure he got just as good as he gave. The singers were not lacking in temperament in any way themselves. Also in the room were friends and patrons, so it was a very busy scene, a very public kind of event, a rehearsal, Chez Handel. But just next door was the most private room of all, the room where he composed. Tiny room with only one small window, and here out of him poured an unimaginable profusion, these extraordinary, sublime masterpieces, these great, long, sometimes three-, four-hour-long operas and oratorios and other sacred music. And here, indeed, he composed Messiah, the work with which his name will always be synonymous, of course. He composed it in a state of high emotion, engaging with the great story with extreme personal passion. He wept, we're told, and he even turned away meals, not a common thing with Handel. This is it, the bedroom to which the great man would no doubt gratefully have retired every night after his monumental labours, churning out page after page of sublime music downstairs. The bed's rather short, and he was for the time quite tall, ma'am, but in the 18th century it was believed that if you slept sitting up, it aided your digestion, and Handel's digestion needed all the aid it could get. His consumption of food was monumental. It's probably here in this room that he died on the 14th of April, 1759. Speaking as a Londoner, I can tell you that contrary to continental hearsay, we are passionate people. Londoners keep two opera companies playing year round in what could be a more passionate art form than opera. When Italian opera hit the capital more than 300 years ago, Londoners embraced it immediately, but only for a time. While Italian opera was in vogue, though, the public lionised those who excelled in writing it, such as Handel, and those who performed it, the superstars of their day. This portrait is of the Italian diva Faustina Bordoni. She was to spell trouble for Handel. Handel recruited her primarily to keep audiences interested, which certainly didn't please the company's resident soprano, Francesca Cuzzoni. She was rather uncharitably described by a contemporary as being short, ungainly, and plain, but she could interpret Handel's vocal writing like no other. Despite Handel's best attempts to keep the pair apart, they eventually came to blows during a performance at the theatre that was originally on the site of today's Her Majesty's Theatre in Haymarket. As the two sopranos fought on the stage, their respective groups of supporters slugged it out in the auditorium, the 18th century equivalent of a football riot. Unfortunately, the Princess of Wales happened to be in the theatre and witnessed the fracas from the royal box. Not surprisingly, she was not amused. Neither, more seriously for Handel, were many of his company's wealthy, aristocratic patrons. It became known as the scandal of the rival queens. Some things in London theatre never change. However, by the 1740s, Handel's success was waning. London aristocracy in the early to mid-18th century was claustrophobically rigid in its musical taste, and Handel, having already caused offence in refusing to continue composing for the Italian castrato Senesino, found himself in serious financial debt as a result. His works were despised by some of society, and it was becoming fashionable to disdain them. Handel had to watch his reputation and fortune disappear through the whims of fashion and warring divas. But today's Australian Chamber Orchestra, our resident musicians on classical destinations, enjoy a more stable existence. But the loss of his audience's approval only served to inspire Handel to explore higher revelations. I've spent a lifetime in theatre, watching new work being created, words and music, and while scholars have long since analysed Handel's tricks of the trade when composing, it's still astounding that his oratorio Messiah, quoting as it does from earlier works of his, was nonetheless put together, right down to every last semiquaver in the second violins, in just over three weeks. Charles Jennings, his close friend and librettist, had sent him a selection of newly arranged scriptures in the August of 1741. The work was begun on August the 22nd, 1741, and completed on September the 14th. Just inscribing the notes alone would be a prodigious achievement, but to have conceived them as well makes the result more than Handelian. It is Herculean. After completing Messiah, Handel left London quite suddenly without advising his friends or colleagues. Jennings is recorded to have written at the time, I heard with great pleasure at my arrival in town that Handel had set the oratorio of Messiah, but it was with some mortification to me to hear that instead of performing it here, he has gone into Ireland with it. So Handel travelled to Dublin, the thriving seaport and the Irish capital, part of Britain, but fiercely independent. Remnants of its colourful history still exist in the Georgian architecture. But although Dublin was an exciting cultural hub, known for its famous playwrights, it was the collective attitude of its people that enticed Handel. Perhaps it was Dublin's fiercely independent spirit. Its people had no concern for the fashions of London. All of Handel's concerts were performed to full houses in Dublin's largest theatre of the time, the Theatre Royal in Smock Alley, which was originally here on this site. Handel's music was received with much praise and admiration. Irish were believers. It was during this time in Dublin that Handel was inspired to premiere his new masterpiece in the city, which had so embraced him. He chose a newly built venue by the name of Neill's Music Hall on Fishandel Street, Temple Bar. The hall no longer stands today, but is commemorated by this plaque. Nearby is the Handel Hotel. I can only wonder what Handel would have thought of a hotel dedicated to his name. A date for the premiere performance was set, the 13th of April, 1742, and various announcements were made in local newspapers. One such advertisement read, Ladies are requested to come without hoops and gentlemen without swords, in an attempt to provide more standing room, which was, in hindsight, a wise precaution. The tiny hall was indeed packed to the rafters. Handel requested that the two most prominent Dublin church choirs, from St Patrick's and the Christchurch Cathedral, unite for the first performance of Messiah. This proved a problem, as the church leaders could not agree on which church to use. Handel therefore wisely selected the neutral Neill's Music Hall to appease the two churches. The performance itself was not without dramatic incident. The soprano Susanna Sibber, a celebrated actress who had scandalously deserted her husband and child and been roundly denounced for it from every pulpit in London, sang the great aria, He Was Despised and Rejected. After which a clergyman, one of her most virulent critics, leapt to his feet crying, Woman, all thy sins are forgiven. And the Hallelujah Chorus, heard for the first time by an astounded Dublin audience, provoked a huge ovation as it has been doing ever since. Messiah was an instant success and Dublin society was captivated by the musical and lyrical grandeur of the piece, as reported in Dublin's Faulkner's Journal on the 17th of April. The sublime, the grand and the tender, adapted to the most elevated, majestic and moving words, conspired to transport and charm the ravished heart and ear. Dublin was equally wonderful by Handel's generous decision to denote all of Messiah's proceeds to various charities, one being Mercer's Hospital. Mercer's Hospital, once on this site, was to become the venue for annual charity performances of Messiah. The music books used by choirs performing the oratorio survived to this day here in Trinity College Library. Performances of Handel's Messiah are still held annually at Christmas time here in St Patrick's Cathedral by the Culwick Choral Society, with all profits going to charity, just as Handel would have wanted. Handel's music is also celebrated in Dublin at the annual Handel Festival, held in April. The Foundling Hospital, which once stood next door to this museum that commemorates its many centuries of work, was supported by the funds generated by performances of Handel's best-known oratorio. Messiah had its triumphant first performance in Dublin in 1742. Thereafter, Handel, who was a greatly generous man, tried to encourage performances of Messiah for charitable purposes, particularly for the Foundling Hospital, of which he was a governor. And indeed, he would have met his fellow governors here in this very room to discuss arrangements for the annual performance. Shocked by the number of homeless and dying children he saw on London's streets, the shipbuilder and sailor Thomas Coram started the Foundling Hospital in 1739 to look after them. The Coram family's Handel concert is still held annually in February, when Messiah is performed, as Handel always intended, to raise funds to assist the poor. Handel's affection for the Foundling Hospital was such that he actually left a codicil to his will in which he says, I give a fair copy of the score and all the parts of my oratorio called The Messiah, to the Foundling Hospital, and here it is. That is that copy, and here are all the parts, and it's just extraordinary to see. Not, of course, in his handwriting, they're copied by a copyist, but just to read this here, he was despised, despised and rejected, rejected of men in this exquisite hand, so fresh, as it were, from the press. It's very inspiring. There's yet a further connection between Handel and the Foundling Hospital. Handel took some of the music from the Hallelujah Chorus and performed it as a separate anthem at the opening of the Foundling Hospital Chapel in 1749. Only later, when the Hallelujah Chorus became so popular, did people realise the connection. It may surprise today's audiences to learn that Messiah was initially met in London with a lukewarm reception, though Handel reworked it a number of times. But once the performances became accessible to wider audiences, its popularity grew very rapidly. George II was an enthusiastic supporter and began the tradition of audiences standing for the Hallelujah Chorus. Handel's last great royal music triumph was staged here in Green Park on a rainy night in April 1749. The music for the Royal Fireworks, dramatic and instantly recognisable, was written to celebrate the end of the Austrian War of Succession that had involved England, among many other European nations. But the performance before the Royal Party was more than a letdown. A wayward firework went in the wrong direction, burning down one of the pavilions. Handel's commitment to his adopted country was expressed in his anglicisation of his name. George Frederick Handel. No umlaut. He had long been Britain's most famous musician. Famously irascible, with an idiosyncratic command of the English language, it nonetheless entertained kings and the public and composed music about the life of Christ. His was the music of London. The composer, however, was getting old. And by the start of 1753, he was completely blind. On April the 6th, 1759, Handel made one of his last public appearances when he attended a performance at Massa. Eight days later, Handel died at home in Brook Street. His good friend James Smyth said of him, he was a good Christian with a true sense of his duty to God and man and in perfect charity with all the world. His importance to English music was acknowledged with the high tribute of a state funeral attended by over 3,000 mourners. In 1824, another German composer said, Handel is the greatest composer who ever lived. I would bear my head and kneel at his grave. That composer was Ludwig van Beethoven. Handel is buried here at Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey's South Transept. His gravestone incorrectly gives his birth date as 1684, probably due to confusion at the time as to the calendar that was in use in Saxony when he was born. On the wall above the grave is a magnificent life-sized statue by the sculptor Rubiliac that was unveiled in 1762 and incorporates the score of I Know That My Redeemer Liveth From Messiah. Handel responded to his adopted city with music of extraordinary vigour, confidence. The 18th century city was tumultuously energetic, expanding rapidly, indeed, at the beginning of what was to become the British Empire. And Handel's music somehow reflects this, this energy, this sense of possibility and of splendour. Handel had an electrifying effect on English music, raising its game considerably, but it was another hundred years before the next great British composer appeared, Edward Elgar, followed shortly afterwards by Benjamin Britten, as we'll see next time. Meanwhile, it's goodbye from me, Simon Callow.