HANDEL, GEORG FRIEDRICH. – Musician, b. at Halle on 23 Feb. 1685, d. in London on 14 Apr. 1759.
Overcoming his father’s hostility, he completed his musical studies under the guidance of the organist Zachov; he enrolled as a law student at the University of Halle, but in 1703 he moved to Hamburg where he had his first theatrical work, *Almira* (1705), performed. From 1706 to 1709 he was in Italy, in Florence, Rome, Venice, and Naples, where he met the great masters Alessandro Scarlatti, Domenico Scarlatti, and Arcangelo Corelli; in 1710 he was appointed Kapellmeister at the court of Hanover, but by the end of the same year he moved to London, where he remained for the rest of his life, a life rich in struggles, setbacks, and triumphs.
The vicissitudes of his theatrical career are well known in relation to the financial difficulties of the Royal Academy of Music, which he founded, and to the economic and artistic rivalries first with Bononcini and then with Porpora. Following his abundant theatrical output, he created a new dramatic form in which HANDEL’s genius left its enduring mark. *Saul* and *Israel in Egypt* (1738–39) were the first examples of this personal conception of the oratorio; followed by *Messiah*, performed in Dublin in 1742 with great success, which did not repeat itself in England. Equally unsuccessful was the secular oratorio *Hercules* (1744), but *Judas Maccabaeus* (1747), written to celebrate the victory of the Duke of Cumberland over the partisans of the Stuarts, was triumphantly received. Fruits of an inexhaustible creative vein were the oratorios composed from 1747 to 1752: *Joshua, Solomon, Susanna, Theodora, Jephtha*. In his last years the musician was struck by blindness, but he was consoled by the now universal and undisputed admiration; he was buried, as a great honor, in Westminster Abbey. HANDEL’s work, also noteworthy in the field of instrumental music, excels in the oratorio, where his imagination was able to unfold with a marvelous grandeur of architecture and fullness of expression: the epic dramatic quality of the choruses and the intense melodic lyricism of the solo parts merge into the harmonious and solid artistic unity of the composition, always imbued with noble and solemn stylistic vigor.