George Frideric Handel (Friday 23 February 1685 – Saturday 14 April 1759) was a German-born British Baroque composer who was a leading composer of operas, oratorios and concerti grossi. Born in Halle as Georg Friedrich Händel (IPA: [ˈhɛndəl]), he dwelt during most of his adult life in England, becoming a subject of the British crown on 22 January 1727. His most famous works are Messiah, an oratorio set to texts from the King James Bible, Water Music and Music for the Royal Fireworks. Drawing on the techniques of the great composers of the Italian Baroque, as well as the music of Henry Purcell, he deeply influenced in his turn many composers who came after him, including Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, and his works helped lead the transition from the Baroque to the Classical era.

Handel was born in Halle at Saxony-Anhalt in Germany to Georg and Dorothea (née Taust) Händel in 1685, the same year that both Johann Sebastian Bach and Domenico Scarlatti were born. He displayed considerable musical talent at an early age; by the age of seven he was a skillful performer on the harpsichord and pipe organ, and at nine he began to compose music. However, his father, an eminent barber-surgeon who served as valet and barber to the Courts of Saxony and Brandenburg,

After his death, Handel's Italian operas fell into obscurity, save for selections such as the ubiquitous aria from Serse, "Ombra mai fu"; his reputation throughout the 19th century and first half of the 20th century, particularly in the Anglophone countries, rested primarily on his English oratorios, which were customarily performed by enormous choruses of amateur singers on solemn occasions. These include Esther (1718); Athalia (1733); Saul (1739); Israel in Egypt (1739); Messiah (1742); Samson (1743); Judas Maccabaeus (1747); Solomon (1748); and Jephtha (1752), his best are based on a libretto by Charles Jennens.
Since the 1960s, with the revival of interest in baroque music, original instrument playing styles, and the prevalence of countertenors who could more accurately replicate castrato roles, interest has revived in Handel's Italian operas, and many have been recorded and performed onstage. Of the fifty he wrote between 1705 and 1738, Agrippina (1709), Rinaldo (1711, 1731), Orlando (1733), Alcina (1735), Ariodante (1735), and Serse (1738, also known as Xerxes) stand out and are now performed regularly in opera houses and concert halls. Arguably the finest, however, are Giulio Cesare (1724) and Rodelinda (1725), which, thanks to their superb orchestral and vocal writing, have entered the mainstream opera repertoire.
Also revived in recent years are a number of secular cantatas and what one might call secular oratorios or concert operas. Of the former, Ode for St. Cecilia's Day (1739) (set to texts of John Dryden) and Ode for the Birthday of Queen Anne (1713) are particularly noteworthy. For his secular oratorios, Handel turned to classical mythology for subjects, producing such works as Acis and Galatea (1719), Hercules (1745), and Semele (1744). In terms of musical style, particularly in the vocal writing for the English-language texts, these works have close kinship with the above-mentioned sacred oratorios, but they also share something of the lyrical and dramatic qualities of Handel's Italian operas. As such, they are sometimes performed onstage by small chamber ensembles. With the rediscovery of his theatrical works, Handel, in addition to his renown as instrumentalist, orchestral writer, and melodist, is now perceived as being one of opera's great musical dramatists.
Handel has generally been accorded high esteem by fellow composers, both in his own time and since. Bach apparently said "[Handel] is the only person I would wish to see before I die, and the only person I would wish to be, were I not Bach." Mozart is reputed to have said of him "Handel understands effect better than any of us. When he chooses, he strikes like a thunder bolt", and to Beethoven he was "the master of us all". The latter emphasized above all the simplicity and popular appeal of Handel's music when he said "go to him to learn how to achieve great effects, by such simple means".

Handel adopted the spelling "George Frideric Handel" on his naturalization as a British subject, and this spelling is generally used in English speaking countries. The original form of his name (Georg Friedrich Händel) is generally used (naturally enough) in Germany and elsewhere, but he is known as "Haendel" in France, which causes no small grief to cataloguers everywhere. There was another composer with a similar name, Handl, who was a Slovene and is more commonly known as Jacobus Gallus.
He is commemorated as a musician in the Calendar of Saints of the Lutheran Church on July 28 with Johann Sebastian Bach and Heinrich Schütz.
Handel's works were edited by Samuel Arnold (40 vols., London, 1787-1797), and by Friedrich Chrysander, for the German Händel-Gesellschaft (100 vols., Leipzig, 1858–1902).
This article includes content derived from the Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, 1914, which is in the public domain.








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List of compositions by George Frideric Handel
Category:Compositions by George Frideric Handel
Category:Oratorios by George Frideric Handel
Category:Operas by George Frideric Handel
Handel Commemoration
Burrows, Donald. Handel. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. ISBN 0-19-816470-X
Deutsch, Otto Erich, Handel: A Documentary Biography, 1955.
Frosch, W.A., The "case" of George Frideric Handel, New England Journal of Medicine, 1989; 321:765-769, Sep 14, 1989. [2]
Harris, Ellen T. (general editor) The librettos of Handel's operas: a collection of seventy librettos documenting Handel's operatic career New York: Garland, 1989. ISBN 0-8240-3862-2
Hogwood, Christopher. Handel. London: Thames and Hudson, 1984. ISBN 0-500-01355-1
Keates, Jonathan. Handel, the man and his music. London: V. Gollancz, 1985. ISBN 0-575-03573-0
Dean, Winton and John Merrill Knapp. Handel's Operas, 1704-1726 (Volume 1) Oxford: Clarendon Press. (1987; 2nd Ed. 1994 (softcover) ISBN 0-198-16441-6
Meynell, Hugo. The Art of Handel's Operas The Edwin Mellen Press (1986) ISBN 0-889-46425-1
Dean, W. (2006) "Handel's Operas, 1726-1741" (The Boydell Press)
Edward Dent's Handel biography from Project Gutenberg
The second volume of Winton Dean for "Handel's Operas" covering the years 1726-1741
Handel Houses:

• The Handel House Museum
  The Händelhaus in Halle
  George Frideric Handel free scores in the Choral Public Domain Library (ChoralWiki)
  The Mutopia Project provides free downloading of sheet music and MIDI files for some of Handel's works.
  George Frideric Handel free scores in the Werner Icking Music Archive
  George Frideric Handel was listed in the International Music Score Library Project
  Handel cylinder recordings, from the Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara Library.
  Kunst der Fuge: George Frideric Handel - MIDI files
  Water Music, Organ Concertos op. 4, Tamerlano, etc. Creative Commons recordings
  Lorraine Hunt Lieberson plays Haendel