Great German Composers | Page 4

before he had met, at Naples, Scarlatti, Porpora, and Corelli.
That year had been the turning-point in his life. With one stride he
reached the front rank, and felt that no musician alive could teach him
anything.
George Frederick Handel (or Handel, as the name is written in German)
was born at Halle, Lower Saxony, in the year 1685. Like German
literature, German music is a comparatively recent growth. What little
feeling existed for the musical art employed itself in cultivating the
alien flowers of Italian song. Even eighty years after this Mozart and
Haydn were treated like lackeys and vagabonds, just as great actors
were treated in England at the same period. Handel's father looked on
music as an occupation having very little dignity.
Determined that his young son should become a doctor like himself,
and leave the divine art to Italian fiddlers and French buffoons, he did
not allow him to go to a public school even, for fear he should learn the
gamut. But the boy Handel, passionately fond of sweet sounds, had,
with the connivance of his nurse, hidden in the garret a poor spinet, and
in stolen hours taught himself how to play. At last the senior Handel
had a visit to make to another son in the service of the Duke of
Saxe-Weissenfels, and the young George was taken along to the ducal
palace. The boy strayed into the chapel, and was irresistibly drawn to
the organ. His stolen performance was made known to his father and
the duke, and the former was very much enraged at such a direct
evidence of disobedience. The duke, however, being astonished at the
performance of the youthful genius, interceded for him, and
recommended that his taste should be encouraged and cultivated
instead of repressed.
From this time forward fortune showered upon him a combination of
conditions highly favorable to rapid development. Severe training,

ardent friendship, the society of the first composers, and incessant
practice were vouchsafed him. As the pupil of the great organist
Zachau, he studied the whole existing mass of German and Italian
music, and soon exacted from his master the admission that he had
nothing more to teach him. Thence he went to Berlin to study the
opera-school, where Ariosti and Bononcini were favorite composers.
The first was friendly, but the latter, who with a first-rate head had a
cankered heart, determined to take the conceit out of the Saxon boy. He
challenged him to play at sight an elaborate piece. Handel played it
with perfect precision, and thenceforward Bononcini, though he hated
the youth as a rival, treated him as an equal.
On the death of his father Handel secured an engagement at the
Hamburg opera-house, where he soon made his mark by the ability
with which, on several occasions, he conducted rehearsals.
At the age of nineteen Handel received the offer of the Lübeck organ,
on condition that he would marry the daughter of the retiring organist.
He went down with his friend Mattheson, who it seems had been
offered the same terms. They both returned, however, in single
blessedness to Hamburg.
Though the Lübeck maiden had stirred no bad blood between them,
musical rivalry did. A dispute in the theatre resulted in a duel. The only
thing that saved. Handel's life was a great brass button that shivered his
antagonist's point, when they were parted to become firm friends again.
While at Hamburg Handel's first two operas were composed, "Almira"
and "Nero." Both of these were founded on dark tales of crime and
sorrow, and, in spite of some beautiful airs and clever instrumentation,
were musical failures, as might be expected.
Handel had had enough of manufacturing operas in Germany, and so in
July, 1706, he went to Florence. Here he was cordially received; for
Florence was second to no city in Italy in its passion for encouraging
the arts. Its noble specimens of art creations in architecture, painting,
and sculpture, produced a powerful impression upon the young
musician. In little more than a week's time he composed an opera,

"Rodrigo," for which he obtained one hundred sequins. His next visit
was to Venice, where he arrived at the height of the carnival. Whatever
effect Venice, with its weird and mysterious beauty, with its marble
palaces, façades, pillars, and domes, its magnificent shrines and
frescoes, produced on Handel, he took Venice by storm. Handel's
power as an organist and a harpsichord player was only second to his
strength as a composer, even when, in the full zenith of his maturity, he
composed the "Messiah" and "Judas Maccabæus."
"Il caro Sassone," the dear Saxon, found a formidable opponent as well
as dear friend in the person of Scarlatti. One night at a masked ball,
given by a nobleman, Handel was present in disguise. He