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656. How Handel Got His Mojo Back

December 12, 2025 • 57m

Summary

⏱️ 8 min read

Overview

This episode explores George Frideric Handel's journey from financial ruin to redemption through Messiah. After years of struggling with expensive opera productions and mounting debts, the aging composer traveled to Dublin in 1741 where his new oratorio received a triumphant premiere. The episode examines Handel's musical education across Europe, his entrepreneurial struggles in London's competitive opera scene, and how a charity performance model ultimately saved both his finances and legacy.

Handel's Early Musical Education and Development

George Frideric Handel was born in 1685 in Halle, Germany, just weeks apart from Bach. Unlike Bach's pious musical family, Handel's father was a barber surgeon, but the young Handel received excellent musical education in a commercially important city with access to published music from across Europe. His teacher Friedrich Wilhelm Sackhow provided crucial models and connections that shaped Handel's early compositional style.

  • Handel was born in 1685 in Halle, Germany, a few weeks after Bach, but they tragically never met
  • Unlike Bach who treated voices like instruments, Handel wrote more naturally for the human voice
  • Handel's father was a barber surgeon who performed amputations, not a musician
  • Halle was an important commercial center with substantial music publishing flowing through it
  • The aria 'I Know My Redeemer Liveth' traces back to a melody by Reinhard Kaiser that Handel encountered in Hamburg
" Bach, in many cases, really does almost treat the voice like an instrument. It's hard to differentiate between the way he's writing for the violins versus the sopranos. Because Handel's music, by and large, that's not so much the case. "
" Scarlatti, one of his contemporaries, would always make the sign of the cross whenever Handel's name was mentioned as this person who would just tear up a keyboard. "

Handel's Italian Period and London Success

At 18, Handel left for Hamburg and then Italy, where he spent three years being acquired by various courts eager to enhance their prestige. The Italian experience fundamentally shaped his musical style, giving him the fluid melodic writing and emotional impact that would define his work. As a non-native English speaker in London, Handel could hear unique rhythms in the language that native speakers missed, creating memorable musical phrases.

  • Italian courts competed to acquire the best artists, paying Handel with lodging, food, and cash
  • Handel's time composing for secular Italian audiences gave a different feel to all his subsequent music
  • Being a non-native English speaker allowed Handel to hear natural rhythms in English text that others couldn't
  • The famous phrase 'For unto us a child is born' emphasizes the wrong word because Handel recycled an Italian duet
" He wants to have an effect on an audience. He's trying to make you feel something. "
" It took a non-native speaker, I think, to hear, oh, here's a natural rhythm to this set of words that perhaps others can't hear. "

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