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George Frideric Handel: Composers
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PRINCETON, N.J. -- The world of the great eighteenth-century composer, George Frideric Handel (1685-1759), is captured in a new exhibition at Princeton University’s Firestone Library. Entitled "Il Caro Sassone: George Frideric Handel at Princeton." The exhibition opens October 4 in the Leonard L. Milberg Gallery for the Graphic Arts and runs until January 9, 2000. The gallery is open to the public without charge from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Monday through Friday and from noon to 5 p.m. on weekends.
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The last performance George Handel attended was his own Messiah. He died in London in 1759. Even his funeral was a grand accomplishment. More than 3,000 mourners were present for the funeral of the famous composer. He was buried at Westminster Abbey and received full state honors.
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The following year the triumph repeated at Covent Garden, when Handel added two more solos. Further revisions took place in 1745 at the famous Foundling Hospital performances, leaving all subsequent conductors with editorial problems as to Handel's final intentions. By the time of the composer's death in 1758, Messiah had already attained an iconic status it has never relinquished.
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Handel's output as a composer declined in his later years, but he continued to conduct and perform (he was a brilliant organist). Indeed, it was at the end of a performance of Messiah that he collapsed, dying three days later.
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The resulting sacred, non-dramatic oratorio was a first for Handel, and – although it heralded the composer's final great phase of oratorio composition – he never wrote one like it again. Messiah is therefore completely atypical within the context of Handel's oratorios, the majority of which relate to Old Testament or Apocryphal stories in dramatized form.
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This paradoxical aspect of Handel's genius has received a great deal of scholarly attention. But all apologetics and moralizing indictments aside, it is clearly evident that Handel was at heart a dramatic composer for whom setting the scene and atmosphere and delineating character thrust all other considerations into the background.
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