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George Frideric Handel: Oratorios
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George Frideric Handel was a Baroque English composer and violinist of German origin. He is famous for oratorio "Messiah," anthem "Zadok the Priest" and "Water Music Suite" and "Music for the Royal Fireworks." Handel was a contemporary of Johann Sebastian Bach and Georg Philipp Telemann.
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Handel developed this formula in such masterpieces as Saul (1739), Samson (1744), Solomon (1748), and Jephtha (1751). He varied it by choosing mythological subjects in Semele (1744) and Hercules (1745), and, on the other hand, by using librettos compiled directly from the Bible in Israel in Egypt (1738) and Messiah (1742). In his later performances of Messiah at the Foundling Hospital chapel he took the first step that moved his oratorios away from the theater toward the church. The gigantic Handel Commemorations at Westminster Abbey (1784รข€“1791) presented his works as monuments of the religious sublime, playing down the subtle interplay of human character that had always been an important inspiration of his greatest dramatic music.
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Handel had close friends in Ireland, one of them the English Viceroy. He visited Ireland on invitation arriving in Dublin on the 18th of November 1741. Two days before Christmas, he began a series of concerts which lasted until the end of March 1742. Many of his recent works that time were included in the programs, most of them oratorios yet unknown in Ireland. In particular, the premiere performance of the Messiah was a tremendous success, with the public and press unanimous in their opinion, with acclaims that they have just heard for the first time one of the greatest musical creations; this despite the short notice rehearsals by inadequate singers. An additional attraction has always been the large number of choruses included, larger than any other of Handel's oratorios.
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About 1706, Handel went to Italy, where he remained until 1710. His Italian travels took him to Florence, Venice, Rome, and Naples. Among the works that he composed for some of the most important patrons of those cities are his first two oratorios, Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno (1707, later rev. and trans. as The Triumph of Time and Truth) and La Resurrezione (1708), and the opera Agrippina (1709). These works reveal Handel's growing mastery of Italian style.
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By degrees the enmity against Handel died away, though he had many troubles. In 1745 he had again become bankrupt; for, although he had no rival as a composer of choral music it was possible for his enemies to give balls and banquets on the nights of his oratorio performances. As with his first bankruptcy, so in his later years, he showed scrupulous sense of honor in discharging his debts, and he continued to work hard to the end of his life. He had not only completely recovered his financial position by the year 1750, but he must have made a good deal of money, for he then presented an organ to the Foundling Hospital, and opened it with a performance of the Messiah on the 15th of May. In 1751 his sight began to trouble him; and the autograph of Jephtha, published in facsimile by the Händelgesellschaft, shows pathetic traces of this in his handwriting, and so affords a most valuable evidence of his methods of composition, all the accompaniments, recitatives, and less essential portions of the work being evidently filled in long after the rest. He underwent unsuccessful operations, one of them by the same surgeon who had operated on Bach's eyes.
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[T]hese established a new vogue (fashion), in which Handel fared better with London audiences than he ever had with Italian opera. As if to test a possible market for dramatic compositions in English, Handel revived past operas with revisions to the oratorio style, meeting with much success. Producing oratorios was a profitable business. As a direct consequence, the oratorio became a regular feature of each season, with Handel leading the field, as he had done previously with Italian opera.
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