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Hallelujah! This week, the composer whose music illuminated Georgian London, and who refined the art of bringing emotion alive in works that still resonate for us today
A German composer who brought Italian musical fashions to a London audience, George Frideric Handel (1685-1759) is the baroque era’s theatre composer extraordinaire, whose 42 operas and two-dozen oratorios refined the art of bringing human emotion alive in music. Writing to the strengths of the greatest singers of his era, he composed arias in which dazzling vocal fireworks sat cheek by jowl with moments of heart-stopping beauty. He was also the composer for many of the state occasions in Georgian England, creating a ceremonial sound-world that still resonates for us, three centuries later. Continue reading...