Handel: Recorder Sonatas, Op. 1, Nos. 2, 4, 7 And 11

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Cat No: 8550700

Release Date: 12 January 1999

Label: Naxos - Nxc / Naxos Classics

Packaging Type: Jewel Case

No of Units: 1

Barcode: 4891030507005

Genres: Classical

Composer/Series: HANDEL

Description
George Frideric Handel (1685 - 1759) Recorder Sonatas George Frideric Handel was born in Halle in 1685, the son of an elderly barber-surgeon of some distinction and his second wife. Destined by his father for a career of greater prestige than music seemed to allow, he was permitted to study music only through the intervention of the Duke of Saxe-Weissenfels, at whose court Handel's father served. After the latter's death, he studied briefly at the University of Hallé, combining the study of law with a position as organist at the Calvinist cathedral in the city, before moving in 1703 to Hamburg, where he played second violin in the opera orchestra, later taking his place as harpsichordist and writing his first Italian operas, produced there in January and February 1705. A meeting with Prince Ferdinando de' Medici, heir to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, led to an invitation to Italy, where Handel moved in 1706, remaining there until 1710 and winning for himself an increasing reputation as a keyboard-player and as a composer, although to Corelli in Rome his style appeared to be too French. Nevertheless it was Italy that decisively influenced his musical language and it was as a composer of Italian opera that he was to make his earlier career in England. Handel had spent time in various cities of Italy and in Venice had met Baron Kielmansegge, Master of Horse to the Elector of Hanover, and members of the ruling family. It was through the Baron's agency that Handel was appointed Kapellmeister to the Elector, an appointment that he took up in the summer of 1710, stipulating immediate leave to visit England, where he provided music for Aaron Hill's ambitious opera Rinaldo, mounted at w hat was then the Queen's Theatre in the Haymarket and the subject of satirical comment from Addison and Steele in The Spectator. The following year he returned to Hanover, where he remained for fifteen months before permission was given once more for a visit to England. From 1712 he was to settle there permanently.Handel was, of course, a composer of considerable versatility and had already written a large amount of music of all kinds. In London he was associated immediately with the Italian opera and under royal patronage wrote music for the court and for the church, quickly learning from the work of Purcell something of the English church style. The death of Queen Anne and the accession to the English throne of the Elector of Hanover might have caused some embarrassment, since Handel was still nominally the Elector's Kapellmeister, absent without leave. He was, however, to enjoy the new king's favour soon enough, proof, if any were needed, of the apocryphal nature of the story about the Water Music, popularly alleged to have reconciled monarch and composer. Handel came to enjoy enormous popularity in England, where he long remained the dominant figure in music, at the expense of native talent. The fortunes of the exotic, irrational and expensive Italian opera waned i
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