How I Discovered...HANDEL

My own personal encounters with the Handel's music, in all of its inexhaustible richness, were a very long time coming. Indeed, until recently much of it was new to me, and it represents one of my happiest musical experiences. How did you first discover Handel--the Handel beyond Messiah and the "state occasion" pieces, that is. Feel free to share the joy!

[@davidheaps3336]

I discovered Handel thru arias on CDs by my favorite baroque singers: Kermes, Genaux, Prohaska, Barath. I commend Alcina and Il trionfomdel tempo and del disinganno as little known masterpieces.

[@gardenphoto]

Just a little anecdote: I played the drums in a Hard Rock band in the early 1980s... and ALL my band mates never missed a chance to make fun of the fact that I also loved Classical music! They'd make cracks about Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart - "Ist time for Eine Kleine guitar solo!" was a favorite - but my favorite "jibe" of all was when our base player left a note on my snare drum that read, "It's about time we learned the UFO song "Too Hot to Handel!" 😂He was a good lad (he passed away nearly 20 years ago) and that still cracks me up to this day... 42 years later! Rest easy, Gary.

[@richardfrankel6102]

For me, it was Mackerras's recording of the Royal Fireworks: good Lord, what a magnificent, "barbaric yawp"! I had it on a Vanguard Lp, and later got it on a Pye "Golden Guinea" Lp. Its CD transfer is on Testament. At the time, I was lucky to have a circle of audiophile friends in Baltimore who had BIG, honkin' speakers: Klipschorns, Altec-Lansing "Voice Of The Theater"s, big Bozaks, etc. And this was a record of choice for blowing out the cobwebs! I guess real appreciation of the music came later--but it's OK to enter the Palace Of Wisdom through a side door.

[@hendriphile]

Back in the Boulez days, the New York Philharmonic followed up their regular season with a series of “rug concerts,“ where you could sit pretty much wherever you wanted. On one program which featured the Royal Fireworks Music, I happened to be seated directly behind the timpani. That timpani part of Handel’s really rocked! Not surprisingly, no recording I have ever heard came anywhere near that experience. That, plus hearing Richard Standen go into those crazy melismas in “Why do the Nations Rage” on the old Scherchen/Vienna recording, was enough.

[@allthisuselessbeauty-kr7]

My introduction was probably the dreaded Water Music (albeit in Hamilton Harty's arrangement, courtesy of George Szell and the LSO - wonderful stuff). I got blown away shortly after by Zadok the Priest (oh those CFP budget lps were such a fundamental part of my musical education...I think in this instance it was with Menuhin and Bath Festival forces). Messiah was probably next (borrowed Marriner's supet Argo set from the library). Pinnock's Concerto Grossi Op.3 was (and still is) one my favourite discs of anything!

[@flexusmaximus4701]

Hi Dave! I discovered Handel through his orchestral works, the fireworks, concertos, especially the organ concertos. I like several of his oratorios, a few operas. But also the keyboard works, a few of which i learned to play. I love the pure sound, and melodic appeal. And to be, im sure chastised, like him much more then Bach!

[@philippecassagne3192]

I discovered Handel when I was very young. At that time, my preferred composer was Mozart. Then I had other centres of interest than classical music for several decades. When I came back, my reference composer was Bach. And then, I re-discovered Handel and it was one of the greatest shocks of my life : as I understood immediately that he would be forever my preferred composer. Since then, I have collected all his works in most of the best interpretations. And I am happy that Dave also understands and appreciates him so well. My preferred works : Giulio Cesare and Theodora.

[@DavesClassicalGuide]

Oh yeah!

[@compositortiagoprado]

My first contact with Handel was a disc of selections from Messiah (the famous Thomas Beecham recording). After that I listened to many records with selections of works, some arias, famous choirs and things like that. Finally, the first Handel work I heard complete was Agrippina (!) on John Eliot Gardiner's recording. I fell in love with this album and then I went to the other operas, Rinaldo, Giulio Cesare... occasionally the complete Messiah, only much later did I come into contact with his orchestral, instrumental work and even other oratorios.

[@mr-wx3lv]

I've always preferred Handel over Bach, not because i think he was a better composer, but too much Bach depresses me after a while. Handel seemed much more tuneful and accessible.

[@charleswoodard253]

I was late coming to Handel’s music. The first time I had a wow experience was about 5-10 years ago hearing the solo piano suites. They are exquisitely beautiful and once you hear them, you never forget them. I was surprised at the beautiful unforgettable melodies. Then with the operas it was definitely a “how did I ever not know about this” moment. Again approximately 10 years ago, I saw a production of Guilio Cesare on PBS at the Met broadcast The scenes of Sesto and Cornelia with Alice Coote and Patricia Bardon singing those roles. OMG so moving and gorgeous it made me cry and Ive been hooked ever since.

[@hobhood7118]

I love the Water Music. My way in was Hogwood's then-revelatory performance, along with his Messiah. I had sung bits of Messiah at school, but the Hogwood version which had just appeared sounded so un-stodgy compared with my previous encounter. Then I raided my dad's classical record collection to hear the Concerti Grossi by Marriner and ASMF. Another early favourite was Alexander's Feast (Gardiner). However, Water Music is my desert island Handel. Great, easy-to-get tunes, great dance rhythms, and contrasts of tempi and texture. Wonderfully celebratory horns and trumpets. I've heard loads of recorded versions and still own a stack of them.

[@ClearLight369]

Since you asked, my own love for Handel began when I bought a cheapie highlights LP recording of Adrian Boult s Messiah. It may not be the greatest recording of the Messiah, but Joan Sutherland did amazingly beautiful performances of Rejoice! and I know that my redeemer liveth, with lots of ornamentation. I still treasure her contributions to that performance. I always enjoy hearing your reflections, btw. Thank you for your gifts.

[@swimmad456]

Boult apparently quipped about mad scenes from Messiah after the recording.

[@ClearLight369]

@@swimmad456 Hilarious. But her singing is still gorgeous.

[@jaykauffman4775]

@@swimmad456I think it was Beecham. He fired her from his own recording saying that her manner was all wrong for the work

[@allanmcbean8001]

Handel is my favourite composer. My obsession began last year when I (surprise!) got to sing in the chorus for Messiah. Like others here I always wrote him off in favour of the fellow who shares his birth year. I was swept away by his melodic genius. Then I heard and loved nearly all the operas and now oratorios. Theodora is maybe my favourite piece of music, and act the three of Hercules is for me the most unbelievably intense stretch of music in all opera!

[@MrKurtank]

I wish I could 'like' this more than once.

[@davidaiken1061]

I always enjoy hearing how you discovered a particular composer or period. Handel was an early discovery for me, along with other Baroque composers. It took many years for me to enjoy late Romantic and 20th Century music. So my story proceeds in the opposite direction, historically speaking. As narrated in earlier comments, my parents, avid music lovers preferred the Viennese classics to every other period. So Baroque music was "my" discovery and "my" period as I was growing up. Bcah came first; but Handel soon followed. I was still a child when my mother bought a first recording of "Messiah." It was the Malcolm Sargent/Huddersfied Society version on Angel. Little did I know at the time that the orchestration, sequence of numbers with cuts, was the long since discredited Prout Edition. A gift from my grandmother of Scherchen's Vienna recording came as a shock, with pared-down forces, no extra wind and brass reinforcements, and at least a half dozen previously unheard choruses and solos. By then I was a budding Handel omnivore. Acquiring and iistening to every instrumental and vocal recording I could get my hands on and afford from my weekly allowance). These were all fairly traditional, modern-instrument recordings. Stephen Simon in "Solomon"; Abravanel in "Judas Maccabeus"; Somary in "Theodora" and "Jephtha"; Leppard in the Concerti Grossi op. 6, etc. So the sensuality and opulence of Handel's music was evident to me all along. By the time I finished college, though, I had learned to enjoy HIP Handel--Harnoncourt, then Gardiner, Hogwood, Pinnock and the usual suspects. Since then, I have never wavered in my love for Handel's music, which rivals Bach in my Baroque affections. I have to read your book, Dave! I read Winton Dean and Paul Henry Lang, among others, while in college, but haven't read a serious study of Handel since then. Sorry for the length of this; I get carried away.

[@DavesClassicalGuide]

Mine isn't that serious, but it IS a study!

[@composingpenguin]

Messiah aside, my first solid come-to-Handel experience was the “Harmonious Blacksmith” set of variations for keyboard, which I encountered in middle school on some compilation CD set of random classical goodies. I got the sheet music a couple years later and learned to play what I could (some of it was beyond my abilities at the time), and it’s great fun.

[@geertdecoster5301]

H A N D E L... well, for me personally it was again while watching Kenneth Clark's Civilization. Looking up at that marvellous Tiepolo ceiling inside the Wurzburg Prince-Bischop's Residence - Handel: Alcina / Act 1 - Questo è il cielo de' contenti · Monica Sinclair · Ezio Flagello · Joan Sutherland · London Symphony Chorus · London Symphony Orchestra · Richard Bonynge - The perfect graphic novel for this lad to read later on the actual book. Glorious it was and still is.

[@LeotheK]

I still struggle with hearing Handel's style and feel like I can't hear what is special yet. I haven't found the key to his operas, maybe I have to see one live to understand. There are so many and sound so similar they run together in my mind. I want to like Handel. I will keep on listening.

[@steveschwartz8944]

I first encountered Handel by singing soprano when my junior-high choir did Messiah's "Hallelujah" chorus. Since this was about the time my voice began to break, eventually I wound up singing all four choral parts of that number. Curiously, it took me a while to hit the entire Messiah and a while after that to get to other Handel. I was in grad school before I took the plunge. Handel is just pure enjoyment for me and, as Dave indicates, sexy as hell.

[@pojuantsalo3475]

I got into classical music in my late 20's listening to classic FM radio in the background. Handel was among those composers who clicked with me instantly. They played his operas and oratorios from beginning to end during the nights and I used to record those transmissions using my Hi-Fi VHS recorder (picture signal, all black, came from my old Sharp MZ-821 computer). I could record 4 hours on a 240 minutes tape and listen to them at good sound quality (limited by the FM broadcast really). I recorded at least Susanna (by McGegan on HM which I later got on CD). I has blown away. Handel is the type of music I can listen to hour after hours never getting tired or bored...

[@petermarksteiner7754]

I think the first Handel recordings I own are Colin Davis's Messiah and Simon Preston's Ode for the Birthday of Queen Anne and the Anthem for the Foundling Hospital. Both are still favorites of mine. On March 27, 1797 Acis and Galatea was played in Vienna. One audience member remarked: It was very well played, but it was at Westminster, with an orchestra of 500 or 600 people - as suits the works of this great master - that I was most moved. His name was Joseph Haydn.

[@timyork6150]

Handel was always on my radar screen because my parents' wartime black box of 78s contained a record of part of Water Music (Hamilton Harty conducting IIRC) and I found the music enjoyable in a jolly way. At that time, Messiah amongst the oratorios was an ubiquitous major work in the UK. With hindsight it think that my then lack of enthusiasm for it resulted from the performing tradition of heavy textures from using huge orchestral and choral forces (I recall Sargent and Huddersfield). In the 60s or 70s I bought a LP set of the Concerti Grossi under Marriner but these did not bowl me over in spite of the polish which Marriner brought to what he did. It was the historically informed performances and the opening of the Handel repertoire from the early 80s by the likes of Pinnock and Gardiner which brought light and air into the textures together with more lively rhythms and revealed to me how marvellous this music is.

[@winslowrogers2026]

Going through junior high and high school music groups in the 50s I remember running across the composer "Handel-Harty." Of course that was Hamilton Harty dumbing-down Handel and taking some of the energy out of it. We knew the Hallelujah Chorus but I couldn't figure out how to connect that Handel with the Handel-Harty guy. Like you I first caught the spark from choral music, in my case the Chandos Anthems. Wow.

[@DavesClassicalGuide]

Harty did not "dumb down" the originals. In fact, his arrangements are rather more sophisticated, even if unidiomatic.

[@jankucera8180]

My journey was of course completely the opposite, as in the former communist country (which the then Czechoslovakia was) most of Handel oratorios were simply not allowed to be performed due to the ideological 'bigotry' of the regime (more precisely, any such performance was very strongly discouraged)... and operas were mostly unknown in the late 1970s/early1980s. Czechia had (and still has) 10 opera theatres, so some rare performances were taking place here and there, mostly in the regional (local) theatres. Thus, it could be through nothing else but the domestic Supraphon recording of Concerti Grossi op. 6 that I acquired as a student as it was 'repressed', that I learned about Handel's music and I realized I wanted more... and I wanted to KNOW more. Subsequently through any other recording I could get my hands on, later the 1985 monograph by a Czech Handelian Rudolf Pečman... and finally it was my personal contact with the Czech Handelian 'propeth' Pavel Polka that opened the world of the music by Handel in its entirety to me. It has been almost 40 years... and new surprises still keep coming...

[@geraldparker8125]

I think that, apart "Messiah", "Saul", and "Judas Maccabeus", I discovered Handel playing in my high school orchestra. We played a lot of great stuff, quite a bit, really, of the standard repertory. I'm pretty sure that this is how I discovered the Concerti grossi, the op. 3 and the great op. 6 set. I became such a big fan of his music that I really engorged myself devouring as much of it as I could.

[@leestamm3187]

Like many others, it was the Hallelujah Chorus in church choir.

[@handelbaroque]

Of course, I knew Hallelujah for a long time, but it is when I bought a CD of the "best of" Baroque with the Music for the Royal Fireworks that Handel stroke me. The CD was "Baroque Favorites" on RCA. Since then (in 1997), I became a fervent handelian. We he is my favourite composer.

[@ervinvice1521]

Sorry, but I love Water Music. That plus Dixit Dominus, the Coronation Anthems, the Concerti Grossi, Opus 3, and of course the Messiah are works that I will NEVER grow tired of.

[@craggyisland8770]

Just discovered your channel and videos. I am enjoying thoroughly!

[@DavesClassicalGuide]

Thank you and welcome! Have fun!

[@neilford99]

Like most of us, the inevitable messiah(s) at school. I played in the orchestra at least once. Fast-forward several decades and I became addicted to Manze’s recording of the Op 6 concerti grossi. Then I discovered the Gabrieli Consort’s Solomon and so forth. I had a huge Händel binge for nearly year and devoured as much as I could. Perhaps as Haydn is to Hurwitz, Händel is for me.

[@Baritocity]

My introduction was a Water Music arrangement for young band, I think it was the no 3 allegro. I remember the band director wrote much of the horn part back in, because band music for 7th or 8th graders often doesn't count on there being a strong horn section.

[@gustinian]

The third chord of *Zadok the Priest* did it for me as a child. Nathan the Prophet. So salty, so unexpected yet so apposite.

[@davidmilsk640]

Israel in Egypt at the UofI in the early 60"s. I play it at Passover.

[@jaykauffman4775]

Feel exactly the same way about Handel. Moving, funny and humane. Interesting that he and Bach were born the same year since I rarely get the same from Bach. I want to be moved in some way

[@bbailey7818]

Beyond Messiah, if memory serves, it was the Decca Sutherland/Bonynge Alcina, still a classic. Orchestrally, the Water and Fireworks music and the magnificent Op 6 (Leppard/ECO on Philips was the first and I still like it a lot. And evviva vibrato!) Speaking of Beecham, remember the stereo Love in Bath? The composer is actually someone called HandelBeecham but fun. The RCA Giulio Cesare with Sills and Rudel conducting also, along with Alcina and the still excellent Westminster Serse opened the world of Baroque opera. At first I did prefer the greater variety of the oratorios including the operas in disguise, Semele and Hercules, but now I love them equally. I'm still discovering performances I should have had in my collection. Just today (frankly prompted by recent events)I was shocked to discover I didn't have Mackerras' recording of Judas Maccabeus though I have his magnificent Saul and Israel in Egypt. Still available and can't wait to hear it.

[@geertdecoster5301]

Gosh, Alcina with Sutherland. Listening to that was glorious as an young lad 🙂

[@HYP3RK1NECT]

Descubrí Haendel cuando escuché la sarabanda en Re menor. Pero una versión de canción de cuna.

[@charlescoleman5509]

Dave. Would you consider making a future "Music Chat" video about this sub classical genre of "Easy Listening" hat some composers have adapted? Composers like Karl Jenkins, Ludovico Einaudi, or Alma Deutcher (cringe!). I have my own strong opinions on this, but you might be more articulate about it than I am. Assuming that the subject interests you in the first place.

[@jeromemckenna7102]

I can understand the desire for using period instruments with Back and Vivaldi, but Handel's works want to be big.

[@clarkebustard8672]

A musicologist friend liked to chide me for my shallowness because I like Handel more than Bach. "Handel - pfui, just a showman. Bach is transcendent, the alpha and omega of music." OK, then, imagine Herr Alpha und Omega setting this to music: Crown with festal pomp the day, Be mirth extravagantly gay. Bid the grateful altars smoke, Bid the maids the youths provoke To join the dance, while music’s voice Tells aloud our rapt’rous joys! (from Handel's "Hercules")

[@bbailey7818]

I'd rather spend three hours with Handel than Bach, as great as the latter is. I certainly know which one I'd rather have dinner with. To me, the Op.6 concerti grossi are every bit as great and every bit as ingenious as the Brandenburgs, and with much more limited coloristic resources.

[@DavesClassicalGuide]

I agree.

[@ClearLight369]

He had his own distinctive style because he stole from everybody else, LOL. And Zadok rhymes with Dr. Spock. You're hilarious. Maybe you'll Garner a wider audience for classical music through your comedy alone. After all, why not?

[@eliecanetti]

You’re not necessarily preaching to the converted. I have had the same prejudices you once held. But you might be converting me.