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George Frideric Handel in German) (February 23, 1685 – April 14, 1759) was a German Baroque composer who was a leading composer of concerti grossi, operas and oratorios. He lived part of his life in Great Britain. His most famous piece is . He deeply influenced many composers that came after him, including Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven.

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Handel was born at Halle in Saxony in 1685, coincidentally in the same year that both Johann Sebastian Bach and Domenico Scarlatti were born. He displayed considerable musical talent at an early age, by the age of seven he was a skilful performer on the harpsichord and organ, and at nine he began to compose music. However his father, a barber-surgeon to the court of Saxe-Weissenfels, opposed George Frideric pursuing a musical career, preferring him to study law. Nevertheless, the young Handel was permitted to take lessons in musical composition and keyboard techniques from Friedrich Wilhelm Zachau, the organist of Liebfrauenkirche, Halle.

In 1702, in obedience to his father's wishes, he began the study of law at the University of Halle, but after his father's death the following year, he abandoned law for music, becoming the organist at the Calvinist Cathedral. The following year he moved to Hamburg, accepting a position as violinist in the orchestra of the opera-house at Hamburg. Here his first two operas, , were produced at Hamburg in 1708. During the years 1707-1709 Handel traveled and studied in Italy. When opera was banned by local authorities, Handel found work as a composer of sacred music and wrote some pieces in operatic to George, Elector of Hanover, who would soon be George I of Great Britain. He visited London in 1710 and settled there permanently in 1712, receiving a yearly income of £200 from Queen Anne. In 1726 Handel's opera (Scipione) was performed for the first time, the march from which remains the regimental slow march of the British Grenadier Guards. He was naturalised a British subject in the same year.

In 1727 Handel was commissioned to write four anthems for the coronation ceremony of King George II. One of these, , has been played at every coronation ceremony since. Handel was director of the Royal Academy of Music 1720-1728, and a partner of J. J. Heidegger in the management of the King's Theatre 1729-1734. Handel also had a long association with the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden, where many of his Italian operas were premiered. Handel gave up operatic management entirely in 1740, after he had lost a fortune in the business. In 1751 he became blind, and died some eight years later in London. He was buried in Westminster Abbey.

He never married. His personal life was very private.

Handel's compositions include some fifty operas, twenty-three oratorios, and a large amount of church music, not to speak of his superb instrumental pieces, such as the organ concerti, the Opus 6 Concerti Grossi, the .

After his death, Handel's Italian operas fell into obscurity, save the odd fragment, such as the ubiquitous aria from , "Ombra mai fu"; his reputation throughout the 19th century and first half of the 20th century, particularly in the anglophone countries, rested primarily on his English oratorios, which were customarily performed by enormous choruses of amateur singers on solemn occasions. These include (1752).

Since the 1960s, with the revival of interest in baroque music and original instrument playing s, interest has revived in Handel's Italian operas, and many have been recorded and performed onstage. Of the fifty he wrote between 1705 and 1738, ) (1738) stand out and are now performed regularly in opera houses and concert halls. Arguably the finest, however, is (1724) which, thanks to its superb orchestral and vocal writing, has entered the mainstream opera repertoire.

Also revived in recent years are a number of secular cantatas and what one might call (1713) are particularly noteworthy. For his secular oratorios, Handel turned to classical mythology for subjects, producing such works as , particularly in the vocal writing for the English-language texts, these works have close kinship with the above-mentioned sacred oratorios, but they also share something of the lyrical and dramatic qualities of Handel's Italian operas. As such, they are sometimes performed onstage by small chamber ensembles. With the rediscovery of his theatrical works, Handel, in addition to his renown as instrumentalist, orchestral writer, and melodist, is now perceived as being one of opera's great musical dramatists.

Handel adopted the spelling "George Frideric Handel" on his naturalization as a British citizen. His name is spelled "Händel" in Germany and elsewhere, and "Haendel" in France, which causes no small grief to cataloguers everywhere. There was another composer with a similar name, Handl, who was a Slovenian (without umlaut; so not Händel). He was usually known as Jacobus Gallus.

Handel's works were edited by S. Arnold (40 vols., London, 1786), and by F. Chrysander, for the German Händel-Gesellschaft (100 vols., Leipzig, 1859-1894).

Handel lived at 25 Brook Street, London from 1723 until his death in 1759. It was here that he composed . In 2000 the upper stories of 25 Brook Street were leased to the Handel House Trust, and, after an extensive restoration program, the Handel House Museum opened to the public on 8 November 2001.

This article includes content derived from the public domain Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, 1914.

For information relating to Handel that most people don't know, see Handel trivia.

The Mutopia Project provides free downloading of sheet music and MIDI files for some of Handel's works.Handel cylinder recordings, from the Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara Library.