For a proper appreciation of the colossal work of Handel many years of study and a book of some two hundred pages are very insufficient. To treat at all adequately of Handel’s life and work needs a whole lifetime in itself, and even the indefatigable and enthusiastic Chrysander, who devoted his life to this subject, has hardly encompassed the task.... I have done what I could; my faults must be excused. This little book does not pretend to be anything more than a very brief sketch of the life an

H ERE in England we are supposed to know our Handel by heart, but it is doubtful whether we do. Who can say from memory the titles of even six of his thirty-nine operas, from whence may be culled many of his choicest flowers of melody? M. Rolland rightly emphasises the importance of the operas of Handel in the long chain of musical evolution, and it seems impossible for anyone to lay down his book without having a more all-round impression than heretofore of this giant among composers. M. Saint-

The Handel family was of Silesian origin. [1] The grandfather, Valentine Handel, was a master coppersmith at Breslau. The father, George Handel, was a barber-surgeon, originally attached to the service of the armies of Saxony, then of Sweden, later of the French Emperor, and finally in the private service of Duke Augustus of Saxony. He was very rich, and purchased at Halle in 1665 a beautiful house, which is still in existence. He was married twice; in 1643 he married a widow of a barber, who wa

N O great musician is more impossible to include in the limits of one definition, or even of several, than Handel. It is a fact that he reached the complete mastery of his style very early (much earlier than J. S. Bach), although it was never really fixed, and he never devoted himself to any one form of art. It is even difficult to see a conscious and a logical evolution in him. His genius is not of the kind which follows a single path, and forges right ahead until it reaches its object. For his

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The C OMPLETE H ANDEL E DITION contains as supplements several volumes of works by various Italian and German composers, which Handel has utilised in his compositions, namely:—...

Friedrich Chrysander , G. F. Handel . 3 vols., 1858-67, Leipzig. (The name of Chrysander ought to be attached permanently to that of Handel, for his life was entirely devoted to him. It was he who founded in 1856, with Gervinus, the German Handel Society and who accomplished nearly the whole of the Complete Edition of the Works of Handel in one hundred volumes by himself alone. His biography is a monument of science and devotion comparable with Philipp Spitta’s J. S. Bach and Otto Jahn’s Mozart