A biography of Handel

Yesterday, it was the 326th anniversary of the birth of George Frideric Handel and today is the 300th anniversary of the first performance of Rinaldo, an opera he composed which also happened to be the first Italian opera written for the London stage. I think the universe is hinting to me that it is time I wrote about Handel (which, handily, is code for "I really like lists").

10 Facts About George Frederic Handel:

1) When he was born, Handel's father was already 63, and had high hopes for his son. He envisaged a career in law for the boy, but it soon became apparent that he had an enormous talent for music - and not only this, but he enjoyed spending hours playing instruments. Georg Handel Sr. was so alarmed by this development that he strictly forbade his son from going near any musical instrument, but Handel Jr. was having none of this. He somehow found a way to sneak a clavichord (a kind of early keyboard) into an attic room at the top of his house, and he would creep up there at night when everyone had gone to bed, to teach himself how to play.

2) During Handel's early teens, he took a trip with his father to go and visit his half-brother Carl, who at the time was a valet to Duke Johann Adolf I. Legend has it that whilst he was there, the Duke overheard him playing on the church organ, and was delighted by what he heard. This helped Handel to convince his father that he should be allowed lessons in composition and keyboard technique, and so he studied under Friedrich Wilhelm Zachow. During this time, he played for Frederick I of Prussia, and met many contemporary composers, including Bononcini and Telemann.

3) In 1702, Handel went to the University of Halle to study Law as his father had wished, but did not enjoy it. After only a year, he dropped out and became instead a violinist at the Hamburg Opera House. Between 1705 and 1708, he wrote and possibly directed four operas which were performed there.

4) Handel met a member of the famous de' Medici family around 1706, and accepted their invitation to spend some time living in Rome with them. At the time, operatic music was banned by the Papal States, so instead he composed choral music for the church for performances in the city. He continued, however, to write operas which were performed elsewhere in Europe, including Agrippina, which had a then unprecedented run of 27 performances, and was the object of much critical acclaim. 

5) In 1710, Handel became Kapellmeister to the man who was soon to become King George I of England, and so moved to London when George did, in 1714. A Kapellmeister was a man who was in charge of music-making, and so Handel's role for the rest of his life was to compose as much music as possible, something he did to great aplomb.In July 1717, the Water Music was performed for the first time along the Thames, where it went down a storm. At around this point also, Handel decided that he was bored of composing operas, and ignored them entirely for about five years.

6) Fiscally, Handel was very lucky - he invested in the famous South Sea Company in 1716, but managed to sell his stocks in 1720, before the bubble burst, leaving him a very rich man. During his lifetime, he was heavily involved with charities, and gave much money to the Foundling Hospital in London, as well as to charities which helped impoverished musicians and their families.

7) His time in Britain can be split into three main periods. Between 1719 and 1734, he was employed by the Royal Academy of Music, during which time he continued to compose at an extremely fast rate. Some of his most famous works from this time include the operas Giulio Cesare and Rodelinda and Zadok the Priest, which he was commissioned to write for the coronation of George II, and has been been performed at every coronation ceremony since.

8) After his contract at the Royal Academy ended, it was expected by many people that Handel would retire; instead he chose to start a new company with his friend John Rich at Covent Garden Theatre. From 1734 until 1741, he composed whilst Rich directed, introducing many more theatrical elements to the performances for some of the first times. During this period, in the summer of 1737, Handel, aged 52, suffered a stroke. It was assumed he would never be able to perform, let alone compose, again, as the illness had seemed to affect his understanding, but he took himself off to a German spa town, where he would spend many hours a day in the hot baths. He was able to give impromptu piano recitals to the surprised costumers of the spa, and by the following year was well enough to return to composing in London.

9) His later life produced some of his most prolific works. On 13 April 1742, 26 men and five boys put on the first performance of the Messiah, a piece that remains as popular today as it was on first performance. A few years later, in 1749, he wrote the Music for the Royal Fireworks, and when it premiered, over 10,000 people attended. This was to be his last major composition - in August 1750 he suffered serious injury in a carriage accident and a couple of years later, he went blind. He survived until 1759, when he finally died on 14 April.

10) He was given a state funeral in Westminster Abbey, and over 3,000 mourners attended. His works had been incredibly popular, and though in the nineteenth century they were to fall out of favour, in more recent years he has regained his popularity. He never married, and in his will he left most of his possessions to his niece Johanna, though his art collection was auctioned posthumously. Often referred to as the "musician's musician", Handel was a favourite of Bach, who attempted to meet him on several occasions but was always unsuccessful, and later Mozart and Beethoven, who described him as, "he master of us all... the greatest composer that ever lived. I would uncover my head and kneel before his tomb".     

15 Reasons Why Wars Are Utterly Stupid & Daft:

15 Reasons Why Wars Are Utterly Stupid & Daft:

A list which came about because I am in the middle of revising for my final exam on the history of warfare, a topic I loathe, and the only interesting facts I manage to find about the battles are ones that are far to trivial to write about in an essay

and

because I like lists a lot. 

1) Shoes are important:

The Battle of Gettysburg, in 1863, remains the largest battle ever to have been fought on American soil. Ever. And do you know why it came about? Confederate General Robert E. Lee's army had no shoes, and when they found themselves outside the small Pennsylvanian town of Gettysburg, they thought to themselves, 'Oh hey guys, these Northerners have lots of shoes! Let's go raid the town for them!'. So they did. Where they happened to bump into the massive Union army, and realized that they'd better start fighting. The Confederates lost the battle, sadly, so I don't think they got any shoes at the end of it all. Sadface.

2) No really, they are: 

My friend Phil told me this story: during the Crimean War, the British were hopelessly disorganised, and decided to send all the left boots down to the Crimea on one ship, and all the right ones on another. And one of the ships sank. You couldn't make it up...

3) Actually, the whole of the Crimean War was a bit of a farce: 

I feel a bit bad making fun of the Charge of the Light Brigade, because so many people died, which is obviously a horrible thing, and would've been devastating for their families and everything, but the whole thing was completely preventable. British cavalry were given the order to charge up the 'Valley of Death', waving their swords about, whilst the Russians blasted them to pieces with cannons on all sides, thinking the British must be drunk.

4) To be honest, most nineteenth century wars were totally ridiculous:

Take the Franco-Austrian War of 1859, for example. It's a fairly insignificant one, in the grand scheme of things, but one thing it is famous for is the fact that the French had the bright idea to utilize the new railways to get their troops to the battlefield fresh and ready to fight, whereas the Austrians went on a two week march to get there. Anyway, the Austrians eventually cottoned on to this train business, and sent their reserve force to the next battle this way. Except they got off at the wrong station and completely missed the battle. Really.

5) And if they weren't missing battles, they were being inadequately prepared:

So a few years later, in 1870, the French were fighting the Prussians, and they had this amazing new weapon, called the matrielleuse. It was a forerunner to the machine gun, so if you were into slaughtering innocent soldiers, it should totally have been your weapon of choice. The Prussians should have been completely wiped out, but they weren't, because the French soldiers hadn't been trained in how to use their new gun, so it was effectively completely pointless.

 

6) Still, at least the French actually had an army:

After Charles II was restored to the throne, Parliament wanted to control his actions as they were afraid he'd do what his father had done, and plunge the country into Civil War again. Their solution, therefore, was to pay for and control the Navy, whilst allowing Charles an army only if he promised to pay for it himself. (Which, y'know, doesn't seem like the brightest move ever - 'Of course you can have an army! Just as long as you're in total control of it, not us! That'll ensure you won't try to attack us or anything...') In the end, Charles didn't attack the MPs (he was too busy partying and being a closet Catholic, two things which totally go together...) but for many years, the English army wasn't officially recognised as such, and the country at least technically had no army. 

7) However rubbish and unofficial the English army was, at least it wasn't full of sheep:

So the Civil Wars themselves were very complex, and their origins even more so, but one of the reasons they occurred was because Charles I needed money from Parliament for a war he was fighting in Scotland - the Bishops' War. In this war, England and Scotland were fighting over Bibles (as you do...), but the English army was much larger than the Scottish one, so the Scottish generals found themselves in a bit of a quandary. They decided that if they could trick the English into thinking their army was much larger than it was, they might be unwilling to fight them - and this plan turned out to be a good one. They did indeed manage to trick the English, by padding out their ranks with sheep, whom the English thought were...particularly woolly soldiers? God knows how this one worked...

8) Mind you, at least they weren't being paid in wool:
During the 100 Years' War, coinage was in short supply, so the English soldiers were paid in sacks of wool. Because all a fighting bloke really wants to do is learn to knit...

9) And about that '100' Years' War business:
Yeah, it actually lasted 116 years. But looking on the bright side, standards in numeracy had improved immeasurably by the time the Seven Years' War rolled round, and that ended bang on time, in 1763.

10) Also, at least numeric names make sense:
100 Years' War, 30 Years' War, Seven Years' War - they're all fairly logical, no? War of 1812 - that's another fairly self-explanatory one. The War of Jenkins' Ear...yeah, perhaps not. Though thinking about it, it started because Captain Jenkins had his Ear cut off by Spanish coast guards, so the name isn't that daft, even if the war itself was...

11) If you thought the names of wars were daft, wait until you hear what's going on on the battlefield:
So there's a very famous miscommunication about the First World War, where some field commander or another sent a message via telegram saying, "We're going to war, send reinforcements" but this got mistranslated and ended up as "We're going to a ball, send three and fourpence", and I can kind of see how this happened but honestly, didn't anyone think to check if this was the right message, coming from, y'know, a battlefield. War does this to people...  

12) Sometimes, people switch sides in the middle of conflicts:
Have you ever watched a children's cartoon and seen one of those montages where the good guys chase the monster through a door, then you see them turning around with the monster chasing them, then next thing you know, they're chasing the monster again, and no one knows what's going on? You have? Good. Visualize that happening in real life, 'cause it did: in 1460, the Earl of Warwick invaded (I'm assuming from some far distant land, and not, y'know, the well known island of Warwickshire...) captured Henry VI and installed Edward IV on the throne. Ten years later, in 1470, Warwick invaded again (oh who knows, maybe the Midlands were suffering from a lot of flooding around that time...), this time reinstalling Henry VI. You couldn't make it up...


13) We didn't get much better in World War Two either:
So Dunkirk was this terribly disorganised thing, where a load of British soldiers were trapped on a beach in Normandy with German soldiers advancing towards them and readying their planes to fly over and drop bombs on them, so the government requisitioned every ship on the south coast, even little two or three man fisher-boats to go out and rescue them, and they managed it, securing the rescue of the soldiers trapped on the beaches. In fact, everyone was so elated by the events that Winston Churchill had to make a special radio broadcast reminding the country that this wasn't actually a victory - in fact, it was a pretty awful defeat.


14)Anyway, sometimes you don't even need to fight, you can just employ a terrible euphemism plonk your warship in someone else's harbour:
As the British did when the Portuguese threatened to renege on their promise to grant independence to Brazil. No shots were fired and no fighting happened, but a stern warning was issued, and the best ship in the Navy set sail for Lisbon just to reinforce the point.

15) And sometimes, you just need to sound convincing:
In 1823, President James Monroe issued the Monroe Doctrine to the rest of the world, which basically said "Hey you guys? Yeah, don't attack us, 'cause we'll so get you back worse". Well, I'm not sure he said it quite like that, but that was definitely the general gist of things. Anyway, Spain and Portugal, who had both been planning to continue or restart old wars, backed down completely upon hearing this. Even though, at the time, the US had no navy and a very poxy little army. So really, all you need to do is sound threatening enough!

Oh my God. Am I condoning bullying?! Oh dear...         

Unscrew the stars

Today marks the 163rd deathday of Caroline Herschel, who was possibly one of the most extraordinary women I have ever come across. Deemed by her own parents 'too ugly to be married', the middle-class girl grew up in Hanover, Germany, ensured that she was well-educated and used her spinsterhood to her advantage - the time she would have spent caring for her husband and any children they may have had was spent studying space, and she eventually ended up being more famous than her brother William, also a keen astronomer. She produced two astronomical catalogs which are still in use today, and on top of all this, was a professionally-trained soprano, despite being a mere four foot three inches in height. Basically, she's another woman who makes me feel hopelessly inadequate, hoorah!

Caroline Herschel, 16/03/1750 - 09/01/1848

Herschel was one of six children born to Isaac and Anna Ilse Herschel, a middle-class couple from Hanover, Germany. Isaac was a keen musician, and took a job as a bandsman in the Prussian Army, encouraging his children - including Caroline - to become well-educated not just in the sciences and maths, but also in music. However, in 1760 when she was 10, she contracted typhus, a disease which left her growth stunted (she never grew taller than 4'3") and her body physically deformed. Her own father believed that she was too ugly to ever marry, and her mother discouraged her education after this point, believing that she would be more suited to becoming a house servant, which she did from the time of her father's death in 1767, until 1772, when she accepted an invitation from her brother to go and live with him in England.

Because the King of England (George II) was from Hanover, the two countries were united, and the citizens of Hanover were granted dual-citizenship, so William Herschel (Caroline's brother, who was 12 years older than her) had moved to England in 1766, he had found it easy to set up a house in Bath, from where he taught music and organised various concerts. When she arrived, William tutored her in singing, and she became such a good singer that she was the principle soprano of many of the concerts her brother organised, and was even offered a job as a singer in Birmingham, though she declined this.

Despite being talented musicians, both the Herschels' real passions lay in the field of astronomy. William not only enjoyed spending nights looking through telescopes at the stars, but also making his own telescopes. It was Caroline, however, who ultimately proved better than her brother at crafting the instruments - she possessed incredible dexterity and patience and was willing to spend many hours making the devices. As well as this, she taught herself how to properly record the observations her brother made in the style that the key astronomers of the day used. As this work was fairly mundane, her brother encouraged her to start using the telescopes herself, and during the 1780s and 1790s, she discovered many comets, becoming the first woman to do so. 

In 1781, William discovered the planet Uranus (though he initially believed it to be a comet) and was invited to name his discovery. His initial choice of 'George' in honour of the King was overruled in favour of 'Uranus' (after the Greek god of the sky, Ouranos - making it the only planet whose name comes from Greek mythology), but the King was clearly flattered enough to offer him the position of chief astronomer to the royal family. A few years later, in 1787, Caroline was awarded £50 per year by the King to work as William's assistant - an important milestone, as it marked the first time a woman was paid for scientific work.

When William married in 1788, the amount of work he did reduced, but Caroline's output increased, as her brother's wife was able to take over the general running of the household, freeing up more of her time to study space. As well as continuing to discover comets and nebulae, she produced the Catalogue of Stars - a rather dull, but incredibly useful piece of work. With stars being discovered left, right and centre, it was often impossible to tell if your 'new' star had already been spotted by someone a few years ago, especially as the previous catalogue that had been used to confirm new discoveries was many years old. In 1798, the Royal Society published her new catalogue, which contained all the stars from the previous list, with erroneous recordings removed, as well as 560 new stars. 

After William's death in 1822, Caroline returned to Hanover, though she continued to correspond with her brother's son, John, who was also a prominent scientist. In 1828, she was awarded the Gold Medal for Science by the Royal Society (the first of many awards); the next woman to be awarded the medal was Vera Rubin in 1996. She herself died in 1848, aged 97, and though it was true that she never married as her parents predicted, it was because of this that she was able to become one of the very first female scientists to gain international recognition for her work.