Piano Music - Georg Friedrich Handel

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Handel

📖 "Conceive the highest you can of his abilities, and they are far beyond anything you can conceive."
Dr John Arbuthnot
In Young, Handel (1947)

📖 "I sat close by [Beethoven] and heard him assert very distinctly in German, 'Handel is the greatest composer that ever lived.' I cannot describe to you with what pathos, and I am inclied to say, with what sumblimity of language, he spoke of the Messiah of this immortal genius. Every one of us was moved when he said, 'I would uncover my head, and kneel down at his tomb.'"
Edward Schulz
On a visit to Beethoven, in The Harmonium (January 1824)

📖 "[Of an edition of Handel's works:] There is the truth."
Ludwig van Beethoven
Remark on his deathbed, in Young Handel (1947)

📖 "I think Handel never gets out of his wig, that is, out of his age: his Hellelujah Chorus is a chorus, not of angels, but of well-fed earthly choristers, ranged tier above tier in a Gothic cathedral, with princes for audience, and their military trumpets flourishing over the full volume of the organ. Handel's gods are like Homer's, and his sublimes never reached beyond the region of the clouds."
Edward Fitzgerald
In a letter (1842)

📖 "[On hearing the Hallelujah Chorus:] He is the master of us all."
Joseph Haydn
In Headington The Bodley Head History of Western Music (1974)

📖 "Handel was the Jupiter of music; … the hallelujahs open the heavens. He utters the word 'Wonderful', as if all their trumpets spoke together. And then, when he comes to earth, to make love amidst numphs and shepherds (for the beauties of all religions find room in his breast), his strains drop milk and honey, and his love is the youthfulness of the Golden Age."
Leigh Hunt, Table Talk (1851)

📖 "Handel understands effect better than any of us - when he chooses, he strikes like a thunderbolt."
Wolfgang Amadeus mozart
In Young Handel (1947)

Georg Friedrich Handel

1685 - 1759
Georg Friedrich Handel was a German-British Baroque composer.

📖 "Learn all there is to learn, and then choose your own path."

📖 "I should be sorry, my Lord, if I have only succeeded in entertaining them; I wish to make them better."
To Lord Kinnoull after the first London performance of Messiah

📖 "What a wonderful thing it is to be sure of one's faith! How wonderful to be a member of the evangelical church, which preaches the free grace of God through Christ as the hope of sinners! If we were to rely on our works-my God, what would become of us?"

📖 "I did think I did see all Heaven before me, and the great God Himself."
In words to his servant, who found Handel alone and weeping, after completing Part II of Messiah with the 'Hallelujah Chorus.'

Quotes by Georg Friedrich Handel

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Explore Recordings of Georg Handel's Music

Complete (16) Keyboard Suites (Century’s recording)
Eric Heidsieck, piano

Editions of Georg Friedrich Handel's Keyboard Works / Piano Music

A Third Set of Lessons for the Harpsichord, ed. S. Arnold (London, c1793) [vols.cxxx–cxxxi of Arnold edn] [A]

Pieces for the Harpsichord, ed. W.B. Squire and J.A. Fuller Maitland (London, 1928) [B]

Unbekannte Meisterwerke der Klaviermusik, ed. W. Danckert (Kassel, 1930) [D]

The Young Pianist’s Händel, i, ed. M. Aldridge (London, 1969) [P]

Pieces à un & deux clavecins (Amsterdam, Roger, ?1721) [based on pre-1720 sources] [Roger]

Suites de pieces pour le clavecin, i (London, 1720) [partly new, partly earlier material]; HG ii, 1–60; HHA iv/1 [1720]

Prelude et chaconne avec LXII variations, op.1 (Amsterdam, ?1732) [1732¹]

Sonata pour le clavecin, op.2 (Amsterdam, ?1732) [1732²]

Capriccio pour le clavecin, op.3 (Amsterdam, ?1732) [1732³]

Preludio et allegro pour le clavecin, op.4 (Amsterdam, ?1732) [17324]

Fantasie pour le clavecin, op.5 (Amsterdam, ?1732) [17325]

Suites de pieces pour le clavecin, ii (London, 1733) [?unauthorized print of material from Roger excluded from 1720, and other items]; HG ii, 63–122; HHA iv/5 [1733]

Six Fugues or Voluntarys, op.3 (London, 1735); HG ii, 161–74; HHA iv/6, 1–23 [1735] (nos. 264, 231, 37, 27, 17, 83)

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