United States or Niger ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The composer Telemann, four years his senior, spoke of him as being already a musician of importance at Halle when he first met him there, probably in 1700.
It cannot have been his musical abilities alone that won him the immediate friendship of Telemann at Halle and Mattheson at Hamburg; and, although he seems from his earliest days to have been ambitious and determined to make a career for himself, his contemporaries give the impression that he was retiring rather than self-assertive.
During these six months in Germany, Handel reverted for a moment to German music; he set what is known as the Brockes Passion, a sacred cantata in verse by the Hamburg poet Brockes, which had already been set once by Keiser. Later on it was set to music again by two of Handel's former friends, first by Telemann, and then by Mattheson.
There are certain 'primitives' of the quartet Johann Christian Bach, Gossec, Telemann, Michel Haydn who have written music full of the rarest melodic charm and freshness. I have much excellent material laid by, but as you know," concluded Mr. Betti with a sigh, "one has so little time for anything in America."
Judas Maccabaeus Gluck Thomas Morell incipient blindness Telemann and his garden last oratorios death character and personality. The new oratorio met with surprising success. In the first place, Handel had given up the subscription system, and opened the theatre to all comers.
Handel's reply suggests that he was not much interested in gardening himself, but was most anxious to do all he could to give Telemann pleasure. He also brought a list of the rare plants desired, and Handel writes to say that he has obtained almost all of them, and will send them by Captain Carsten when he sails for Hamburg again in December.
Telemann, it will be remembered, had been a close friend of Handel's during their student days at Halle; whether they met again in Germany after Handel had taken up his residence in London is not known, but it is quite probable. Telemann appears to have been a keen gardener, and had evidently asked Handel to send him some rare plants.
We can learn from them the state of dramatic music at that time in Berlin, Leipsic, Brunswick, Hanover, Koethen; we can form from them some correct idea of the powers of Keiser, Steffani, Graupner, Schieferdecker, Telemann, Gruenwald, and others, then in possession of the lyric stage; we can thus estimate the influences which led Handel from the path that Bach so successfully followed, into that which he pursued with equal success; and though the amount of matter relating to him personally be small, much that throws light upon his early life still remains inaccessible to the English reader.
It is true that there is no mention of any parcel of music in these letters, beyond Telemann's "System of Intervals," but they suggest that they were part of a longer correspondence. Telemann was keenly interested in contemporary music, as his correspondence with Graun shows; he also seems to have asked Graun to send him plants from Berlin.
It may well be asked how Handel acquired the original copies of all the works which he utilised in his later years, since it is obvious that they could not have been well known or easily available to musicians in England. A guess may be hazarded that he obtained them through his old friend Telemann at Hamburg.
Word Of The Day