Halle – A Cradle of a European Composer

Halle in the 17th Century
Germany after the Thirty Years’ War
Samuel Scheidt
Court Opera in Halle
Structural Alterations
University
The Händel Family
Handel’s Father
Handel’s Parents
Birth and Childhood
At School
Musical Lessons
Lessons with Zachow
Student
Cathedral Organist
Journey(s) to Berlin



Halle in the 17th Century
At the beginning of the 17th century the luxurious court life presided over by Count Christian Wilhelm of Brandenburg, who as Administrator of the Diocese of Magdeburg resided in Halle, led to a flourishing of courtly culture, which to some degree extended its influence to the cultural life of well-to-do citizens and to music in church and school, fostered significantly by the presence of prominent musicians in the town. But by the end of the Thirty Years' War (1618-48) the town, occupied and plundered in turn by Imperial, Swedish and Saxon invaders, had fallen a prey to dysentery and the plague and was threatened with extinction.


Germany after the Thirty Years’ War
The Thirty Years’ War had been terminated by the Treaty of Westphalia. Unified and centralised national states emerged in England, France and the Netherlands whereas Germany remained backward both politically and economically. The main reason for this was its fragmentation into many small states, secular and clerical. No speedy recovery from the devastation caused by the war could be expected, and the incipient development of unified national culture that appeared in wide areas of Europe had no counterpart in Germany.


Samuel Scheidt
But there was no lack of individual artists. One of the most significant, Samuel Scheidt (1587-1654), an outstanding musician, played a leading role in Halle’s musical life, first as court organist and later as director of court music. His reputation spread beyond the boundaries of the town and he was held to be the greatest organ master of his generation. About 600 of his compositions have come down to us. His “tabulatura nova” became generally known as a collection of toccatas, fantasies, fugues, choral and folk-song arrangements - pieces for keyboard instruments according to the Italian model on the five-line stave instead of the old system of letter notation, which was common in Germany and was known as the “organ tablature”.


Court Opera in Halle
After Samuel Scheidt’s death, Duke August appointed Philipp Stolle (1614-1675) as his successor. At the same time he founded a court opera, which performed “singing comedies” in the German language and “singing ballets”. The annual expenditure on these was quite extravagant, exceeding that of the Dresden court in 1676, for example, by 4,500 thalers. The ducal orchestra had sixteen instrumentalists, among them later famous personalities, such as Christian Ritter, Johann Beer and Johann Philipp Krieger,who also mixed in Handel’s house.


Structural Alterations
After the death of Duke August in 1680, who was the last Administrator of the Diocese of Magdeburg, the cession of the territory came into force in accordance with the terms of the Treaty of Westphalia, and Halle became part of Brandenburg. The duke’s son, Johann Adolf I, removed his court residence to nearby Weissenfels, which meant that Halle lost its status as a courtly seat, and with it various other things, including the court opera and the artists engaged at court. In Weissenfels the opera flourished once more under the direction of Johann Philipp Krieger (1649-1725).

The transfer of political control to the Electorate of Brandenburg brought fundamental political and economic changes to Halle. But at the same time the spread of the plague, which claimed 5,566 victims, more than half the town’s population, brought public life to a complete halt. Economic recovery was made possible only by the influx of people from the surrounding areas and the settlement of foreigners, refuge Huguenots, who had been brutally persecuted in France after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. They brought to Halle not only a disciplined labour force but also considerable sums of money, machines and advanced production skills.


University
The young but erudite scholar Christian Thomasius, driven away from Leipzig University because of his radical opinions, held lectures in Halle in German instead of the traditional Latin from 1690 onwards. Inter alia this bold innovation gave a decisive impetus to the foundation of a university in Halle. In this new institution of higher education were to be trained not only theologians but above all the numerous classes of officials needed by the Government of Brandenburg. The brilliant and extravagant foundation festivities took place on 11 July 1694. From then on the University was to play a significant part in the public and intellectual life of the town of Halle, not least because the new generation of young scholars, unlike their colleagues in other universities, no longer published their works in Latin but in German. By attending public disputations, often lengthy, students became familiar with the ideas of the new Enlightenment. Such were some of the new conditions which undoubtedly influenced the development of the young Handel.


The Händel Family
The Händel family presumably moved to Halle at the beginning of the 17th century. The grandfather, Valentin Händel was entered into the roll of Halle’s citizens as a “coppersmith from Preslau”. An obviously immediate ancestor, “Valten [Valentin] Händel”, had practised the same trade in 1544 in Breslau and had become a citizen of it in 1568. Valentin, the new citizen of Halle and one of good standing, married Anna, the daughter of the master coppersmith Samuel Beichling of Eisleben. Two sons of the marriage were also coppersmiths.


Handel's Father
A further son, Georg Händel, after learning the trade of a barber, went out into the world. He participated in various campaigns during the Thirty Years’ War and gained a great deal of experience as a surgeon. On his return he entered into an apprenticeship with the "barber-surgeon" Adam Albrecht and at the age of 21 he married Anna, the 34-year-old widow of the surgeon Christoph Oettinger, who lived in the Neumarkt (New Square, outside of the city wall).

Georg Händel soon acquired prestige, opulence and even fame. By 1645 he had been appointed as official surgeon for the area of Halle’s Giebichenstein Castle and in 1660 entered the service of Duke August as his personal physician. Thus advanced in life he bought the house "Zum gelben Hirsch" near the ducal residence. In 1682 the plague carried off Georg's wife and put an end to a harmonious marriage.


Handel's Parents
During the exercise of his medical duties at Giebichenstein (then a district of 50 villages northern of Halle) and especially during the difficult years in which he was assigned to duty as a plague doctor he made the acquaintance of the daughter of the Giebichenstein pastor Taust. Then in 1683, the 61-year-old “ noble, most distinguished, right honourable and highly esteemed chamberlain of the Electorate of Brandenburg, Georg Händel,” took the “ maiden Dorothea” as his second wife.


Birth and Childhood
On 23 February 1685 Georg Friederich Händel was born in his parent’s home, the present Handel House, and baptised on the next day in the church on the market place.  Little is known of his childhood and youth and almost all the information we have rests upon anecdotes which for the most part can be traced back to the first Handel biography of 1760, written by John Mainwaring.


At School
In all probability the boy, as the son of a respected, “ highly esteemed” burgess, went to the town grammar school sometimes between 1692 and 1702. - If not, he was taught by professors from there at his home. - To judge by the still extant curriculum he must have received a thorough general education, including history, geography, stylistics, logic, ethics, physics and Latin, Greek and Hebrew.


Musical Lessons
But opportunities for music were not lacking, and it may be assumed that Handel sang in the school choir and played in performances of “school comedies” produced by the headmaster, Johann Praetorius, of Quedlinburg. “ From his very childhood this Handel had discovered such a strong propensity to music”, says Mainwaring, “ That his father [...] had reason to be alarmed.” Little Handel had certainly had lessons on various instruments at home before his father limited or perhaps even forbade further musical activity - out of concern for the lad’s future.


Lessons with Zachow
But a journey to Weissenfels, which Handel is said to have made in the company of his father, might have been the occasion for apprenticing the lad to the best musician of the time in Halle, Friedrich Wilhelm Zachow (1663-1712). It was he who “ showed him the different styles of different nations; the excellencies and defects of each particular author; and, that he might equally advance to the practical part, he frequently gave him subjects to work, and made him copy, and play, and compose in his stead. Thus he had more exercise, and more experience than usually falls to the share of any learner at his years [...],” as Mainwaring reported in the mentioned biography of 1760. The fame of the boy spread beyond the town boundaries and Georg Philipp Telemann reports in his autobiography of 1739 that when on the way from Magdeburg to study in Leipzig in 1701 he stopped in Halle especially “ to make the acquaintance of the already famous Mr. Georg Friedr. Händel.”


Student
A year later, in February 1702, the young artist entered his name on the roll of Halle University - probably in deference to his recently deceased father. But his main interest continued to be his music and it may well be that he had made up his mind to become a musician while still a 12-year-old boy, when he signed the poem that he wrote in honour of his father with the inscription “George Friedrich Händel / Der freyen Künst ergebener” (“Dedicated to the liberal arts.”)


Cathedral Organist
In the same year, on 13 March 1702 the “ studiosus Georg Friedrich Händel [...] recommended above all others for his skilfulness” was appointed organist at the reformed (Calvinist) cathedral. Here he came into contact with Halle’s famous musical ensemble, the “ Hautbois Band of the Hyntzsches.” Later he recalled: “ I used to write like the Devil in those days, but chiefly for the hautbois, which was my favourite instrument...“ In view of the astonishing productivity of his later years this remark may be taken to indicate a very great number of compositions during his period in Halle though not a single one of these works has come down to us directly. We can only surmise that some parts of them were taken up and used in later compositions.

Soon the pupil had outdone his teacher and Halle was “ no longer the place for a lad whose efforts were so praiseworthy.” These “efforts” obviously referred to his music more than anything else. But, as we learn from his later friend Johann Mattheson, Handel at this time pursued not only “ uncommon studies in music” but also “ other quite fine studia.” And we may take it for granted that the alert and open-minded young student and musician had seized his chances of attending the lectures of the reputed young professors at the University of Halle and becoming acquainted with their enlightened ideas.


Journey(s) to Berlin
But, as we have said, it was his artistic future that lay at the centre of his aspiration, and it was no doubt this future that his journeys to the court of Berlin (in 1697 and 1702/3?) were intended to further. Handel stayed supposedly at Lietzenburg Castle – the “Musenhof” (“Where the muses abide”) of the baroque in Brandenburg-Prussia.  The mistress of the castle, Sophie Charlotte (1668-1705), loved music and theatre and engaged famous artists, among them the composers Attilio Ariosti (since 1697) and Giovanni Bononcini (since 1702/03). Here young Handel’s art was admired, too. We do not know any further details about the circumstances, aims and outcome of this (or another previous) sojourn in Berlin. Certainly this journey also contributed to the maturing of his personality and possibly also to his decision to leave Halle once and for all and go to Hamburg.