Music for the Royal Fireworks
performed Nov 23, 2003

There is an element of paradox about the career of George Frideric Handel (1685-1759). Born in Halle in 1685, the son of a distinguished and elderly barber-surgeon by his second wife, the young Handel gave up other studies in order to become a musician, working first in Hamburg at the opera, as composer and harpsichordist. From there he moved to the source of all opera, Italy, where he made a name for himself as a composer and performer. A meeting in Venice with Baron Kielmansegge led him to Hanover as Kapellmeister and from there, almost immediately, to London, where he was invited to provide music for the newly established Italian opera. It was then, primarily as a composer of Italian opera, that Handel made his early reputation in England. Handel moved to England in 1716, employed by the Duke of Chandos, and in 1719 accepted the appointment as music director of the newly formed Royal Academy of Music. When fickle audiences brought rough times upon Italian opera in London, Handel turned to writing oratorios. In April 1759, Handel fainted during a performance of the Messiah, and died soon after.

As part of the celebrations celebrating the treat of Aix-la-Chapelle, Handel was asked by George II to create a suite for an immense pyrotechnic display to be held on April 27, 1749, and Music for the Royal Fireworks was born. A rehearsal on April 21 went well, with a hundred musicians playing to a crowd of over 12,000! The same could not be said of the main event: "The rockets succeeded mighty well, but the wheels, and all that to compose the principal part, were pitiful and ill-conducted ... and then, what contributed to the awkwardness of the whole, was the right pavilion catching fire, and being burnt down in the middle of the show." Nonetheless, Handel's music was an enormous success against this comic backdrop, and has remained a staple of the repertoire.

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