According to people who knew him, George Frideric Handel was a "very portly man", "impetuous, rough, and peremptory in his manners and conversation but totally devoid of ill-nature...; there was an original humour and pleasantry in his most lively sallies of anger or impatience." He was the son of a barber-surgeon and a Lutheran pastor's daughter. His father wanted him to become a lawyer, but the boy's talent and passion for music decreed a different life for him. At 17 he became a church organist (he was later known as one of the most brilliant keyboard virtuosos of his day), and at 18 he went to Hamburg, where he studied composition and wrote his first operas. He might have become an organist in LŸbeck, but would have had to marry the daughter of his predecessor, Buxtehude; he took one look at her and turned down the offer - as did Bach two years later. (Handel never married, and someone who knew him reported that he "scorned the advice of any but the Woman he loved, but his Amours were rather of short duration.") In 1706 he went to Italy: during his four years in Venice, Florence, Rome and other major cities he gained valuable experience and considerable success as a composer of operas, oratorios, cantatas, concertos and sonatas. He became Kapellmeister to the Elector of Hanover in 1710, but he was so well received during his first visit to England later that year that he determined not to return. He settled in London in 1712. Although he was to experience great difficulties as well as triumphs there, England remained his home for the rest of his life. In 1737 he had a stroke, from which he recovered, but he became blind at 67. He died in London at the age of 74, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. According to the Handel expert Winton Dean, after the composer's death "this prince of public entertainers, a pantheist and hedonist who loved to depict the sensual pleasures... was by a singular irony transformed into a marble monument of respectability." But a major Handel revival, still underway, has begun to destroy the monument and give us back the warm-blooded composer. Harvey Sachs Biographical notes (c) 1996, reprinted by permission of Deutsche Grammophon GmbH, Hamburg A selection of major works: Orchestral: Concerti grossi (Op. 3 & 6), Music for the Royal Fireworks, Overtures, Water Music, Organ Concertos. Chamber: Sonatas, Trio Sonatas, Violin Sonatas Instrumental solo: Fugues and Voluntaries, Suites for Keyboard. Choral: Alexander's Feast, Athalia, L'allegro, il penseroso e il moderato, Belshazzar, Chandos Anthems, Coronation Anthems, Hercules, Israel in Egypt, Jephtha, Joshua, Judas Maccabaeus, Lucrezia, Messiah, Ode for St Cecilia's Day, La Resurrezione, Samson, Saul, Semele, Solomon, Susanna, Theodora. Stage works: Operas: Agrippina, Alcina, Ariodante, Atalanta, Giulio Cesare, Giustino, Orlando, Rinaldo, Rodelinda, Serse (Xerxes), Tamerlano.