# What makes Handel's music so English?



## Sven Bjorg (Sep 29, 2014)

Handel, or Händel was born in Germany, but moved to London in his twenties. To my ear, his music sounds incredibly English. I'm no musician at all, so forgive my rudimentary describing that his Dixit Dominus sounds 'stiff' 'stilted' and 'rigid' - Like the cliche stiff British upper lip! His music also sounds very reductive, unlike Bach's music, which is obviously far more complex. In my mind, Handel's music fits well with the image of an old aristocratic Englishmen. It fits in with the deductivism of classic British economic theory too. 

I just can't seem to describe exactly what I mean! Is there anyone here who too thinks Handel's music sounds too English? What is an English style? Are there any earlier compositions by Handel, which could show his native German style before he became subject to this 'Englishness' I'm alluding to in this thread? It'd be interesting to listen to the difference between the two styles. Has it got something to do with cantus firmi perhaps?


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

Honestly, I've never noticed an English element in Handel's music although it likely makes sense that some of the British sensibilities would seep into his works.


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## ptr (Jan 22, 2013)

^^ I'm also one of those that only hear the German tone in Händel's music!

/ptr


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Handel's style was highly eclectic and changed over time. Or perhaps it's more accurate to say that he drew upon different stylistic lineages - German, Italian, French, English - according to his milieu and genre. I do hear a Purcellian English element in the late oratorios and anthems, but the operas are filled with Italianate melody, he could write a French overture or keyboard suite with the best of them, and could outfugue anyone but J.S. Bach himself. I think the "reductive" element you perceive derives mainly from his experience in Italian-style opera, with its emphasis on melody and terse, striking dramatic effects. I also suspect that we think of his music as "English" because he dominated and defined English music during and for some time after his lifetime. Unlike the great choral works of Bach, Handel's oratorios - particularly _Messiah_ - never disappeared from sight in his adopted country and never had to be "revived."


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

To my ears, nothing in the music itself, zip, nada. He became English by taking a citizenship, but arrived there fully trained, with all his training and musical influences being German, Italian, mainly (and other European styles, the third strongest element, French) (my hunch on the alleged 'Purcell' influence is that it comes via an English, or Anglophile, musicologist or historian who was more than a little eager to have something _actually a bit English having influenced Handel_  He composed operas, oratoria, and songs in English text, and setting aside the floridness of the general late baroque (Galante - Fr.) style, I would say he set texts in English quite masterfully, i.e. no sense of a foreigner setting texts awkwardly in a second less familiar tongue.

Because he established himself there when young, and composed so much while there, and 'being English,' the English, and many an article on music, will name him as an English composer, and his music is sometimes known as the "height of the English baroque."

Stylistically, I will always hear the synthesis of the Germanic and Italianate styles more constant and dominant than any of his other (European) influences; nor can I ever hear his music or think of him as English, while many will, and do


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Handel studied Purcell's scores. He was significantly influenced by Purcell when it came to writing English odes early during his career in England when he was writing all those operas. That's what I think.


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## schigolch (Jun 26, 2011)

In any case, the right question should be what makes English music so Händel...


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

The only really predominant English factor is the English texts he used for his vocal works - the music itself is by and large within the French/German/Italian parameters of the times. Handel's music is a bit like the English people themselves - an entity made from a mixture of different bloodlines.


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## nicktom (Mar 24, 2015)

Handel can be all things to all men - Dixit Dominus, don't forget was written when he was barely twenty and had never visited England.
Giulio Cesare is predominantly Italian; Teseo verging on French, but the Allegro perhaps the greatest marriage of English words to music ever devised (unless that honour should go to Semele).
At his best, he is not stiff: just listen to Oh Sleep from Semele, Se pietà from Giulio Cesare and Trip it, trip it from l'Allegro and get back to me...


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

It sounds very English to me too. I would not be able to explain it in terms of musical theory, but there is a kind of stateliness and dignity about it that is easy to associate with aristocracy. Yeah, I know, it is a worn-out stereotype.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

I don't find Handel's music particularly English at all.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Acis and Galatea sounds like it was influenced by Dido and Aeneas.

The truth is I'm not familiar with very much English baroque music, if anyone has any suggestions I'd be keen to listen to some. I know about renaissance English music - Byrd, Gibbons, Peter Philips, Thomas Morley, Giles Farnaby etc. But not later stuff, apart from Henry Purcell.


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## Headphone Hermit (Jan 8, 2014)

as elgars ghost and Petrb point out, Handel's music is much more obviously rooted in an Italian and German tradition than an English one. 

That some people associate Handel's music with 'englishness' has more to do with associations in their minds than with associations with the music ... a bit like Dvorak's New World being associated with Hovis rather than the music itself being informed by factory-made brown bread


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Semele and Giulio Cesare sound Italian to me.


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