MARBECKS COLLECTABLE: Handel: The Essential Handel

In the eighteenth century, just as in the centuries before, it was hard for a composer to make a living without royal patronage or a salaried post. Bach composed as part of his employment in a number of court and church positions, Vivaldi was a violin teacher in Venice's Ospedale della Pietà and Purcell wrote his music whilst holding the post of organist at both Westminster Abbey and the Chapel Royal. Handel was never tied down in England by a formal salaried appointment, choosing instead a more independent but less secure lifestyle, putting on performances of his own operas and oratorios, taking the profits and suffering the occasional losses. He was not only a fine composer, but also an astute businessman and shrewd diplomat whose movements in aristocratic circles and friendship with nobility and royalty ensured continuing support for his work in London's concert halls and opera houses.
During an astonishing compositional career that spanned more than fifty years Handel wrote in almost every genre; the result is a vast and rewarding corpus of operas, oratorios, odes, sacred works, cantatas, songs, concerti grossi, suites, concertos and sonatas. He exceeded the compositional output of both Mozart and Bach but, like them, his standards rarely slipped.