Scholars outside Germany have, with good reason, tended to avoid a direct confrontation with the first twenty-one years of Handel's life. First, there are few primary sources relating to his upbringing and education, and the secondary material from the eighteenth century is fraught with obvious inaccuracies and misunderstandings. Furthermore, whatever can be gleaned from the most influential accounts – most notably Mainwaring's of 1760 – might seem, on first sight, irrelevant to a composer whose talents and international exposure seem to stretch well beyond the confines of Halle and Hamburg.

Two of Handel's earliest English biographers, Mainwaring and Hawkins, both try to portray the composer as an isolated genius, who – in Hawkins's view – learned to play the clavichord with virtually no previous experience of music. Even the most significant German biographer, Chrysander (who otherwise fills in many of the spaces in previous accounts of the German years), tends to underplay the achievement of Handel's teacher, Zachow, in order to emphasise the composer's innate talent. More recent writers have, fortunately, redressed the balance, showing quite clearly that Handel did not miraculously spring fully formed into cosmopolitan musical life. Nevertheless, surprisingly few have observed the sheer variety of musical institutions and patronage that Handel experienced before he left Germany, something which undoubtedly contributed to his uncanny ability to handle both court support and public financing during his active career in England.