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13 - Handel as a concerto composer

from Part II - The music

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2011

Donald Burrows
Affiliation:
The Open University, Milton Keynes
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Summary

London, where Handel spent his mature career, can be regarded as the historical home of the public concert. John Banister's concerts in 1672 have a claim to being the first-ever series of such concerts, though Banister may previously have attempted a similar venture in Oxford. During Handel's lifetime benefit concerts, usually involving a mixed programme of instrumental and vocal items, were a regular, if occasional, part of the London theatre programmes. Hickford's concert room was an established concert venue, and was one of the places attended by a visiting Frenchman in the mid 1720s:

While we are on the subject of music, I must tell you about the public concerts in London, which are poor stuff compared with ours. We heard one which took place in a low room, decorated throughout but with dirty paint, which is usually a dance-hall; there is a platform at one end that you climb a few steps to get on to, and that is where the musicians are placed. They played some sonatas and sang English and German ballads: you pay 5 shillings for these inferior concerts. We attended another concert on the first floor of a coffee-house, where the violins from the opera house play every Thursday. They were all Germans, who play very well but rather inexpressively; one of them played the German flute excellently. We also saw a clergyman playing the cello.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1997

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