by Brian Roser
Handel is probably best known for the Hallelujah chorus from Messiah. It has been sung every year since its first performance in 1742. Imagine the situation where your cover band is not only going strong after you retire, but when your cover band’s grandkids die of old age, they are still playing your music. As impressive as that is, however, I want to discuss a different composition of his.
Handel started out working for Georg Ludwig, the Elector of Hanover. Soon afterwards, however, he took a trip to London and fell in love with the city. Pretty soon, he was writing music for Queen Anne and told dear old Georg to take his job and shove it. A few years later, Anne’s health began to fail. She fell ill and died. The British Parliament decided that they had had quite enough of Catholic monarchs, thank you very much. Since all of the queen’s closest relatives in Britain were Catholic, this meant they had to go abroad to look for a suitable Protestant monarch. The closest relative that fit the bill was good old Georg Ludwig of Hanover, who then became King George the first.
Think about that for a second.
You tell your boss to take a hike and start your awesome new dream job. Everything is going great until your new boss retires and your old boss, the one you told where he could stick it, is now your boss again. This had to suck. Now Handel is in the dog house and if he can’t think of something quick, he will literally never work in that town again. Just saying he is sorry is not going to cut it. There is too much ass for him to kiss to make this go away. He needed to think of something big and he needed to do it fast.
He finds out that George is going to be taking a boat ride on the Thames. Knowing that his livelihood depends on this, he puts together the best, most awesome, resume busting piece of music he can think of. He gets together a pretty sizeable band and when the king floats within earshot, they start playing. It has to be tough to conduct an entire orchestra while holding your breath and crossing your fingers at the same time.
Luckily for him, it worked. The king loved it, and forgave Handel enough to have him play Water Music a few more times during his Thames excursion. After that, he didn’t employ Handel directly as Anne had done, but he didn’t stand in the way of Handel getting work from other British dukes. Handel even wrote the coronation music for his successor, George II.
Handel lived to the ripe old age of 74, having had a long and successful career by the time he died. It might have gone another way, though because of that one day when it all came down to him having to play his goddamn heart out just to stay afloat.
