The Voice
Handel was loud. In every sense. Loud voice, loud personality, loud appetites, loud music. Born in Halle, trained in Hamburg and Italy, settled in London, he became more English than the English while never losing the German accent. The voice was powerful — the instrument of a large man (he was famously corpulent) who filled rooms the way an organ fills a cathedral. Not subtle. When Handel was happy, the room knew. When Handel was angry, the building knew. He reportedly threatened to throw a soprano out a window when she refused to sing his notes as written.
He spoke in at least four languages — German, Italian, English, and French — and switched between them mid-sentence, grabbing whichever language had the word he needed. Musical metaphors governed everything. He spoke of composition as divine dictation. After writing the Hallelujah Chorus, he told his servant: “I did think I did see all Heaven before me, and the great God Himself.” Whether this was genuine ecstasy or excellent self-promotion — and with Handel the two were inseparable — the statement captures the voice at its most characteristic: operatic intensity applied to everything, including describing how he wrote an opera.
How We Know
No recording exists. But the documentary evidence is extraordinary: contemporary accounts from singers, librettists, patrons, and rivals. His biographer John Mainwaring (1760) — who wrote the first biography of any composer — describes Handel’s temperament in vivid detail. Concert accounts from the 1740s describe his conducting style: emphatic, physical, brooking no dissent.
Letters survive, though fewer than you’d expect — Handel was not a prolific correspondent. The best evidence comes from the people who worked with him, especially the singers and instrumentalists who left accounts of his rehearsal methods: passionate, demanding, alternately terrifying and generous.
The Accent
German-accented English. Born in Halle, Saxony-Anhalt. The accent would have been Central German — softer than Prussian, harder than Bavarian. He moved to London in 1712 and became a British citizen in 1727, but the German accent persisted throughout his life. Contemporary accounts consistently describe his English as heavily accented. The combination of German consonants, Italian musical vocabulary, and English syntax created something uniquely Handelian.
Italian was his musical language — operas, oratorios, and correspondence with Italian musicians were all conducted in Italian. French he used at court. English was his civic language. German was his native tongue. The result was a polyglot who thought in music and expressed himself in whichever language was convenient.
In Their Own Words
“I did think I did see all Heaven before me, and the great God Himself.” On composing the Hallelujah Chorus. The archaic English construction — “I did think I did see” — is Handel’s non-native syntax showing through. A native speaker would say “I thought I saw.” Handel’s version is clumsier and infinitely more powerful. The repetition of “did” gives it biblical weight.
“Madam, I know you are a devil — but I will show you that I am Beelzebub.” Reportedly said to the soprano Francesca Cuzzoni when she refused to sing an aria as written. The theological escalation — from devil to Beelzebub, prince of devils — is pure Handel: taking the insult and raising it, the way he took Italian opera and raised it to oratorio.
What They Sounded Like in Context
It is April 1742. Dublin’s Fishamble Street Music Hall. Handel conducts the premiere of Messiah before an audience of 700. The space is so crowded that women have been asked to wear dresses without hoops and men to leave their swords at home. Handel’s voice — deep, German-accented, enormous — has been commanding rehearsals for weeks. The soloists know better than to deviate from the score. The chorus has been drilled to Handelian precision. When the Hallelujah Chorus begins, the effect is seismic. The audience erupts. When the work comes to London, the King will stand during the Hallelujah Chorus — possibly because he is moved, possibly because he needs to stretch his legs — and everyone will follow, establishing a tradition that persists three centuries later. Handel conducts it all from the keyboard, his large frame swaying, his German voice calling corrections to the performers between movements. He composed the entire work in twenty-four days. Twenty-four days. The voice that claims to have seen Heaven during the composition is the same voice that berates a soprano, gorges on a meal, and gives enormous sums to the Foundling Hospital. All at full volume. All at once. Handel will go blind and keep conducting. The music will outlast everything, including the voice.
Sources
- Mainwaring, John. Memoirs of the Life of the Late George Frederic Handel. R. and J. Dodsley, 1760.
- Burrows, Donald. Handel. Oxford University Press, 2012.
- Harris, Ellen T. George Frideric Handel: A Life with Friends. W. W. Norton, 2014.
- Dublin premiere accounts, 1742. Various archives.