Westminster Abbey

George Frederic Handel

Image of George Frederic Handel Momorial in Westminster Abbey

The famous composer Handel was born at Halle in Saxony in 1685, son of Georg and Dorothea, and died in London in 1759. He worked first at the opera house in Hamburg and spent several years in Italy before making his first visit to London in 1710. By 1717 he had settled permanently in England and in February 1727 was naturalized as an Englishman by Act of Parliament.

Handel made his reputation as a composer of Italian opera for the London stage, but like most composers of the period, he wrote music for a wide range of occasions and patrons. Some of his earliest works setting English words - a birthday ode for the Queen and a Te Deum and Jubilatein celebration of the Treaty of Utrecht - were performed before Queen Anne in 1713. The accession of George I caused Handel some embarrassment, however, for he had previously been employed by the new king in Germany (where George was Elector of Hanover) and had broken his terms of employment by remaining in England. Fortunately, the new monarch forgave Handel this misdemeanour and the composer enjoyed much royal patronage for the remainder of his life.

The works that associate Handel most closely with Westminster Abbey are the four anthems written for the coronation of George II in 1727. The best known, 'Zadok the Priest', has been used at every coronation since then, but all four continue to be regularly performed and recorded. Handel also wrote an anthem, 'The ways of Zion do mourn', for the funeral of Queen Caroline (George II's consort) who was buried in the Abbey in December 1737.

A less well-known link between Handel and the Abbey involves Esther, the composer's first oratorio, performed privately at the Crown and Anchor Tavern in the Strand in 1732 under the direction of Bernard Gates. Gates was Master of the Children of the Chapel Royal, but he was also a long-standing member of the Abbey's choir and had assembled a number of his Westminster colleagues to sing in the chorus.

Three days before his death in 1759 Handel signed a codicil to his will saying he hoped he might be buried in the Abbey and desired that his executor erect a monument for him. The funeral was attended by about 3,000 people and the choirs of the Abbey, St Paul's Cathedral and the Chapel Royal sang the service. His gravestone in the south transept reads "GEORGE FREDERIC HANDEL BORN YE 23 FEBRUARY 1684 DIED YE 14 OF APRIL 1759". The date of his birth inscribed on the stone is not a mistake but is due to the fact that the new year in England at this period did not begin on 1 January but on 25 March (Lady Day). Therefore, to the contemporary Englishman, Handel was born in February 1684, as the year 1685 would not have begun until 25 March. The coat of arms on his gravestone is now very worn.

On the wall above his grave is a fine monument by the sculptor Louis Francois Roubiliac (with the same inscription as on the stone but with the dates in Roman numerals). The life-size statue, unveiled in 1762, is said to be an exact likeness as the face was modelled from a death mask. Behind the figure, among clouds, is an organ with an angel playing a harp. On the left of the statue is a group of musical instruments and an open score of his most well-known oratorio Messiah, composed in 1741. Directly in front of him is the musical score I know that my Redeemer liveth.

Above the monument a small additional tablet records the Handel festival or 'Commemoration' of 1784. This series of concerts of Handel's music was given in the Abbey by vast numbers of singers and instrumentalists and established a fashion for large-scale performances of Handel's choral works throughout the nineteenth century and much of the twentieth.