Georg Friedrich Händel
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GEORG FRIEDRICH HAENDEL
IN FITZWILLIAM MUSEUM
Baroque composer George Frideric Handel was born in Halle, Germany, in 1685. In 1705 he made his debut as an opera composer with Almira. He produced several operas with the Royal Academy of Music in England before forming the New Royal Academy of Music in 1727. When Italian operas fell out of fashion, he started composing oratorios, including his most famous, Messiah. Handel died in London, England, in 1759.
Full-length marble statue of the composer George Frideric Handel (1685–1759) was commissioned by the entrepreneur and collector Jonathan Tyers, who ran Spring Gardens at Vauxhall in London in the mid-18th century. Handel was then a leading figure in the capital's musical life. Since public life-size marble statues of living subjects were until this date undertaken only for monarchs, noblemen or military leaders, this figure made a considerable impact at the time. It is the earliest-known independent work by Roubiliac, and established his reputation as a sculptor.
Handel has not dressed up to have his portrait taken. He sits comfortably in his indoor clothes. He is totally at ease with the little naked boy who writes down the music which the composer is striking on a lyre.
The boy has propped his paper against a viol, and an oboe and flute lie discarded beside him. Handel has crossed his legs and listens attentively to his own music, while his left elbow rests on leather-bound scores of his operas.
The sculptor has captured the lively, informal and friendly atmosphere of many 18th century novels and plays. He has achieved this not only through the pleasant attitude in which he has portrayed Handel, but also through the relaxed rhythm of the body, the soft curves of the clothes, and the rich textures wherever the light ripples over the crumpled surfaces. Yet the statue is carefully composed: the S curve of the body is framed on the left by the undulating line of the gown, and on the right the lyre and viol pick up the curves of the boy's body and the composer's arm and face.
Roubiliac probably knew Handel. They might have met at Slaughter's Coffee House in St Martin's Lane to exchange gossip and discuss Handel's scores, which had been published with engraved illustrations by Gravelot, a French artist who was also a friend of the most famous frequenter of Slaughter's, William Hogarth. They may all have discussed Hogarth's engravings of 'The Rake's Progress' and 'Handel's Oratorios' before setting off up the river to the pleasure gardens at Vauxhall owned by yet another friend of Hogarth, the businessman Jonathan Tyers.
Tyers had opened the Vauxhall Gardens to the public in 1723, about ten years before he commissioned Roubiliac to make the statue. Well-to-do middle-class Londoners brought their friends to Vauxhall for a meal in one of the supper-boxes, which lined both the grove surrounding the bandstand and the two major walks, where on the south side stood our statue of Handel. The lighthearted qualities of the 18th century found expression in the music, the manners of the visitors, and the decorations of the supper-boxes.
Like Gravelot, Roubiliac was French. He had worked in Paris with a sculptor who also came from Lyons, Nicolas Coustou. In painting the informal style of portraiture was accepted during the first decades of the 18th century and the négligé was clearly acceptable for a portrait bust, even in England, but such informality in a full-length statue was achieved for the first time by Roubiliac in our statue of Handel.
The Fitzwilliam Museum’s music holdings are among the most important in this country. At their core is the collection bequeathed to the University by Viscount Fitzwilliam in 1816 after a lifetime of studying, composing, and performing music. They include the celebrated Fitzwilliam Virginal Book and Handel material second in importance only to the Royal Collection in the British Library. Handel was the greatest hero of the Museum’s founder, who acquired some of his autographs and organised together with fellow-enthusiasts the 1784 festival of Handel’s music in Westminster Abbey.
In 1902, these holdings were further enhanced by Francis Barrett Lennard’s gift of 67 volumes of copies of Handel’s scores, shelved in the fine cabinet known as ‘Handel’s bookcase’. Stimulated by acquisitions made under the Directorship of Sydney Cockerell (1908-1937), the collection has continued to grow, and now includes autograph scores by Purcell, Bach, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Wagner, Brahms, Stravinsky, Elgar, Vaughan Williams, Britten, and Tippett.
BY MACIEJ ŁUCZAK
Photo by fusion-of-horizons
