The Hammock Papers: Handel

Showing posts with label Handel. Show all posts

23 February 2026

Happy Birthday, George Frideric Handel

Denner, Handel, 1727

George Frideric Handel was born on this day in 1685.

Leo Duarte performs the first Allegro from the Oboe Concerto No. 3 in G minor (HWV 287) with members of The Academy of Ancient Music ...

14 February 2026

10 July 2025

Handel, Water Music Suite No.2, HWV 349

Hervé Niquet at the helm of Le Concert Spirituel ...

01 July 2025

Handel, Music for the Royal Fireworks, HWV 351

Herve Niquet having the time of his life directing Le Concert Spirituel ...

Saints have no moderation, nor do poets, just exuberance.

Anne Sexton

Remember, reflect, and be exuberant this week.

22 June 2025

Handel, Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno, HWV46a

Mary Bevan sings "Lascia la spina, cogli la rosa" with Christopher Bucknall and the Academy of Ancient Music ...

26 April 2025

Handel, The Music for the Royal Fireworks (HWV 351)

The Academy of Ancient Music, conducted by Richard Egarr, perform La Rejouissance and Menuets ...

23 February 2025

Happy Birthday, Handel

Mercier, Georg Friedrich Handel, 1730

George Frideric Handel was born on this day in 1685.

Giovanni Antonini conducts Il Giardino Armonico's performance of the Concerto Grosso in D-Major, Op. 6, No. 5, HWV 323 ...

02 February 2025

Handel, Ode for the Birthday of Queen Anne, HWV 74

Marie-Sophie Pollak performs "Eternal Source of Light Divine" with members of Ensemble Concerto Munchen, featuring Matthew Sadler on the baroque trumpet ...

01 January 2025

Handel, L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato HWV 55

Amanda Forsythe, Thomas Cooley, and Voices of Music perform "As Steals the Morn" ...

20 October 2024

08 July 2024

19 June 2024

Handel, An Occasional Oratorio, HWV 62

The Sebastians, under the flailing baton of Patrick Dupré Quigley, perform the Overture ...

23 February 2024

Happy Birthday, Handel

Mercier, George Frederick Handel, 1730

In 1743, following the first London performance of his masterpiece, Messiah, a friend congratulated Handel (born on this day in 1685) on the excellent “entertainment” he had provided the audience.

“My Lord, I should be sorry if I only entertained them,” Handel humbly replied. “I wish to make them better.”

Herve Niquet and Le Concert Spirituel improves us in two minutes, blasting through some Coronation Anthems ...

21 October 2023

Handel, Oboe Concerto in G Minor, HWV 287

Alfredo Bernardini performs with the Altberg Ensemble ...

06 August 2023

Handel, Oboe Concerto in G-Minor, HWV 287

Featuring Alfredo Bernardini and the Altberg Ensemble ...

20 July 2023

Published.

Handel, Water Music Suite No. 1, HWV 348: Overture, 1717

George Frideric Handel published his Water Music Suites on this day in 1717.

Hervé Niquet conducts Le Concert Spirituel ...

19 July 2023

Published.

George Frideric Handel published Dixit Dominus, HWV 232, on this day in 1707.

Monteverdi Choir and the English Baroque Soloists perform under the masterful direction of Sir John Eliot Gardiner ...

19 June 2023

Handel, Suite No. 5 in E Major, HWV 430, “The Harmonious Blacksmith”

Performed by Monica Raczynski, clanger, Albrecht Mayer, oboe, and Guilhaume Santana, bassoon ...

10 April 2023

Handel, Giulio Cesare, HWV 17

Jeanine De Bique performs “V’adoro pupille saette d’amore le vostre faville don grate nel sen” ...

25 February 2023

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

WALT WHITMAN

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering. I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world. The last scud of day holds back for me, It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow’d wilds, It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk. I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun, I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags. I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles. You will hardly know who I am or what I mean, But I shall be good health to you nevertheless, And filter and fibre your blood. Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, Missing me one place search another, I stop somewhere waiting for you.

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."