Handel Commemoration

The Handel festival or ‘Commemoration’ took place in Westminster Abbey in 1784, to commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the death of George Frideric Handel in 1759.

The commemoration was organized by John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich [GroveOnline|4th Earl of Sandwich|William Weber|November 19|2006] and the Concert of Antient Music and took the form of a series of concerts of Handel’s music, given in the Abbey by vast numbers of singers and instrumentalists.

Above Handel's own monument in the Abbey, there is a small additional tablet to record the commemoration. An account of the commemoration was published by Charles Burney in the following year (1785).

The commemoration established a fashion for large-scale performances of Handel’s choral works throughout the nineteenth century and much of the twentieth. E.D. Mackerness (in "A Social History of English Music") described it as “the most important single event in the history of English music”.

References

*E.D. Mackerness, A Social History of English Music, London, 1964.
*H. Diack Johnstone, A Ringside Seat at the Handel Commemoration. Musical Times, Vol. 125, No. 1701 (Nov., 1984), pp. 632-633+635-636
*William Weber, The 1784 Handel Commemoration as Political Ritual. Journal of British Studies, Vol. 28, No. 1 (Jan., 1989), pp. 43-69
*Pierre Dubois, Reviews of the Handel Commemoration of 1784: Discourse and Reception. [http://ies.sas.ac.uk/events/conferences/2006/ESSE8/SeminarCFPs/georgian.pdf ESSE-8: LONDON 2006]

External links

* [http://www.westminster-abbey.org/library/burial/handel.htm Handel's monument at Westminster Abbey]
* [http://www.aam.co.uk/features/9912.htm Messiah in other hands] by Donald Burrows
* [http://www.aam.co.uk/features/aam18c.htm The Original Academy of Ancient Music] by William Weber