(Section C)
(Led by F. WEIST HILL)
Conductor, ADRIAN BOULT
GEORGE FRIDERIC HANDEL , newly-appointed Kapellmeister to George,
Elector of Hanover, was granted leave of absence to visit England in 1710. The brilliant young musician, already famous at the age of twenty-five, was well received in London, achieved fame in a night with his opera Rinaldo, grew to love the city, and vowed to come again. Two years later ho returned, intentionally overstayed his leave, and comfortably forgetting all about his Hanoverian Kapellmeistership , burnt his whole fleet of continental boats and entered the service of Queen Anne. But in a little while, Anne dying, Handel had occasion to recall Hanover; for, of all possible people, the one chosen to succeed the English queen was his later master.
George, Elector of Hanover, came to
London as King George I, in 1714, making it very awkward, one would think, for the truant. Handel appeared unconcerned, however, and placing reliance on his growing reputation, sat tight and waited. So poignant a situation, so tempting a tit-bit, was more than the musical historians of two centuries have been able to resist. Of the incident of The Water Music they have perpetuated so engaging a fiction that until quite recently nobody suspected the existence of the cold fact. But to Newman Flower, the English biographer of Handel, nothing is hidden. The essence of both the fiction and the fact as recorded by him is the subject of a note in the centre column.