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Discovering Handel's London Through His Music

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Discovering Handel's London Through His Music presentations Discovering Handel’s London through His Music n May 11, 2015, Ellen T. Harris (President of the American Musicological Society and Class of 1949 Professor Emeritus in Music and Theater Arts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) spoke at the Academy about O Handel’s life and his inner circle of friends. Harris’s slide presentation and discussion was followed by a perfor- mance by members of the Boston Early Music Festival Vocal and Chamber Ensembles. The program, which served as the Academy’s 2021st Stated Meeting, included a welcome from Jonathan F. Fanton (President of the American Academy) and a remembrance of Academy members who died during the year read by Arthur M. Jaffe (Landon T. Clay Professor of Mathematics and Theoretical Science at Harvard University). The following is an edited transcript of Ellen Harris’s unscripted talk. Unexpectedly, Handel’s 1750 will was after Handel’s death, and hoped to make the best starting point I found for learning one thousand; she ended up creating about about the musician and the community of 980. Other associates of Handel included friends and intimates surrounding him. He Anne Donnellan, one of the legatees who left bequests to a number of friends, none lived nearby, and Elizabeth Mayne, who of whom were known to Handel scholars. married the lord of the manor in Teffont It seemed very strange to me that in the Evias, near the city of Salisbury. two hundred and fifty years since Handel’s How did I find out about Handel’s mys- death not one researcher had investigated terious colleagues, and where did I go to these individuals, who were referred to retrieve information about them? I spent simply as the mysterious people appearing a lot of time in historical archives, look- in Handel’s will. I suspected that they could ing through documents for evidence and emerge as more fully realized figures. The will led me ultimately to six col- leagues and acquaintances of Handel (some of whom are not actually named in the docu- ment). One of these was James Hunter, who Ellen T. Harris received a bequest, a significant portion of Ellen T. Harris is President of the American which unfortunately remains unreadable Musicological Society and Class of 1949 Professor despite the most advanced efforts to deci- Emeritus in Music and Theater Arts at the Mas- pher it. Another was Joseph Goupy, one of Handel’s colleagues who was best known as sachusetts Institute of Technology. She was elected a painter of copies of artistic masterworks a Fellow of the American Academy in 1998. for the aristocracy. (First-rate painters who specialized in reproductions were very y talk tonight stems from my most much in demand in the eighteenth century.) M recent book, George Frideric Handel: A But Goupy had a huge falling-out with Han- Life with Friends, in which I try to understand del and was not included in the will. Mary Handel, the man. We tend to think of him as Delany, who has in recent years become he is portrayed in Thomas Hudson’s famous well known for her flower mosaics, all of portrait (Figure 1), in which the rather which are preserved at the British Museum, Figure 1: Thomas Hudson, Portrait of George portly Handel is wearing brocade, silk, ruffs is another Handel colleague who fascinated Frideric Handel, 1748-1749. Image courtesy and lace, and, most important, a big wig. In me in the course of my research. Delany of the Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek a literal sense, Handel was, in fact, a bigwig. began making her mosaics at age seventy, Hamburg Carl von Ossietzky. 22 Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Summer 2015 discovering handel’s london through his music material about their personal lives. Their own handwritten wills are preserved in the United Kingdom’s National Archives, based in Kew. The legal (Chancery) copies, which function like modern typed copies, can be purchased online, but in order to see the original handwriting, which can be very useful, it’s necessary to go to the Archives. Legal documents also reveal an enormous amount of information. Bills of complaint contain striking content, and depositions are especially interesting. Like captured speech, they are as close as we might get to the gos- sip of the time. In the course of a deposi- tion, people tended to reveal an enormous amount of information in response to ques- tioning (not all of it relevant to the case). All of that material was invaluable to my effort Figure 2: James Hunter’s fire insurance policy, renewed in 1752 with the Hand-in-Hand Fire to learn about these characters in depth. and Life Insurance Society. Image courtesy of London Metropolitan Archives, London. Bank of England documents, in particu- lar, were essential to my work. Not only did in-Hand Fire and Life Insurance Society– name is written in the catalog in red, indicat- I have Handel’s records, but I also had the on his dye house in Old Ford (Figure 2). ing he was the purchaser. The authenticity of bank accounts of many of his friends. The I learned a great deal from reading in the the “Rembrandt” cannot be confirmed. All Bank of England has preserved all of its doc- margins. Hunter owned not just a single of Handel’s paintings were auctioned after uments back to its founding in 1694. Both house, but a business with many buildings: his death, and we do not yet have enough my students and my colleagues sometimes dye houses, still houses, carriages and ser- information to trace his collection. ask me why I’m spending time with docu- vants’ rooms, which, taken together, con- Combing through these records, catalogs, ments in the vaults of the Bank of England. stituted a factory. I could glean, then, that and bank documents, I got the sense that For one, they’re beautiful: these are stun- Hunter was not himself up to his elbows Handel and his friends formed a distinct ning, handwritten documents of the time. dying linen in vats, but instead delegated neighborhood. All of these people lived in very There’s a Dickensian feel to a lot of this work to his company’s workers. Fire insur- close proximity to one another. In 1723, Han- research, though much of the material pre- ance records can tell you other essential del moved to 25 Brook Street, close to Bond dates his novels by one hundred years. The information about these residences, such Street, Tiburn Road (now Oxford Street), image of Bob Cratchit of A Christmas Carol as which rooms have wainscoting or how and Grosvenor Square (where the American sitting on his clerk’s stool and writing often many chimneys a house had (an import- Embassy stands today). For some time in the came to mind. Second, if you want to know ant piece of information for fire insur- late twentieth century, there was a chance about someone, where better to look than in ance). After examining Hunter’s insurance that Handel’s house would be torn down, their financial records? I ask my students, if record, I was able to create a fairly accu- but in 2001, it opened as the London Han- I had your credit card record and your bank rate facsimile of what Hunter’s dye house del House Museum. (Much effort went into accounts, what would I learn about you? would have looked like. preserving this house as a museum. Opera- They then understand! Finally, I relied on art auction catalogs, tions began on the upper three floors, thanks I also spent a lot of time with fire insur- some of which featured beautifully hand- to a “peppercorn rent,” before the museum ance records. After the Great Fire in written records about buyers and prices. raised enough funds to buy the ground floor.) London in 1666, fire insurance became a Unknown to many, Handel had a significant The map of the neighborhood around coveted commodity. I consulted James art collection that included “a large land- St. George Hanover Square (Figure 3) Hunter’s policy–created with the Hand- scape and figure” by Rembrandt. Handel’s gives an approximation of where Handel’s Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Summer 2015 23 presentations friends lived. They moved around a great inner circle enjoyed. Elizabeth Mayne (Eliz- events, she describes Handel attending and deal. In the small area of this map, Delany abeth Batt before she married) was a harp- how he was in a good mood, which suggests had two different residences; Donnellan sichordist, noted for her playing. I tracked to me that he wasn’t always in one. She had four; Goupy had three; and Palmer down her early keyboard book from 1704 relates that Handel performed with one of had two, including a big double house on in the British Library, and in it, I found a lot his featured prima donnas, but stayed until Curzon Street. Handel is the one station- of fascinating music from the time, such the early hours of the morning accompany- ary figure. Once he moved into the house as incidental music by Purcell adapted for ing all the ladies in attendance. on Brook Street, he remained there for the keyboard and excerpts from English opera. Handel’s friend Anne Donnellan was rest of his life, dying there in 1759. In con- Batt’s name is carefully written out in gothic widely known as a singer. There are letters trast, Goupy first took leased residence on letters on the cover of the book.
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