[24] The first representation took place June 1, 1700, with a pastoral ballet of Ariosti. Leibnitz was present at the full rehearsal.
[25] All that one has heard of his meeting with Ariosti and Bononcini is somewhat legendary. A. Ebert has shown that Ariosti only went to Berlin in 1697, and that Bononcini did not arrive in Germany till November, 1697, and they were not there together before 1702. In order that Handel should have met them there it was necessary that they should return in 1703 on their way to Hamburg. But then he was eighteen years; and the legend of the infant prodigy being victorious over the two masters thus disappears (Attilio Ariosti in Berlin, 1905, Leipzig).
[26] The broad-minded policy of the Electors of Brandenburg attracted to their University at Halle many of the most independent men in Germany who had been persecuted elsewhere. Thus the Pietists who were driven from Leipzig came to Halle. Indeed they flocked there from all parts of Germany, Switzerland, and the Low Countries (Volbach: Vie de Haendel, and Levy-Bruhl: L’Allemagne depuis Leibnitz, 1890).
[27] See the fine studies of J. S. Bach by Pirro.
[28] One knows that the trial of witchcraft was one of the many blots on this period. More than a hundred thousand victims perished in the funeral pyres of witchcraft in one century! Frederick II said that if women could die peacefully of old age in Germany, it was all owing to Thomasius.
[29] The yearly contract with the Cathedral church was dated March 30, 1702, a month after he had signed the faculty of law.
[30] Telemann, passing through Halle in 1701, said that he made the acquaintance of Handel, who was already there “a man of importance” (“Dem damahls schon wichtigen Herrn Georg Friedrich Haendel”)—a singular epithet indeed to apply to a child of sixteen years! Chrysander had indeed reason to insist on the precocious maturity of Handel, “No one was his equal in that, even J. S. Bach, who developed much more slowly!”
[31] Already for several years he had composed “like the devil,” as he said of himself once.
[32] There are attributed to him two oratorios (very doubtful), one Cantata, Ach Herr mich armen Sünder, and a Laudate Pueri for Soprano solo, which are anterior to his departure for Hamburg.
[33] Alfred Heuss was the first to show what attraction the musical drama had for Zachau, who introduced it even into the Church. Some of his cantatas, the 4th, for example, Ruhe, Friede, Freud und Wonne, very unjustly criticised by Chrysander, is a fragment of a fantastic opera where one finds David tormented by evil spirits. The declamation is expressive, and the choruses have a highly dramatic effect. Thus we see the theatrical career of Handel was prepared in Halle, and perhaps it was Zachau himself who sent Handel to Hamburg (A. Heuss: Fr. Wilh. Zachau als dramatischer Kantaten-Komponist). (I.M.G., May, 1909).