HAND (a word common to Teutonic languages; cf. Ger. Hand, Goth. handus), the terminal part of the human arm from below the wrist, and consisting of the fingers and the palm. The word is also used of the prehensile termination of the limbs in certain other animals (see [Anatomy]: Superficial and artistic; [Skeleton]: Appendicular, and such articles as [Muscular System] and [Nervous System]). There are many transferred applications of “hand,” both as a substantive and in various adverbial phrases. The following may be mentioned: charge or authority, agency, source, chiefly in such expressions as “in the hands of,” “by hand,” “at first hand.” From the position of the hands at the side of the body, the word means “direction,” e.g., on the right, left hand, cf. “at hand.” The hand as given in betrothal or marriage has been from early times the symbol of marriage as it also is of oaths. Other applications are to labourers engaged in manual occupations, the members of the crew of a ship, to a person who has some special skill, as in the phrase, “old parliamentary hand,” and to the pointers of a clock or watch and to the number of cards dealt to each player in a card game. As a measure of length the term “hand” is now only used in the measurement of horses, it is equal to 4 in. The name “hand of glory,” is given to a hand cut from the corpse of a hanged criminal, dried in smoke, and used as a charm or talisman, for the finding of treasures, &c. The expression is the translation of the Fr. main de gloire, a corruption of the O. Fr. mandegloire, mandegoire, i.e. mandragore, mandragora, the mandrake, to the root of which many magical properties are attributed.
HANDEL, GEORGE FREDERICK (1685-1759), English musical composer, German by origin, was born at Halle in Lower Saxony, on the 23rd of February 1685. His name was Handel, but, like most 18th-century musicians Life. who travelled, he compromised with its pronunciation by foreigners, and when in Italy spelt it Hendel, and in England (where he became naturalized) accepted the version Handel, which is therefore correct for English writers, while Händel remains the correct version in Germany. His father was a barber-surgeon, who disapproved of music, and wished George Frederick to become a lawyer. A friend smuggled a clavichord into the attic, and on this instrument, which is inaudible behind a closed door, the little boy practised secretly. Before he was eight his father went to visit a son by a former marriage who was a valet-de-chambre to the duke of Saxe-Weissenfels. The little boy begged in vain to go also, and at last ran after the carriage on foot so far that he had to be taken. He made acquaintance with the court musicians and contrived to practise on the organ when he could be overheard by the duke, who, immediately recognizing his talent, spoke seriously to the father, who had to yield to his arguments. On returning to Halle Handel became a pupil of Zachau, the cathedral organist, who gave him a thorough training as a composer and as a performer on keyed instruments, the oboe and the violin. Six very good trios for two oboes and bass, which Handel wrote at the age of ten, are extant; and when he himself was shown them by an English admirer who had discovered them, he was much amused and remarked, “I wrote like the devil in those days, and chiefly for the oboe, which was my favourite instrument.” His master also of course made him write an enormous amount of vocal music, and he had to produce a motet every week. By the time he was twelve Zachau thought he could teach him no more, and accordingly the boy was sent to Berlin, where he made a great impression at the court.
His father, however, thought fit to decline the proposal of the elector of Brandenburg, afterwards King Frederick I. of Prussia, to send the boy to Italy in order afterwards to attach him to the court at Berlin. German court musicians, as late as the time of Mozart, had hardly enough freedom to satisfy a man of independent character, and the elder Händel had not yet given up hope of his son’s becoming a lawyer. Young Handel, therefore, returned to Halle and resumed his work with Zachau. In 1697 his father died, but the boy showed great filial piety in finishing the ordinary course of his education, both general and musical, and even entering the university of Halle in 1702 as a law student. But in that year he succeeded to the post of organist at the cathedral, and after his “probation” year in that capacity he departed to Hamburg, where the only German opera worthy of the name was flourishing under the direction of its founder, Reinhold Keiser. Here he became friends with Matheson, a prolific composer and writer on music. On one occasion they set out together to go to Lübeck, where a successor was to be appointed to the post left vacant by the great organist Buxtehude, who was retiring on account of his extreme age. Handel and Matheson made much music on this occasion, but did not compete, because they found that the successful candidate was required to accept the hand of the elderly daughter of the retiring organist.
Another adventure might have had still more serious consequences. At a performance of Matheson’s opera Cleopatra at Hamburg, Handel refused to give up the conductor’s seat to the composer when the latter returned to his usual post at the harpsichord after singing the part of Antony on the stage. The dispute led to a duel outside the theatre, and, but for a large button on Handel’s coat which intercepted Matheson’s sword, there would have been no Messiah or Israel in Egypt. But the young men remained friends, and Matheson’s writings are full of the most valuable facts for Handel’s biography. He relates in his Ehrenpforte that his friend at that time used to compose “interminable cantatas” of no great merit; but of these no traces now remain, unless we assume that a Passion according to St John, the manuscript of which is in the royal library at Berlin, is among the works alluded to. But its authenticity, while strongly upheld by Chrysander, has recently been as strongly assailed on internal evidence.
On the 8th of January 1705, Handel’s first opera, Almira, was performed at Hamburg with great success, and was followed a few weeks later by another work, entitled Nero. Nero is lost, but Almira, with its mixture of Italian and German language and form, remains as a valuable example of the tendencies of the time and of Handel’s eclectic methods. It contains many themes used by Handel in well-known later works; but the current statement that the famous aria in Rinaldo, “Lascia ch’io pianga,” comes from a saraband in Almira, is based upon nothing more definite than the inevitable resemblance between the simplest possible forms of saraband-rhythm.
In 1706 Handel left Hamburg for Italy, where he remained for three years, rapidly acquiring the smooth Italian vocal style which hereafter always characterized his work. He had before this refused offers from noble patrons to send him there, but had now saved enough money, not only to support his mother at home, but to travel as his own master. He divided his time in Italy between Florence, Rome, Naples and Venice; and many anecdotes are preserved of his meetings with Corelli, Lotti, Alessandro Scarlatti and Domenico Scarlatti, whose wonderful harpsichord technique still has a direct bearing on some of the most modern features of pianoforte style. Handel soon became famous as Il Sassone (“the Saxon”), and it is said that Domenico on first hearing him play incognito exclaimed, “It is either the devil or the Saxon!” Then there is a story of Corelli’s coming to grief over a passage in Handel’s overture to Il Trionfo del tempo, in which the violins went up to A in altissimo. Handel impatiently snatched the violin to show Corelli how the passage ought to be played, and Corelli, who had never written or played beyond the third position in his life (this passage being in the seventh), said gently, “My dear Saxon, this music is in the French style, which I do not understand.” In Italy Handel produced two operas, Rodrigo and Agrippina, the latter a very important work, of which the splendid overture was remodelled forty-four years afterwards as that of his last original oratorio, Jephtha. He also produced two oratorios, La Resurrezione, and Il Trionfo del tempo. This, forty-six years afterwards, formed the basis of his last work. The Triumph of Time and Truth, which contains no original matter. All Handel’s early works contain material that he used often with very little alteration later on, and, though the famous “Lascia ch’io pianga” does not occur in Almira, it occurs note for note in Agrippina and the two Italian oratorios. On the other hand the cantata Aci, Galattea e Polifemo has nothing in common with Acis and Galatea. Besides these larger works there are several choral and solo cantatas of which the earliest, such as the great Dixit Dominus, show in their extravagant vocal difficulty how radical was the change which Handel’s Italian experience so rapidly effected in his methods.
Handel’s success in Italy established his fame and led to his receiving at Venice in 1709 the offer of the post of Kapellmeister to the elector of Hanover, transmitted to him by Baron Kielmansegge, his patron and staunch friend of later years. Handel at the time contemplated a visit to England, and he accepted this offer on condition of leave of absence being granted to him for that purpose. To England accordingly Handel journeyed after a short stay at Hanover, arriving in London towards the close of 1710. He came as a composer of Italian opera, and earned his first success at the Haymarket with Rinaldo, composed, to the consternation of the hurried librettist, in a fortnight, and first performed on the 24th of February 1711. In this opera the aria “Lascia ch’io pianga” found its final home. The work was produced with the utmost magnificence, and Addison’s delightful reviews of it in the Spectator poked fun at it from an unmusical point of view in a way that sometimes curiously foreshadows the criticisms that Gluck might have made on such things at a later period. The success was so great, especially for Walsh the publisher, that Handel proposed that Walsh should compose the next opera, and that he should publish it. He returned to Hanover at the close of the opera season, and composed a good deal of vocal chamber music for the princess Caroline, the step-daughter of the elector, besides the instrumental works known to us as the oboe concertos. In 1712 Handel returned to London and spent a year with Andrews, a rich musical amateur, in Barn Elms, Surrey. Three more years were spent in Burlington, in the neighbourhood of London. He evidently was but little inclined to return to Hanover, in spite of his duties to the court there. Two Italian operas and the Utrecht Te Deum written by the command of Queen Anne are the principal works of this period. It was somewhat awkward for the composer when his deserted master came to London in 1714 as George I. of England. For some time Handel did not venture to appear at court, and it was only at the intercession of Baron Kielmansegge that his pardon was obtained. By his advice Handel wrote the Water Music which was performed at a royal water party on the Thames, and it so pleased the king that he at once received the composer into his good graces and granted him a salary of £400 a year. Later Handel became music master to the little princesses and was given an additional £200 by the princess Caroline. In 1716 he followed the king to Germany, where he wrote a second German Passion to the popular poem of Brockes, a text which, divested of its worst features, forms the basis of several of the arias in Bach’s Passion according to St John. This was Handel’s last work to a German text.
On his return to England he entered the service of the duke of Chandos as conductor of his concerts, receiving a thousand pounds for his first oratorio Esther. The music which Handel wrote for performance at “Cannons,” the duke of Chandos’s residence at Edgware, is comprised in the first version of Esther, Acis and Galatea, and the twelve Chandos Anthems, which are compositions approximately in the same form as Bach’s church cantatas but without any systematic use of chorale tunes. The fashionable Londoner would travel 9 miles in those days to the little chapel of Whitchurch to hear Handel’s music, and all that now remains of the magnificent scene of these visits is the church, which is the parish church of Edgware. In 1720 Handel appeared again in a public capacity as impresario of the Italian opera at the Haymarket theatre, which he managed for the institution called the Royal Academy of Music. Senesino, a famous singer, to engage whom Handel especially journeyed to Dresden, was the mainstay of the enterprise, which opened with a highly successful performance of Handel’s opera Radamisto. To this time belongs the famous rivalry between Handel and Buononcini, a melodious Italian composer whom many thought to be the greater of the two. The controversy has been perpetuated in John Byrom’s lines: