What music did the young George Frederic listen to?
Even in his youth, music was an ever-present companion in George Frederic Handel's life. At the end of the seventeenth century, he would have heard music not only in the context of frequent church services, but even his studies at the Latin School in Halle were combined with training in choral singing. Music was played on the marketplace to greet the town councilors, at feasts, or at dances.
Handel grew up surrounded with music by composers such as Jacobus Gallus, Orlando Lasso, and Michael Praetorius, and was heavily influenced by these sounds of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. According to Johann Mattheson's famous pronouncement, Handel was "strong [...] in fugues and counterpoint"; his roots in traditional melodies are especially evident in his work Komm, du süßer Tod, written on the famous melody Folie d'Espagne, and in turn based on an earlier composition by his teacher Friedrich Wilhelm Zachow.
Capella de la Torre's concert takes up the question of what music the young George Frederic might have heard around him, including pieces from the collection Florilegium Portense, as well as arias from Adam Krieger and Constantin Christian Dedekind, and traditional melodies which the composer used later, for example in his oratorio "The Messiah". The concert illustrates and brings alive Handel's early influences, the musical traditions of his surroundings, and the spirit of the seventeenth century.