This set of New Year discourses is not meant to be about my favourite things but things I like. Of course I like Bach, and admire him beyond just about anything else but, in the same way that one perhaps admired David Bowie but loved Marc Bolan, you can feel something different for Handel without questioning Bach's towering superiority.
They sound very similar, don't they, but whereas Bach is more profoundly Protestant, German and flawless, Handel is brighter, shinier and more glamorous and I think that is because he spent some formative years in Italy, brought Italian operatic style to England and was writing music for the box office more than the church.
Bach appears to have been capable of falling out with other musicians but Handel probably just outdoes him on anecdotes relating to their respective reputations for difficultness and repartee.
Auditioning one singer, presumably in the rehearsal room in the house in Brook Street, Handel's dissatisfaction reached such a level that the singer threatened to trample all over the great man's harpsichord, to which he replied, 'well, at least it will make a better sound than your singing'.
A man of gargantuan appetite, the record showing no trace of vegetarianism, modern biography inevitably has to mention that there is no trace of romantic involvement whatsoever. None of the lady singers he regularly employed and none of the men either are ever suggested as candidates for intimacy, which is unusual. That presumably leads many to assume some carefully guarded, clandestine homosexuality but I believe Isaac Newton was genuinely not interested in such diversions either and the fact that Handel was not possessed of the angelic good looks of Vivaldi doesn't mean he wouldn't have had the chance because Bach was no oil painting either(although he was, actually) and he produced nearly as many children as he did Cello Suites, Violin Sonatas and Partitas put together.
But Handel made fortunes and lost them, abandoning opera in favour of oratorio when the fashion changed, recycled a useful tune from an old work when he needed it for a new one and even managed to fall out with the librettist of Messiah long before Lennon & McCartney, Fleetwood Mac or the Everly Brothers ever thought of it.
Why I like Handel, however, is for his confidence, the dignity and the elegance that comes from that Age of Enlightenment (for those who could afford it), for the inventiveness of the interplay in the duets in the operas. I don't know if there is something English about it- he was as German as the king really, but I don't mind if, for once, my scepticism about patriotism is compromised if it is. I like standing up for the Hallelujah Chorus, which sounds fine coming from me who, forty years ago at school, dared not to stand for the National Anthem hoping against hope that the headmaster wouldn't notice a boy not standing in the fifth row back in the third form.
I don't know that my redeemer liveth and doubt if I have one but that doesn't detract from the aria and one really needs to go to a Messiah once in a while to be reminded what a ready-made album of Greatest Hits it was.
And Handel is one of a few things I like to think I share with or inherited from my mother. It seemed to be something one knew about when she was young, or it was for her, but I'm not sure it is quite so much an essential part of the culture now. That is something to be regretted.
