Hallelujah House: Inside Handel’s HQ
PRESS RELEASE
A new exhibition at Handel Hendrix House, the museum on Brook Street and home to composer G.F. Handel from 1723-1759, tells unique stories of music that Handel wrote within its walls and performed as he became Georgian London’s go-to composer and most celebrated musical personality.
Bringing together loans from the National Portrait Gallery, The Royal Collection Trust, Foundling Museum, Victoria & Albert Museum, The College of Optometrists, private collectors and rarely seen items from the museum’s own collection, Hallelujah House will show how his music reached every corner of London from theatres to taverns, coronations to coffeehouses, grand palaces to gardens, and filled many a music-lover’s home. Items on display bring the variety of people and places that surrounded Handel’s performances to life through manuscripts, letters, portraits, personal possessions, and musical instruments.
Handel worked furiously hard as a composer, musical director and host to make ends meet. In all this, his terraced house on Brook Street, Mayfair - then the fringes of London, now just five minutes from Bond Street underground station – was much more than a home. It was his rehearsal studio, study, office, entertaining suite and much more.
In his ground floor parlours he would meet patrons, sell tickets and subscriptions to his new compositions, such as his grand concertos; on the first floor he wrote his music, from the celebrated opera Giulio Cesare to his last great oratorio Jephta, the composition of which was movingly altered by the loss of the 67-year-old composer’s eyesight. Zadok the Priest and the other Coronation Anthems were all written here at lightning speed, with Messiah famously written in just 24 days. Handel would wow his friends and supporters with dazzling displays of his virtuosity at the keyboard as he gave them previews of his latest music, including his wonderful magical opera Alcina. Downstairs in the basement kitchen his servants, perhaps alongside his singer-cook Gustavus Waltz, would prepare a never-ending succession of meals for Handel, visiting musicians and his guests. Despite the hard work, food and drink were never far from Handel’s mind, leading him to write on the score of his opera Faramondo a shopping list beginning with ‘12 gallons port’!
Everyone needs feedback, and items on display include a letter in Handel’s own hand to his collaborator on Messiah Charles Jennens asking him to detail the parts of the newly composed Messiah which he thought needed improving. Objects on display depict Handel’s musical London life, including a leaf from the score of a revival of Handel’s Esther in Handel’s own hand, a unique manuscript quilled by Handel for his friend Elizabeth Legh and The Music Party, a painting by Philip Mercier gloriously depicting Handel’s students, the musical children of Queen Caroline. A portrait of Thomas Britton who ran popular concerts from his coal shop, a violin believed to have been played in Britton’s band and engravings of London’s many musical events bring to life the social world which Handel’s music touched every corner of. A book by notorious quack John Taylor who performed unsuccessful eye surgery on both Handel and J.S. Bach hints at transitions that Handel made as he lived his life at Brook Street – always whilst performing his immeasurably wonderful music.
Olwen Foulkes, exhibition curator said ‘Handel was not just a creative genius, but someone who could organise, entertain, network and work ferociously hard to produce his brilliant music. The story of a creative entrepreneur working hard from home feels very relevant to today, and we are thrilled to be bringing together so many inspiring works of art and objects from museums and our own collections to bring this story vividly to life. We hope visitors will enjoy exploring Handel’s house, seeing these works of art and fascinating objects and relating them to Handel’s music which they can hear in the house itself and in their homes with our playlist.’
NOTES TO EDITORS:
Hallelujah House: Inside Handel’s HQ is supported by Hallet Independent
This exhibition has been made possible by the provision of Government Indemnity. Handel Hendrix House would like to thank HM Government for providing Government Indemnity and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and Arts Council England for arranging the indemnity.
Any acknowledgement of lenders as necessary
The house is open Wednesday – Sunday 10.00 – 17.00 (last entry at 16:00). Tickets are £14.50 for adults, £10.50 for students and free for the under 12s. Tickets can be purchased in advance on the website www.handelhendrix.org but it is possible to buy
a ticket on the day at the museum. Nearest Tube: Bond Street
PRESS INFORMATION
Please contact Rachel Aked
Email: [email protected]
Tel: 07790 732448
The live music at Handel Hendrix House is generously supported by The Thistle Trust, The Garrick Charitable Trust, and Chapman Charitable Trust.
Handel Hendrix House cares for and presents to the public the homes of two of the greatest musicians ever to have lived in London. George Frideric Handel lived at 25 Brook Street from 1723 until his death in 1759. It was here that Handel wrote and rehearsed his greatest works, including Messiah and its ever popular ‘Hallelujah chorus’ – perhaps the most famous piece of classical music ever written. His stirring anthem ‘Zadok the Priest’, was also written in Brook Street and has accompanied the coronation of every British monarch since George II (for whom it was written in 1727), including HM King Charles III.
In 1968, Jimi Hendrix moved into an adjoining flat at number 23. Here, in the only place he said he felt truly at home, Hendrix entertained, inspired, and collaborated with other icons of British 60s rock music.
Handel Hendrix House has completed a £3million project to open all of Handel’s house to the public for the first time by restoring the basement and ground floor by faithfully recreated Handel’s basement kitchen with all its fixtures and fittings, carefully detailed on research and an inventory made shortly after the composer’s death.
Also
· Restored the ground floor parlours in which Handel would receive his guests and aristocratic patrons and in which his assistant, J.C. Smith, would sell tickets and subscriptions to new works.
· Restored the front façade of 25 Brook Street so that visitors can finally enter Handel’s home through his front door.
New things to see in Handel’s house include:
• Historic rooms presented as they might have been in the 1740s, when the composer was in a new burst of creative energy and commercial success writing dramatic oratorios.
• Recently acquired works of art, creating a collection representative of the more than 100 works of art Handel owned in Brook Street.
• New exhibitions about Handel’s music and the musicians he worked with and a mixed reality audio-visual display about the writing of Messiah in the very room in which it was composed.
In 2016, Jimi Hendrix’s flat in 23 Brook Street was brilliantly restored and opened to the public. To be enjoyed as a contrasting and complementary part to a visit to Handel’s home,
the Hendrix experience at Handel Hendrix House has been expanded as part of the Hallelujah Project:
• For the first time, visitors can walk up and down the stairs to his flat, where George Harrison famously had to step over one of Jimi’s other visitors who had passed out en route to the exit.
• A new exhibition features a film showing visitors exploring Hendrix’s legendary guitar technique and his influence on musicians and creatives, with high quality sound supported by Bang & Olufsen
• The film includes material uncovered by Handel Hendrix House through their national ‘Your Experience’ appeal for memories, images and stories of people’s encounters with Jimi Hendrix across the country.
A guide to Handel Hendrix House is now available on Bloomberg Connects, which can be translated into 12 different languages including French, German, Spanish, Portuguese (Brazil), Italian, Russian, Korean, Hindi, Japanese and Chinese. Details of the house can be found https://guides.bloombergconnects.org/en-US/guide/handelHendrixHouse