Burney and Sir John Hawkins. For the inner life of
Mozart and Beethoven we can turn to copious letters and other personal
writings; Handel's extant letters do not amount to more than about twenty
in all, and it is only rarely that they throw much light on the workings of
his mind.
The family of Handel belonged originally to Breslau. The name is found
in various forms; it seems originally to have been _Haendeler_ signifying
trader, but by the time the composer was born the spelling _Haendel_ had
been adopted. This is the correct German form of his name; in Italy he
wrote his name _Hendel_, in order to ensure its proper pronunciation, and
in England he was known, for the same reason, as Handel. The Handels of
Breslau had for several generations been coppersmiths. Valentine Handel,
the composer's grandfather, born in 1582, migrated to Halle, where two of
his sons followed the same trade. His third son, George, born 1622, became
a barber-surgeon. At the age of twenty he married the widow of the barber
to whom he had been apprenticed; she was twelve years older than he was. In
1682 she died, and George Handel, although sixty years of age, married a
second wife within half a year. Her name was Dorothea Taust; her father,
like most of his ancestors, was a clergyman.
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