Mainwaring asserts that in 1698 he went to Berlin, where he
was presented to the Electress Sophia Charlotte and made the acquaintance
of Ariosti and Giovanni Battista Buononcini, two famous Italian opera
composers whom he was to encounter again, in London, many years later. But
it is known that Ariosti did not arrive in Berlin until the spring of 1697,
and Buononcini not until 1702. And as old Handel died in February 1697, his
son cannot have been in Berlin later than about the end of 1696, if it is
true (as Mainwaring says) that the Elector offered to send him to Italy, an
offer which the father firmly refused to accept for him. If, on the other
hand, Mainwaring is right in saying that young Handel went to Berlin with a
view to obtaining a musical post there, it is hardly likely that he should
have made the journey at ten years of age, and while his father was still
living. It seems much more probable that if he ever did visit Berlin it was
when he was of an age to form his own judgments as to his future career.
Three days before his seventeenth birthday he matriculated as a law student
of the University of Halle, but music must have been the chief occupation
of his time. The composer Telemann, four years his senior, spoke of him
as being already a musician of importance at Halle when he first met him
there, probably in 1700.
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