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. Her age was thirty-two. Her
first child, born in 1684, died at birth; her second, born February 23,
1685, was baptised the following day with the name of George Frederic.

The town of Halle had originally belonged to the Dukes of Saxony, but after
the Thirty Years' War it was assigned to the Elector of Brandenburg. George
Frederic Handel was therefore born a Prussian. But Duke Augustus of Saxony
was allowed to keep his court at the Moritzburg in Halle, and it was this
prince who made George Handel his personal surgeon. After Duke Augustus's
death in 1680, Halle was definitely transferred to Brandenburg, and the new
Duke, Johann Adolf, took up his residence at Weissenfels, twenty-five miles
to the south-west of Halle. At the time of George Frederic's birth, Halle
had relapsed into being a quiet provincial town. The musical life of
Germany in those days was chiefly centred in the numerous small courts,
each of which did its best to imitate the magnificence of Louis XIV at
Paris and Versailles. But the seventeenth century, although it produced