of his was in regular service in the Duke's establishment. One day he was
allowed to play on the organ in the palace chapel; the Duke happened to
hear him, made enquiries as to who the player was, and at once urged on the
father the duty of having him properly trained for a musical career.

Old Handel remained obstinate; he was determined that his son should have
a liberal education and become a lawyer. By his own efforts he had raised
himself to a position of some distinction and affluence; it was only
natural that he should wish his son to enter on life with better advantages
than he himself had enjoyed. He at any rate followed the advice of the Duke
so far as to place the boy under the musical tuition of Friedrich Zachow,
the organist of the Lutheran church at Halle.

The next episode in George Frederic's career has considerably puzzled his
biographers. 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