The Necessary 100: Let's not forget George Frideric Handel's Messiah and other big hits
Updated: 2011-01-31 10:27:00
Everything we need to know about Western art music has its roots in the 17th and 18th centuries, so we need to spend more time with some of its seminal composers -- and give them a few more credits on the Necessary 100 list. Today's man: George Frideric Handel, an incredibly inventive, self-reinventive individual, born in Germany in 1685, musically spit-and-polished in Rome and then transplanted to the England of soon-to-be King George I. Handel wrote music for every occasion, both sacred and secular. He died in 1759. He had his own opera company. I'm going to over-simplify in saying...