Georg Friedrich Händel was born February 23, 1685, in Halle, Germany. He died in London on April 14, 1759. In England, he signed his name George Frideric Handel.

Asked to name a Baroque composer, most people today still would most likely say Bach first. Yet, in his day, Bach toiled in relative obscurity, working for a succession of minor nobles that ruled some of the dozens of tiny states in what is now Germany. He was respected as both a keyboard player and composer, but his efforts to land a big job – as court composer for, say, an elector of the Holy Roman Empire – came to naught. Neither did he pursue a career in public theaters.

Georg Friedrich Händel succeeded at both.

Comparisons of the two giants are inevitable: They were born just a month apart, both in Germany; both died in the 1750s. Both of their fathers died while they were young, and both headed first to northern Germany to make their fortunes. They were perhaps the two greatest living organists of their day, and both lived long lives, which allowed them to hone their compositional skills and to create a prodigious body of work in many genres.

Händel seems by comparison to have led a relatively charmed life. His father practically forbade him to pursue music, but the young boy managed to sneak a clavichord (a small keyboard instrument) into the house to practice. When the duke of Saxe-Weissenfels heard the boy play, he convinced Händel’s father to permit instruction in music as well as law.

Händel’s musical training was wide-ranging, including exposing him to the music of greatest composers of the day. It grounded him well in what was to be his profession, but the real key to his enormous future success was his first job: violinist in the orchestra of Hamburg’s opera company, the only one in the region not run by a royal court. In less than two years, in 1705, Handel’s first two operas had their premieres there. From there a series of fortuitous connections with supportive aristocrats led the young composer first to Italy, then to Hanover, and then to London, the city that would be his home for more than 40 years.

Besides freeing him of the most urgent financial needs, Händel’s travels – particularly in Italy – allowed him to meet in person and experience first-hand the music of the day’s great composers. Both Scarlattis (Domenico and Alessandro), Corelli, Albinoni, and Vivaldi were among the composers he met and whose expertise he absorbed. Händel further had the motivation to put that new-found knowledge to prompt use: His Italian patron required him to write a cantata per week to be performed at his private estate. Händel also improved his operatic chops with great success in Agrippina in Venice and in several oratorios on sacred themes (the Vatican had banned actual opera in Rome).

As a result, by the time the composer met the very enthusiastic Prince Ernst August of Hanover in Venice, Händel had lightened his more rigorous, earlier, Germanic style with Italian lyricism. It armed him with an unequalled blend of musical tools.

Thanks in part to Prince Ernst August, Händel in 1710 won the job as Kapellmeister at Hanover, where Ernst August’s brother Georg was elector, and the esteem in which the court held him is apparent in the contract condition they granted. He was immediately