Composed: 1740
Duration: 19 minutes

Born and educated in Northern Germany, Handel spent several years in Italy before settling in London. His style is truly international, as was his renown. Handel’s instrumental music includes two volumes of orchestral concerti grossi. The first set, labelled Opera Terza, was published in London in 1734. The concertos seem, however, to have been compiled without the assistance, and possibly even without the knowledge of Handel himself. The London publisher, John Walsh, a shrewd businessman, wished to take advantage  of the popularity of both Handel and the Italian style concerto grosso, so he set about compiling a set of concertos from manuscript copies of works he had obtained, legitimately or otherwise, during his long association with Handel. In the days before musical copyright, any composer who was careless enough to let a score get away was likely to see it in print if an enterprising publisher thought he could make money from it; the composer was unlikely to be paid. The fact that this happened to Handel attests to his great fame, and this probably resulted in the preservation of much fine music which might easily have been lost if only a few hand-written copies were made.