The Handel House Museum Page at the Teri Noel Towe Home Pages
Handel at 56, in 1741, the year in which he composed Messiah in the house on London's Lower Brook Street a portion of which now houses the Handel House Museum. This image is the frontispiece to the 1760 John Mainwaring biography.
Handel's House in Brook Street, London
The House in which Messiah was written!
Hallelujah!
The Handel House Museum opened on November 8, 2001!
I am happy to report that the Handel House Museum opened, as scheduled, on November 8, 2001.
The original, wonderful plan to turn all of Numbers 23 and 25 Brook Street, including the commercial spaces on the ground floor of each building, into a Museum unfortunately was compromised, if not flat out sabotaged, en route, and there are those of us who are fervent fans of the late, great Jimi Hendrix, fans who are dejected that his apartment within Number 23, which could have been recreated as he left it, with all of its original furnishings, instead will now be "museum support space".
But, as my beloved father would have put it, "40% of something is better than 100% of nothing."
We have a Handel House Museum at last!
A simply delightful account of what a visit to the Handel House Museum is like was sent to me by an esteemed internet friend and ardent Handelian who, a day or so before the official opening, attended a reception at the Handel House Museum for those who contributed to the cause . With the permission of this friend, who has asked for anonymity, I happily reproduce his report:
Tonight [November 6] was a special pre opening for those who gave some money to the Handel House. It opens officially on the 8th November.
IMHO they have arranged things very well.
You enter through a very exclusive little pedestrian area at the back which is gradually filling up with exclusive little restaurants and shops. Security desk cloakrooms are on the ground floor which is well below the ground floor at the front. You then take a lift to the 2nd floor where Handel's bedroom was. Where you enter there is a continuous video with Christopher Hogwood, Charles Mackerras, Jean Rigby, Christopher Robson and other doing their thing, plus a drive around London in a cab with the cabbie doing the commentary about Handel sites. I didn't see it all. Innumerable pictures of course. The bed is terrific and there is a little cylindrical cupboard which I was told was for night soil.
You then proceed down the wooden stairs to the room where he had performances in the front. There were three young musicians entertaining us; then through to a very large exhibit room at the back where his life is spelt out on boards (this is part of the Jimi Hendrix house.)
Downstairs is a shop selling one CD (compilation from harmonia mundi), an excellent book "Handel Museum Companion" by Jackie Riding, Donald Burrows and Anthony Hicks and lots of cards and edupacks etc.
I can't really do justice to it here.
Londoners must and others should see it asap.
But, please remember that the happy news that the Handel House Museum has finally opened does NOT mean that the need to raise money for its preservation has evaporated. Quite the contrary. If anything, the need to raise money for the Handel House Museum has increased. A solid endowment is needed, and some of us have not given up hope that the dream of acquiring the freehold of the houses from its corporate owners, of restoring the facade of the building to its eighteenth century appearance and of opening an adjunct Jimi Hendrix Museum .
For those of you who may be interested in making contributions to the Handel House Museum and its endowment, here is the requisite and pertinent information:
Contributions from the United Kingdom should be sent to:
The Handel House Trust Ltd.
25 Brook Street
London W1K 4HB
Tel : +44 (0)20 7 495 1685
Fax : +44 (0)20 7 495 1759
E-mail: mail@handelhouse.org
For more information about making a gift, please contact
Martin Eggleston at +44 (0)20 7495 1685
(I just love those phone numbers, don't you? I am delighted that someone had the presence of mind, the PR sense, and the Handelian wit to see if the last four digits could be 1685 and 1759!)
The Handel House Trust is a registered charity under British law.
Contributions from the United States of America should continue to be sent to:
The Handel House Foundation of America, Inc.
c/o James B. Sitrick Esq.
Coudert Brothers
1114 Avenue of the Americas, 43rd Floor
New York, NY 10036-7703
Tel : (212) 626-4444
The Handel House Foundation of America, Inc., is a tax exempt organization under §501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code of the United States of America.
Although the Handel House Museum has its own home page, at http://www.handelhouse.org/, detailed and timely information on the Handel House Trust and on the Museum, as well as up to date announcements about both the Trust and the Museum, is available at Brad Leissa's The Handel House Museum and Trust Page ; this avid Handelophile is far more "involved" and "au courant" than I am!
Teri Noel Towe
December 1, 2001
P. S.: When you send that e-mail to mail@handelhouse.org, I strongly urge you to inquire about obtaining a copy of the Handel House Museum Companion, the spectacular souvenir guidebook available at the gift shoppe!
This black and white photogravure, from an 1893 issue of The Musical Times, reproduces an early photograph -- perhaps the first to be taken of the painting, as a matter of fact -- of one of the earliest authentic portraits from life of George Frideric Handel (or Georg Friedrich Händel, as his name still legally was at the time that he sat for it). Painted about 1720 by Thornhill, this portrait depicts the approximately 35 year old composer-virtuoso, casually but elegantly attired, at the console of the organ that was then in the chapel at Cannons, the Duke of Chandos's palatial country residence. This instrument, or, more accurately, however much now remains of it after nearly three centuries of "rebuilds" and "restorations", is now in the Church of Holy Trinity, Gosport, England, to the best of my knowledge.
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Copyright, Teri Noel Towe, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2001
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The Roubilliac Statue of Handel that was commissioned from Roubilliac by the promoters who owned the
notorious Vauxhall Gardens, a libertine pleasure garden that was the "Heaven" or "Studio 54" of its day.
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