George Frideric Handel, Composer of Messiah (Sowers)

His father wanted him to become a lawyer. George Frideric Handel wanted music―and the struggle between those two futures began when he was still a boy.

Today George Frideric Handel is remembered as one of the great composers of Western music and, above all, as the composer of Messiah. But the road to that achievement was anything but easy. As a child, Handel faced strong opposition to his musical ambitions. His father considered music an unsuitable career and tried to steer his son toward law. Handel, however, could not give up the gift and calling that had captured his imagination.

George Frideric Handel: Composer of Messiah by Charles Ludwig follows Handel from his childhood in Germany through a remarkable musical career that carried him across Europe and eventually to England. Along the way, readers encounter not only extraordinary talent, but also years of discipline, ambition, competition, disappointment, financial pressure, illness, and perseverance.

Handel became known for operas, orchestral works, ceremonial music, and sacred compositions. His career brought him into contact with royalty and some of the most important musicians and cultural centers of his day. Yet success was never guaranteed. Changing public tastes, professional rivalries, financial difficulties, and serious health problems repeatedly threatened the career he had worked so hard to build. Readers will discover:

• A boy determined to make music: Handel’s early fascination with musical instruments and the conflict between his ambitions and his father’s plans for him.
• The discipline behind the talent: the training, practice, and opportunities that helped develop Handel into a professional musician and composer.
• A career across Europe: Handel’s experiences in Germany and Italy before making England the center of his professional life.
• Success and disappointment: the unstable world of opera, changing audiences, professional competition, and financial setbacks.
• Music for kings and ordinary listeners: a career that produced operas, orchestral works, anthems, and music for major public occasions.
• Perseverance through physical hardship: the severe health crisis that threatened Handel’s ability to continue composing and performing.
• The creation of Messiah: the sacred oratorio that would become Handel’s most famous work and one of the most enduring compositions in Christian music.
• Faith expressed through music: the book’s Christian perspective on Handel’s gifts, struggles, perseverance, and desire to glorify God through his work.

Charles Ludwig presents Handel as more than a famous name from music history. Readers meet a determined, sometimes stubborn, highly gifted man who experienced both acclaim and failure and who continued composing through circumstances that might have ended another career.

The book also helps young readers understand the historical world in which Handel lived. Chapters follow his journey through Halle, Berlin, Italy, and London and introduce major works and turning points in his life, including Water Music, his years in opera, his struggles with illness, and ultimately Messiah.

Part of Mott Media’s Sowers Series, George Frideric Handel: Composer of Messiah is well suited for homeschool studies of music history, famous composers, eighteenth-century Europe, Christian biography, and the historical background of Messiah.

Long after the premieres, rivalries, and financial worries of Handel’s own century disappeared, the music remained. This biography introduces young readers to the talent, faith, perseverance, and extraordinary life behind it.

Charles Ludwig was a pastor, evangelist, and prolific Christian writer whose work included biographies, articles, stories, and books for young readers. His Sowers Series biographies combine lively historical storytelling with an emphasis on faith, perseverance, and Christian character.