2018: Migration Movements in Music. Music and Musicians from Foreign Lands 1650–1750

Location: Händel-Haus, Halle an der Saale

Date: 28th to 29th May 2018

Organizers: Institut für Musik, Medien- und Sprechwissenschaft, Abteilung Musikwissenschaft der Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg

Stiftung Händel-Haus zu Halle

Georg-Friedrich-Händel-Gesellschaft e. V., Internationale Vereinigung

John Mainwaring’s story about the hero musician, successful anywhere, with the people falling at his feet immediately obscures the fact, that throughout his entire career Handel was a foreigner who needed to deal with phenomena of linguistic, religious, political, cultural and aesthetic difference. Handel needed to prove himself inevery foreign environment. There was the “new world” of the opera in Hamburg, and the Italian Metropolis each with its own versatile diversified music culture. Also London had its specific music life oscillating between national (English) and international (Franco-Italian) idioms. Handel needed to adapt and to find a new orientation in all these different milieus and to strive for a balance between his own culture, that he brought with him, and the foreign, with which he had to face.

Handel shared this challenge with many of European musicians, which orientated themselves more internationally in the period after the Thirty Years’ War. There were composers as well as singers and instrumentalists. The emigration of musicians was connected with the transfer of different musical styles, vocal practices and performance styles in most different cultural milieus. On the one hand this could cause irritations and controversies, but on the other hand it could initiate a wide and diverse variety and combination of versions.

The conference aims to encourage an investigation from a fresh perspective of the opportunities, conflicts and challenges that resulted from the migration movements of the musicians inside Europe in the period between 1650 and 1750. Along with this new perspective goes the goal to reconsider the work and characteristics of Handel within this movement.