On July 15, 2025, the Handel House Foundation announced in a press release that the collaboration with the director of the Handel House and artistic director of the Handel Festival, Clemens Birnbaum, had been terminated “as of September 30, 2024”. On behalf of the Handel Society, the Hallische Händel-Ausgabe and the musicology department at Martin Luther University, I would like to add a few important aspects from the field of Handel research to the tribute paid to his achievements.
Clemens Birnbaum initiated an important research project on the history of Handel’s reception in 20th century Germany in collaboration with the musicology department in Halle, which was funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media. The result of the research project carried out by Dr. Juliane Riepe, Dr. Lars Klingberg, Dr. Susanne Spiegler and Katrin Gerlach was not only the world’s most comprehensive collection of sources on this subject, but also a large two-volume publication that set new standards for research into the composer’s associated political endorsements as well as the performance and editing history of his works in the 20th century. Based on this project, a further systematic project on the “Politische Instrumentalisierung von Musik der Vergangenheit im Deutschland des 20. Jahrhunderts am Beispiel Georg Friedrich Händels” was funded by the German Research Foundation, the results of which, like those of the previous project, were published in the in-house series Studien der Stiftung Händel-Haus, which was headed at the time by Clemens Birnbaum and edited by Dr. Konstanze Musketa.
The close and fruitful cooperation between the Handel House Foundation and Handel research, which was significantly influenced by Clemens Birnbaum, is also demonstrated by the fact that both the Halle habilitation thesis by Dr. Juliane Riepe Händel vor dem Fernrohr. Die Italienreise The dissertations by Dr. Annette Landgraf on the reception of Handel’s oratorio Israel in Egypt and by Dr. Teresa Ramer-Wünsche on Handel’s Parnasso in Festa were also published in this series.
The musicologist’s own research formed the basis for his concept of performing all of Handel’s pasticcio operas in the Handel Festival programs for which he was responsible, a series of performances that provided a completely new and unique look at this group of works. In general, Clemens Birnbaum always endeavoured to honor the newly published volumes of the Hallische Händel-Ausgabe with first performances according to their musical texts in the festival programmes.
The Handel House Foundation’s study courses, which offer students of musicology and music the opportunity to familiarize themselves with the diverse collections of the Handel House in conjunction with practical seminars on editing, in which the Editorial Board, various volume editors and the staff of the Hallische Händel-Ausgabe have always been involved, were and still are a great idea of his.
In my view, these are some of the important “highlights” of the successful collaboration between Handel research in Halle and the Handel House Foundation under the aegis of Clemens Birnbaum, to which more could be added. I would like to thank him most sincerely for this collaboration. These thanks are accompanied by best wishes for the future on the path to new shores, which the heroines and heroes of Handel’s operas have sung again and again in their parable arias: After many storms and the happy circumnavigation of many cliffs, they always reach safe shores.
Wolfgang Hirschmann