Handel's Playlist

Putting together your own collection of favourite music and preserving it on a recorded medium may seem like a nostalgic notion these days. Music is increasingly digital and available anytime, anywhere. Your favourite songs can be added to your personal playlist in the blink of an eye. In Handel’s youth at the end of the 17th century, the first phonograph records were still a good 200 years away. Listening to music in those days meant going to church or the market square, condoling at funerals or dancing at weddings.

What did the young Georg Friedrich listen to, and how did the music that influenced and shaped him sound? The original sound ensemble Capella de la Torre ponders this question and brings to life the composed arias, improvised dances and traditional melodies that surrounded Handel as a young man and inspired his later masterpieces.