Handel composed more than forty operas in over thirty years, and since the late 1960s, with the revival of baroque music and original instrumentation, interest in Handel's operas has grown.

The instrumentation for Handel's score follows closely that of all his early operas, and consists of two recorders, two oboes, two trumpets, three violins, two cellos, viola, timpani, contrabassoon and harpsichord.

Ebenezer Prout commented on various facets of Handel's instrumentation in the work.

He was certainly devoted to Handel's music, having helped to finance the publication of every Handel score since Rodelinda in 1725.

Title page of Handel's autograph score

The first published score of Messiah was issued in 1767, eight years after Handel's death, though this was based on relatively early manuscripts and included none of Handel's later revisions.

In continental Europe, performances of Messiah were departing from Handel's practices in a different way: his score was being drastically reorchestrated to suit contemporary tastes.

At the turn of the century, The Musical Times wrote of the " additional accompaniments " of Mozart and others, " Is it not time that some of these ' hangers on ' of Handel's score were sent about their business?

" In 1902, the musicologist Ebenezer Prout produced a new edition of the score, working from Handel's original manuscripts rather than from corrupt printed versions with errors accumulated from one edition to another.

However, Prout started from the assumption that a faithful reproduction of Handel's original score would not be practical:

The first published score of 1767, together with Handel's documented adaptations and recompositions of various movements, has been the basis for many performing versions since the composer's lifetime.

The opening aria, " Ombra mai fu ", sung by Xerxes to a tree ( Platanus orientalis ), is set to one of Handel's best-known melodies, and is often played in an orchestral arrangement, known as Handel's " largo " ( despite being marked " larghetto " in the score ).

He confiscated Goss's score of Handel's organ concertos on the grounds that choristers of the Chapel Royal were there to learn to sing and not to play.

Supported by friends of Ouseley, the library contained such important articles as the original score of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas and Handel's own conducting score from the Chester premiere of the Messiah.

Older recordings tend to use arrangements of Handel's score for the modern orchestra, for example the arrangements by Hamilton Harty and Leopold Stokowski.

This sequence derives from Samuel Arnold's first edition of the complete score in 1788 and the manuscript copies dating from Handel's lifetime.

Older recordings tend to use arrangements of Handel's score for the modern orchestra, for example the arrangements by Hamilton Harty and Leopold Stokowski.

The pathos of Handel's oratorios is an ethical one.

* 1717 – King George I of Great Britain sails down the River Thames with a barge of 50 musicians, where George Frideric Handel's Water Music is premiered.

Not the Messiah is a spoof of Handel's oratorio Messiah.

* June 29 – Handel's Israel in Egypt is recorded onto wax cylinder at The Crystal Palace, it being the earliest known recording of classical music.

* April 13 – George Frideric Handel's oratorio The Messiah is first performed in Dublin, Ireland.

* January 8 – George Frideric Handel's opera Ariodante is premièred at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, London.

The pinnacle of the oratorio is found in George Frideric Handel's works, notably Messiah and Israel in Egypt.

* Georg Friedrich Handel's 1707 solo cantata in Italian, Ero e Leandro ( HWV 150 ), is based on the tale.

The peak of its season is the Lincoln Christmas Market, accompanied by a massive annual production of Handel's Messiah.

* Terpsichore is also found in the third version ( HWV 8c ) of Handel's opera Il pastor fido ( 1712 ).

In contrast with most of Handel's oratorios, the singers in Messiah do not assume dramatic roles, there is no single, dominant narrative voice, and very little use is made of quoted speech.

Handel's music for Messiah is distinguished from most of his other oratorios by an orchestral restraint — a quality which the musicologist Percy M. Young observes was not adopted by Mozart and other later arrangers of the music.

A particular aspect of Handel's restraint is his limited use of trumpets throughout the work.

Although Messiah is not in any particular key, Handel's tonal scheme has been summarised by the musicologist Anthony Hicks as " an aspiration towards D major ", the key musically associated with light and glory.

Nevertheless, Luckett finds this thesis implausible, and asserts that " the unity of Messiah is a consequence of nothing more arcane than the quality of Handel's attention to his text, and the consistency of his musical imagination ".

The opening Sinfony is composed in E minor for strings, and is Handel's first use in oratorio of the French overture form.

The music proceeds through various key changes as the prophecies unfold, culminating in the G major chorus " For unto us a child is born ", in which the choral exclamations ( which include an ascending fourth in " the Mighty God ") are imposed on material drawn from Handel's Italian cantata Nò, di voi non vo ' fidarmi.

Here, Handel's use of Nò, di voi non vo ' fidarmi has Sedley Taylor's unqualified approval: " bids the voices enter in solemn canonical sequence, and his chorus ends with a combination of grandeur and depth of feeling such as is at the command of consummate genius only ".

First page of the concluding chorus " Worthy is the Lamb ": From Handel's manuscript

After a brief solo recitative, the alto is joined by the tenor for the only duet in Handel's final version of the music, " O death, where is thy sting?

" The melody is adapted from Handel's 1722 cantata Se tu non lasci amore, and is in Luckett's view the most successful of the Italian borrowings.

Handel's Judas Maccabaeus was often performed in the Land of Israel, with the motif of " conqu ' ring hero " becoming a Hanukkah song.

Handel's " Water Music ", although it was composed more than thirty years earlier, is often paired with the " Music for the Royal Fireworks " as both were written for outdoor performance.

" Brahms might well have known that large and often admirable work, published as recently as 1856, which Volkmann based on the so-called ' Harmonious Blacksmith ' theme from the Air with Variations in Handel's E major Harpsichord Suite.

A Scratch Messiah, People's Messiah, Come Sing Messiah, Sing-it-yourself Messiah, or Sing along Messiah ( the first two British and Australian usage, the last two common in North America ) is an informal performance of Handel's Messiah in which the audience serves as the unrehearsed chorus, often supported by a carefully prepared core group.