If you've heard any family gossip about your great-grandfather, it's probably just amusing stories about his boyhood antics and the scrapes he got into and out of as an adult.
Those are anecdotes about unusual events. But what about the work he did day in and day out, and his most characteristic turns of phrase rather than his one-shot zingers? All that would reveal a person perhaps quite different from the man you've heard about.
In the same way, George Frideric Handel is remembered today mainly for a few excellent orchestral pieces that were comparatively unimportant to his contemporaries. Londoners during the first half of the 18th century knew Handel primarily as a composer for the theater.
Born in Germany and christened Georg Friedrich Haendel, the composer more or less Anglicized his name when he settled in England as an adult.
Today, Handel is known as one of the two greatest and most prolific composers - the other being J.S. Bach - of what is now called the Baroque era, which occupied the 17th century and was quickly metamorphosing into another style when Handel died in 1759.
Handel is now most popular for his instrumental pieces, especially the noisy and pompous ŸMusic for the Royal Fireworks'' and the more elegant ``Water Music,'' written to be performed on a barge on the River Thames.
He also produced many concertos, both concerti grossi without individual soloists, and organ concertos, for which Handel improvised some of the organ parts when he performed them himself.
His chamber music is also gaining favor in modern times - dozens of sonatas involving a violin or sometimes a flute, recorder or oboe accompanied by a harpsichord and viola da gamba, an early cellolike instrument.
In England, Handel's reputation has survived the centuries mainly through his grand oratorios on biblical subjects, the most famous of which is ``Messiah' (note that the correct title is not ``The Messiah'').
These huge religious works for vocal soloists, chorus and orchestra came mainly toward the end of Handel's life. Earlier in his career, the composer was famous not so much for instrumental music as for his operas.
In the early 18th century, operas were opulent affairs, produced with elaborate stage machinery that brought gods down from the clouds and lifted dragons from the depths of the earth.
Opera singers were true celebrities, and the best way to showcase a celebrity then and now is with a solo. In opera, this solo is called an aria.
The aria had become common in the late 16th century as one of many components of the new kind of musical entertainment called opera. Arias were tuneful songs for a single voice with instrumental accompaniment, and so they remain to this day.
By 1700, arias had come to dominate opera. While operas still included plentiful choruses, duets, trios and other ensemble numbers, the solo arias were drawing big audiences.
That's because they were the flashiest parts of the show. Certain singers developed followings that Michael Jackson would envy. And it was in an aria that a singer could strut his or her stuff.
Handel tailored his arias for particular singers. If the soprano he had in mind for a role was especially good at flurries of high notes, he'd provide an aria worthy of a canary.
On the other hand, if a very popular castrate was capable of some lovely singing but couldn't handle extremely high or low notes, Handel would keep the melodies within a constricted range.
No doubt the word castrate caught your eye. It's exactly what it sounds like, a male singer who kept his high voice into adulthood by being castrated before he reached puberty. Castrati were rampant in the 16th through 18th centuries, and were highly regarded for the boyish purity of their voices.
The one drawback to castrati was that they couldn't reproduce (missing only their testicles, they could remain sexually active, but to no effect in terms of offspring). By the 19th century, the public had come to regard castrati as freakish, fewer boys were willing to submit to the necessary operation, and consequently composers stopped writing material for castrati.
When old castrate roles were revived between about 1800 and 1950, they were usually performed by tenors singing the music an octave lower than it was written. Today, castrate roles are usually assumed by mezzo-sopranos in pants, or by countertenors.
A countertenor is a man, fully intact, who sings in the female soprano or mezzo-soprano range by developing his falsetto register. When you hear the vocal harmonies in old Beach Boys songs, just think of the singers as rock 'n' roll countertenors.
So much for the singers. Now, back to the arias they sang.
Folks in the 17th century were big on classification, so it's not surprising that a couple of dozen specific types of aria were codified. There were the slow and smooth aria cantabile, the declamatory aria parlante (including the familiar ``Comfort Ye'' from ``Messiah''), the comic aria buffa, and many others.
These arias were classified according to their character, but the most famous sort of Baroque aria takes its name from its structure - the da capo aria.
In colloquial English, ``da capo'' might be translated as ``from the top.'' This kind of aria has two sections, followed by a repetition of the first. In other words, it's a three-part structure that can be illustrated with the letters ABA, where A is the section that's repeated.
That's the outline, anyway. The details are a little more complicated.
The da capo aria usually begins with an instrumental introduction. Then comes the first vocal section (A), a short instrumental postlude, and the second vocal section (B), which is in a different key and often modulates into still other keys.
Then A returns. But it's not quite the same A. Composers like Handel rarely bothered to write out this section again; they'd just note ``da capo'' - ``from the top'' - in the score. The singer would repeat the first section, but this time improvising elaborate, bravura ornamentation around the original theme.
All of this was quite impressive, but every da capo aria brought the opera's action to a halt while the singer showed off. Today's opera fans may be as star-struck as those in Handel's day - consider the popularity of Luciano Pavarotti and Joan Sutherland - but they also expect the plot to move along. Vocal gymnastics can be impressive, but enough's enough.
After Handel's death, composers such as Mozart and Cluck pretty much abandoned the da capo aria. They replaced it with something that fit more smoothly into the dramatic flow. It was a two-section aria; the first part, which came to be known as the cavatina, was slow, and the second, eventually called the cabaletta, was fast.
The cavatina-cabaletta pairing provided much more dramatic development and contrast than the da capo aria. In the cavatina, the singer was usually thinking or worrying; in the cabaletta, the singer was more resolute, often calling for action.
This format was popular among Italian opera composers until the end of the 19th century, although there were plenty of other methods of putting together an aria in use at the same time.
But all this came after Handel.
Handel listening suggestions
The difficulty with Handel's operas for today's audiences is that they can seem terribly static. One da capo aria after another can become grueling over the course of three or four hours.
So, even though you can't get the full sense of an opera through excerpts, it might be wise to ease into Baroque opera with a compact disc or two containing isolated arias.
For an outstanding example of ``modernized'' Handel, try to find a collection of arias sung by mezzo Marilyn Home accompanied by a modern orchestra on the Erato label.
For sounds pretty much corresponding to what Handel heard - violins with gut strings, bright reedy oboes, and singers in the proper range - investigate a series of recordings on the Harmonia Mundi U.S.A. label. Each disc collects arias Handel wrote for a specific singer. Although there's a different modern soloist on CD - including a countertenor in one volume - the series is held together by the presence of the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra directed by Nicholas McCegan.
Excellent versions of Handel's purely or- chestral music, played on original or replicas of 17th-century instruments, may be found on the Archiv label. Trevor Pinnock leads the English Concert in lively versions of the ``Water Music,'' ``Music for the Royal Fireworks,'' the concerti grossi and many other works, all but the organ concertos available on single CDs.
And for the chamber music, dip into the Philips series on modern instruments played by members of the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields.