The Handel House Museum is Buzzing

This year I have made a number of visits to America with the purpose of spreading the word about the Museum. It has been the greatest pleasure for me to make new friendships with so many people with a common interest in Handel and I would like to thank them all for their wonderful interest and support. It has been particularly exciting to hear Ellen Harris, Head of Music and Theater Arts at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, developing one of the themes of her book, Handel as Orpheus. In the early 1720s, Handel stopped writing cantatas having composed so many to be performed in the drawing rooms of his patrons in Rome or London - in the houses in which he lived. However now Handel's output suddenly changes and this is surely related to the fact that he has his own house in Brook Street, where he does not have to sing for his supper and from where he can concentrate on other forms, particularly the operas.

Final Leg of the Fundraising

Many friends on both sides of the Atlantic have been extremely generous to the Handel House Museum and we are now in the final stage of our main capital campaign. It is our aim that this will be completed by the end of 2004, by which date we will have paid for the creation of the Museum and built up an endowment to give us the stability necessary to be able to run the Museum successfully in the future.

We still have approximately £1.5 million to raise which is quite a challenge. Now that the Museum is open it is easy to forget that the funding is not complete, but without it the future of the Museum is not secure. Already we have raised three times this amount.

With your help, I am sure we can reach this goal.

Christopher Purvis

Chairman

Posted: 1 December 2003