ABSTRACT
Amongst the fashionable and talented who climbed the unstable stairs to Thomas Britton's attic concert room during the musical coalman's last years was a young, well-built German musician in his mid-twenties with an already formidable reputation, both as a composer and as a keyboard player. This was George Frederick Handel, who after spending four years in Italy had recently (1710) taken up a post as director of music at the court of Hanover. He had not long been in office before he sought and obtained permission to travel to England, a country he greatly wanted to visit because he believed that the opportunities there for opera were especially good, and it was opera that interested him most as a composer. Nevertheless, his powers as a harpsichordist were rated only slightly below those of Domenico Scarlatti, with whom there had been friendly rivalry during his Italian years, and in organ-playing Handel was judged supreme. He certainly gave one or more harpsichord recitals in Britton's room, and may well also have played the chamber organ there.
